Local News in Brief : Pulitzer Winner Urged to Return Prize

Two black Korean War-era Army officers have urged a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer to give back his award until he changes his portrayal of the Army’s last all-black infantry regiment as a unit that repeatedly broke and ran from the enemy in Korea .

A day after Neil Sheehan won the nonfiction award for “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam,” Lt. Col. Charles M. Bussey and Capt. David K. Carlisle, both retired in Los Angeles, said Sheehan’s reference to the 24th Infantry Regiment is a “scurrilous misrepresentation” that perpetuates untruths about the unit. A paragraph on page 445 of the book says the unit, often forced to “fetch and carry for white warriors,” eventually “believed the myth of inferiority and repeatedly ran before the North Koreans.” Carlisle, a West Point graduate, and Bussey, a Silver Star holder, said the regiment won America’s first victory in Korea, at Yechon, and made strategic advances into vital areas. If there were problems in the regiment, said Bussey, they stemmed from poor leadership by “misfit” white officers who were assigned to the 24th as punishment.