On the morning of Aug. 18, 1976, a work detail entered the Joint Security Area (JSA) at Panmunjeom to perform what should have been a routine task: trimming the branches of a poplar tree.

Within minutes, two U.S. Army officers were dead.

Capt. Arthur Bonifas and 1st Lt. Mark Barrett were killed by North Korean guards during a confrontation that lasted only a few minutes. Several other American and South Korean members of the detail were also injured.

This Aug. 18 marks the 50th anniversary of their deaths.

The event became known as the Axe Murder Incident, one of the most infamous confrontations in the history of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

I can still remember when it happened. In August 1976, I was in the U.S. Air Force attending technical training school when I first heard about the killings at Panmunjeom. Korea was far away, and I could not have imagined that the events unfolding there would remain with me for the next half-century.

But 50 years later, I find myself returning once again to that tree.

To understand what happened on Aug. 18, it is necessary to know what was different about the JSA in 1976. The JSA was established following the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement as a place where representatives of the United Nations Command (UNC) and North Korea could meet to deal with matters concerning the armistice.

Although the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) passed through the JSA, it did not then separate personnel from the two sides within the compound as it would in later years. American, South Korean and North Korean guards encountered one another at close range as they carried out their duties. Elsewhere along the DMZ, the MDL separated opposing forces. At Panmunjeom, soldiers from opposing armies regularly came face to face. And violence was not unknown.

During the late 1960s, the area surrounding Panmunjeom was caught up in a period of North Korean infiltration attempts, ambushes and firefights along the DMZ, an era sometimes referred to as the "Second Korean War."

On Aug. 29, 1967, North Korean soldiers attacked Camp Kitty Hawk, the JSA base camp, killing two American soldiers and wounding 24 others.

On April 14, 1968, North Korean troops ambushed a vehicle traveling toward the JSA. Four American soldiers were killed and two wounded.

On June 30, 1975, Maj. William D. Henderson, a UNC officer, was attacked by a group of North Korean guards inside the JSA and seriously injured.

The Henderson incident demonstrated the danger inherent in the unusual arrangement at Panmunjeom.

A small, nondescript bridge spanned the MDL. Nicknamed the Bridge of No Return, it was used mainly for prisoner exchanges between the two sides. However, a large poplar tree stood in the way, obstructing the view of the bridge from UNC positions in that part of the JSA.

The decision was made to trim it, and on Aug. 16, a work party was sent out to cut the branches and improve the visibility of the bridge. However, North Korean guards intervened, stopping the work.

On the morning of Aug. 18, the work party returned, accompanied this time by a security force. Bonifas, commander of the Joint Security Force company, and Barrett, a platoon leader, were among those present.

No sooner had the work begun than North Korean guards started gathering nearby. At first there were about 15. Then their number grew to approximately 30. A confrontation followed, and within minutes it turned violent. North Korean guards attacked members of the UNC party. Axes brought by the work crew were seized and used as weapons.

Bonifas was killed at the scene. Barrett became separated from the others during the attack and was later found mortally wounded. Several other members of the UNC party were injured.

On Aug. 21, the UNC responded with a posture of overwhelming force. This time, American and South Korean forces in Korea were placed on heightened alert. South Korean special forces personnel participated, helicopters supported the operation and U.S. combat aircraft were part of the larger military deployment. The aircraft carrier USS Midway task force had been moved to a station just offshore. B-52s from Guam flew high above.

All of this was backup for a team of engineers carrying chainsaws, accompanied by a substantial security force. They went out to the tree and set to work, cutting away at the tree for 42 minutes until only a lifeless stump remained. All the while, North Korean troops watched. This time, they did not interfere.

That operation was known as Operation Paul Bunyan, named after the giant lumberjack and folk hero of legend. They demonstrated overwhelming force to send a message to the North Koreans over the killings, and it was carried out with one simple objective: to remove the tree.

A little more than 20 years later, I found myself standing at Panmunjeom for the first time ever.

By then, I had lived in Korea and developed a deep interest in its modern history. But history has a different quality when you stand where it happened. Standing at Panmunjeom brought me closer to the story I had first heard about as a young airman in technical training school. The conference buildings, the MDL and the Bridge of No Return were no longer simply names on maps or images in photographs. They were real places.

In the years that followed, my interest in Panmunjeom deepened, and as a journalist I wrote several articles about the JSA and its history.

In 2001, Lt. Col. William Miller, commander of the UNC Security Battalion-JSA, invited me to attend an observance marking the 25th anniversary of the Axe Murder Incident.

At the time, 25 years seemed like a long time ago to me. Now another quarter-century has passed, and once again, I find myself writing about that tree.

This time, however, my journey back to Panmunjeom has taken another form.

During the years since my first visit, my interest in the JSA and the soldiers who served there never disappeared. Eventually, I returned to the summer of 1976 through fiction in my newest novel, "The Tree at Panmunjom."

While doing research for the story, I wanted to know what it was like to be a young soldier assigned to the JSA in 1976.

What was it like to serve in a place where American, South Korean and North Korean soldiers encountered one another at such close range? What did they do during the long hours when nothing happened? How did they live with the possibility of another confrontation? Questions like these became important to me.

Soldiers stood guard. They ate meals. They joked with one another. They wrote letters home. They listened to music. They thought about girlfriends, wives and families thousands of miles away. They counted the weeks and months remaining in their tours. They lived ordinary lives in an extraordinary place.

And then came Aug. 18, 1976.

The men who walked toward that poplar tree that morning could not have known that within minutes Panmunjeom would again become a name appearing in headlines around the world. They could not have known that a tree they had probably passed many times would become forever associated with the deaths of two of their fellow soldiers.

Half a century has passed since the Axe Murder Incident. Much has changed on the Korean Peninsula during those 50 years. But the names of Arthur Bonifas and Mark Barrett remain part of the history of Panmunjeom. So does the tree.

*Jeffrey Miller is the author of several novels. His latest is "The Tree at Panmunjeom," about the 1976 Axe Murder Incident. Reach him at daejeonscribe@yahoo.com. *