Dave Spencer
9 min readAug 19, 2022

An Experience In Korea

I was asked to write about the Axe Murder Incident on the Korea DMZ…here you go.

There was one incident during my 1970s Army service in Korea that I believe changed my life, my attitude about my service, and largely contributed to my ongoing fear and mistrust of authority and the “way things are supposed to be”. I was not directly stationed at the DMZ, but we were forward area air defense (2nd Battalion/71st Air Defense Artillery), regularly on alert for troop movements and many violations of the cease-fire on the DMZ. This is about the “Axe Murder Incident”, which event ultimately included “Operation Paul Bunyan”. The way I was affected was because of the impact of the recall and the account of the incident coupled with video I saw which was captured at the site of the incursion and things I learned shortly and later after the fact left me with feelings of horror and revulsion and vivid anger at the time, and “survivor’s guilt” since. Before that event, I was happy with my life and proud to be a soldier and doing my job. Afterward, I began to doubt everything and believe that nothing really had any good reason, which contributes to my life attitudes yet, today.

For background, I was on my second tour in Korea in 1976, and was serving at D Battery, 2nd Bn., 71st ADA following an eventful and very stressful tour at A Battery from 1974-’75. My experience at A Battery included certain strife between junior enlisted and senior leadership, and a level of racial conflict — after all, A Battery was known as “Fraggin’ Alpha” because of a grenade incident in which a disgruntled soldier broke into a bunker and used a grenade in the NCO barracks, almost killing a sergeant that everyone liked and respected. In 1975, when US troops were rousted out of Vietnam, the entire Pacific Theater was very tense, especially Korea. I was transferred from A to D Battery to be a maintenance section chief there, too; D Battery was my best personal experience, overall, of any unit in which I served in my time. During the year 1975, I won my first distinction of being the top military Hawk maintainer for that year, worldwide, and with that came increased recognition. The battery commander was CPT Robert Huston, there were two great lieutenants, and CW2 Sam J. Pignatella, who became a good friend of mine over time. The battalion commander was LTC Donald Infante, who I knew for years after that, including his stint as 69th ADA Group commander while I was in Germany, where he got me out of another bad unit into a much better one. Over a few months of being in D Battery, and after the previous time in A Battery, these people all became very important and close to me, like family. I also was then with the Korean girl I eventually married following my return to the States. It was a very interesting way we got together; she was a server for the officers’ side of our mess hall, and we simply connected one day while she stood close to me waiting on one meal to take over there, and things went from there, really good; this would be another long story…while we divorced in the mid-’80s after I left the Army, we certainly had some good years and involvement in interesting events.

For several days before the incident, we had been on alert for various reasons, including the sentry dogs becoming aware of people moving around just outside of our perimeter fence on several occasions, more likely than not some spying activity, because there was no other reason for anybody being out there that close, and even if it was some local people, the dogs never barked and ran to that corner of their fence like that. Added to that was the several equipment failures that had kept me and my troops quite active almost 24/7 for several days getting things operational again. The battery commander and my warrant officer suggested I take some days off to relax, and come back to duty after the weekend. So, that Wednesday morning, August 18, 1976, my girl and I headed to southern Seoul where her mother and brothers, who liked and respected me much, lived.

On the DMZ, there were certain things that happened on a regular basis. There were a number of guard towers in the JSA area, and with the trees and brush, sometimes there were trimming work details sent out, often comprised of both American and Korean soldiers. They were not allowed to carry guns by rules of the JSA. One unit of JSA security was commanded by a CPT Arthur Bonifas and a LT Barrett. They were both highly respected by their troops, much in the same way I felt close to my officers at D Battery. I know this because I later read the account of one of the JSA troops, CPT Bonifas’s driver, whose name, if I remember right, is Mark, who recounted his experience after the incident. Mark’s experience gave an affirmation of my feelings for my officers and I have yet, today, many times thought about how I would have dealt — or not — with such an event if it happened at my unit, especially being unable to act in defense of my leaders and my fellow soldiers. Knowing Mark’s feelings, and remembering my fear, anger, and guilt, created a lasting traumatic memory and changed my beliefs about how the world works, once again leaving me completely uncertain about much of what I believed about life, God, and authority. I knew good and bad happened, but this was so without reason and it seemed without real consequence; God was supposed to be on our side, but then God had nothing to do with this; finally, the authority figures were just making things up as events happened, they really weren’t ready for this at all.

Several incidents had occurred, over time, when N Korean troops had attacked one or more of the US guard posts. One incident back maybe 10–11 years before had been resolved with overwhelming gunfire on our side. One thing I remember that got us on alert for a while was in November of 1974, just a few months into my first tour there, DMZ patrol troops came upon a tunnel dug under the border which held food, weaponry, and ammo for up to 2,000 N Korean troops, a preparatory operation for another attack on S Korea. An incident not long before the Axe Murder Incident involved N Korean border troops holding some American and Korean soldiers at gunpoint, in which CPT Bonifas had personally intervened and won safety for the US and ROK troops. On August 18, when CPT Bonifas and LT Barrett led a work group out to cut a tree back, this NKPA Senior LT who they called “LT Bulldog” told them to go back, but Bonifas, as usual, just turned away from him and the detail prepared to begin work. Bulldog just suddenly shouted for his troops to “kill all the Americans”, and the incident began.

When it started, for me, was when we arrived at her mother’s home and she ran to the door telling me I had to go back to my unit because their news had said something big had just happened on the DMZ, and they were very scared. I felt suddenly very numb, but anxious, and I showed back up to the battery an hour later. We didn’t know until later that evening exactly what happened, but we later were told and shown video of the violent attack, which formed our anger and contributed to the stress of the moment. The video (some of it) is available online, and you can go read another, more informative account of the event here on Medium, “How a Tree Almost Started a War” by Qizhen Li, which I think is about 95% accurate, with what I experienced and have learned.

The incident finally stopped when someone drove one of the trucks into the middle of the melee and stopped it right over the hacked and beaten body of CPT Bonifas. One thing I remember Mark saying is he would never forget all the blood in the back of the jeep when he took away Bonifas and Barrett’s bodies. Seeing the incident happen on the video and learning of Mark’s feelings, I realized I felt just like he did — I was angry and felt helpless and guilty because there was nothing I could do, and even with billions of dollars’ worth of military weapons on the peninsula, there was no way to stop it or turn back the clock. To this day, I often struggle with the anger and grief, especially when something relating to Korea makes the news. At the time, also, there was the overwhelming fear and insecurity of not knowing for sure, until some days after the Incident, whether we would get caught up in a major war just before I was due to return Stateside. What actually stopped the war, as I learned later from intelligence, was that the Chinese spoke up and told N Korea if they started another war on their border, they would simply nuke the North and get it over with. That’s when Kim Il Sung made his regret speech.

The 2/71 ADA was forward area air defense, part of a major force gathered to reinforce Operation Paul Bunyan, America and Korea’s response to the NKPA aggression. This involved an assertive action to simply cut the disputed tree down to a stump while daring North Korea to interfere. We were trucked up to our tactical site in full battle gear; in my later attempt to locate files and records to back up my claim, I was told there was no record of any unit being “moved up to the front”, which added to my anger at the stupidity which ignored that we were “up front”, already! It was GEN Stillwell’s decision to finish the job the ill-fated crew had started, to show resolve rather than revenge, and to make the point that America’s determination to maintain a superior position on the Korean peninsula was not going to be intimidated, which resulted in his “Operation Paul Bunyan”. For many people, especially in the forward area, it was hard for us to accept that simply cutting down the tree was enough.

Something that added to the impact of the whole event and of CPT Bonifas’s death, besides relating to the event with a scary visualization of it happening where I was to people I really cared about, was learning some personal details, especially about CPT Bonifas. Our CPT Huston was being promoted to Major and was leaving us for an assignment in Battalion HQ; CPT Bonifas had orders promoting him to Major, as which he would return to a good assignment Stateside, which his battalion commander had placed on hold pending working out arrangements for Bonifas’s wife to be flown over to meet him, participate in pinning on his new rank in formation, and then flying back to America with him. I felt a strong sense of grief with the visualization of the impact of happy excitement turning to horror and grief all around. I was terribly angry and then I felt simply lost, for a while.

Adding to my anger and grief over the incident and its bad impact on how I believed things should be, for a long time the 2/71 ADA has gotten no recognition for even being a part of the defensive force in the Korea forward area. Hawk, while it was surely the very best air defense missile system in the world during the ’60s to ’90s timeframe (when it was actually operational!), was never recognized for its useful role in managing the odds in our (and others) favor during Vietnam and Cold War years. This also contributed to my overall feelings of anxiety, depression, grief and loss in that particular event and the feeling that I have never “fit in” anywhere as I have lived. I was an unintended consequence of the early relationship between my mother and father. I am not a real “Vietnam veteran”; I was not a “combat troop”; I served in the Korea DMZ area, but not at the JSA. I lived through the horror and fear and other emotions that framed the Axe Murder Incident, but I was not really on the line, not one of them. I didn’t fit in even as a sergeant, because my understanding and practice of effective leadership was outside the “Army way”; I might have been a good officer, but then I wouldn’t have been able to do the things I did as an enlisted person. I put myself completely into my role as a soldier, but in the long run nothing I (or so many others) has done or endured, has ever really mattered.

I still don’t know how to be who I really am; I still do SSG Spencer really well, but I still don’t know how to live truly well any other way.

Dave Spencer
Dave Spencer

Written by Dave Spencer

disabled military veteran, activist for better things in government and society

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