KENTUCKY MAN BEHIND MASSACRE
ACCOUNT
The Cincinnati Post Online Edition - June 05, 2000
By John C.K. Fisher, Post staff reporter
The Northern Kentucky aunt of the
soldier being doubted for his account of the slaughter of civilians during
the Korean War says she'd believe her nephew over government records.
Edward Lee Daily, who was born in Covington, never bragged about his
Army days and wasn't known to be dishonest, said Deloris Losey McNabb, who
lives in Erlanger. ''I think I would
trust Eddie Lee, rather than what they (government records) say,'' said Mrs.
McNabb, 75. ''Eddie Lee is No. 1 in my book. I would believe Eddie Lee.''
Still, she said, Daily may have suffered mental trauma from the war and
that could have affected his memory.
''If you are over there in that Korean conflict, and you are dodging
bullets, I think it affects your mind,'' Mrs. McNabb said. ''He probably
thought he was in that (Nogun-ri shootout.)''
Daily, 69, who now lives in Clarksville, Tenn., was one of a number of
GIs who were interviewed by the Associated Press for a Pulitzer Prize-winning
series last year about whether dozens - or perhaps hundreds - of innocent
Korean men, women and children were killed during a battle in Korea at Nogun-ri in July 1950.
Daily, who grew up in Elsmere and Erlanger before joining the Army as a
teen-ager in the late 1940s, provided the news agency with the names and
numbers of many veterans who said they witnessed the Nogun-ri incidents.
Daily told the Associated Press last year that he was at Nogun-ri
during the shootings, but his first-hand account has since come under
scrutiny by both the AP and the New York Times, which last week ran a
front-page cover story about Daily and whether he made up his story about his
involvement at Nogun-ri.
Both the AP and the New York Times confronted Daily with Army records
that indicated he wasn't at Nogun-ri during the 1950 shooting incidents and
in fact showed up at the site about eight months af terward. Daily, in
interviews with the AP and the New York Times, didn't deny the official Army
records - and appeared to back off his initial statements that he was in fact
at Nogun-ri during the shootings.
Daily, who wrote two books about his experiences in the Korean War,
could not be reached for comment.
Daily was born in Covington
in 1932. The family lived on Jefferson Avenue
in Covington before
moving to Kenton Avenue
in Elsmere. Daily's parents split up when he was a boy and he lived with his
mother, who worked for Cambridge Title Co. in Cincinnati.
After the Korean War, Daily lived in Maryland
and worked for Bethlehem
Steel, his aunt said. Later, he opened a restaurant in Valparaiso,
Ind., before moving to Clarksville.
Publication
date: 06-05-00
|