Around noon on July 26, 1950, several hundred South Korean villagers sat on a railroad embankment near the hamlet of No Gun Ri. American soldiers had ordered them there, searched their belongings, and promised safe passage south. Then the soldiers left. Planes suddenly strafed the crowd of men, women, and children. The survivors scrambled for cover beneath a concrete railroad bridge as soldiers opened fire from nearby positions. What followed became one of the deadliest acts committed by U.S.