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Books : History : Military : Korean War : Personal Narratives
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America's "forgotten war" lasted just thirty-seven months, yet 54,246 Americans died in that time -- nearly as many as died in ten years in Vietnam. On the fiftieth anniversary of this devastating conflict, James Brady tells the story of his life as a young marine lieutenant in Korea.
In 1947, seeking to avoid the draft, nineteen-year-old Jim Brady volunteered for a Marine Corps program that made him a lieutenant in the reserves on the day he graduated college. He didn't plan to find himself in command of a rifle platoon three years later facing a real enemy, but that is exactly what happened after the Chinese turned a so-called police action into a war.
The Coldest War vividly describes Brady's rapid education in the realities of war and the pressures of command. Opportunities for bold offensives sink in the miasma of trench warfare; death comes in fits and starts as too-accurate artillery on both sides seeks out men in their bunkers; constant alertness is crucial for survival, while brutal cold and a seductive silence conspire to lull soldiers into an often fatal stupor.
The Korean War affected the lives of all Americans, yet is little known beyond the antics of "M*A*S*H." Here is the inside story that deserves to be told, and James Brady is a powerful witness to a vital chapter of our history.
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"A MUST READ . . . This book [is] one of the best on that war in Korea. . . . A wonderful account of common, decent men in desperate action."
--Leatherneck
During the early, uncertain days of the Korean War, World War II veteran and company lieutenant Joe Owen saw firsthand how the hastily assembled mix of some two hundred regulars and raw reservists hardened into a superb Marine rifle company known as Baker-One-Seven.
As comrades fell wounded and dead around them on the frozen slopes above Korea's infamous Chosin Reservoir, Baker-One-Seven's Marines triumphed against the relentless human-wave assaults of Chinese regulars and took part in the breakout that destroyed six to eight divisions of Chinese regulars. COLDER THAN HELL paints a vivid, frightening portrait of one of the most horrific infantry battles ever waged.
"Thoroughly gripping . . . The Chosin action is justly called epical; Lieutenant Owen tells the tale of the men who made it so."
--Booklist
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He joined the army at 15 and is today America's most decorated living soldier. In one of the most extraordinary military memoirs of our time, About Face chronicles the wars of David H. Hackworth--from World War II to his opposition to U.S. tactics and goals in Vietnam. Photographs.
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At the height of the Korean War, President Truman launched one of the most important intelligence - gathering operations in history. So valuable were the mission's findings about the North Korean-Soviet-Chinese alliance that it is no stretch to say they prevented World War III. Only one man — sworn to secrecy for a half-century—survived Operation Broken Reed. Arthur Boyd recalls his role as cryptographer on a team of Army Rangers, Navy Frogmen, Air Force officers, and CIA operatives that posed as the captured crew of a B-29 bomber in January 1952. Given cover names and cyanide capsules in case of discovery, the men were transported by Chinese Nationalists wearing Communist uniforms across North Korea, where undercover allies delivered information about troop strengths, weaponry, and intention. Fraught with danger, the mission came apart on its last day when the Americans came under fire from Chinese forces wise to the operation. The members of Broken Reed supplied Truman with proof of massive Chinese and Soviet buildups and a heavy Soviet bomber group in Manchuria, fully loaded with atomic weapons. With the potential destruction of the world outlined in front of him, Truman chose not to escalate the Korean War, saving millions of lives.
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Considered by many to be the finest American combat memoir of the First World War, Hervey Allen’s Toward the Flame vividly chronicles the experiences of the Twenty-eighth Division in the summer of 1918. Made up primarily of Pennsylvania National Guardsmen, the Twenty-eighth Division saw extensive action on the Western Front. The story begins with Lieutenant Allen and his men marching inland from the French coast and ends with their participation in the disastrous battle for the village of Fismette. Allen was a talented observer, and the men with whom he served emerge as well-rounded characters against the horrific backdrop of the war.As a historical document, Toward the Flame is significant for its highly detailed account of the controversial military action at Fismette. At the same time, it easily stands as a work of literature. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, Allen employs the novelist’s powers of description to create a harrowing portrait of coalition war at its worst.
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In February 1952, Army 1st Lt. Ben Malcom embarked on one of the most fascinating and untold stories of the Korean War - the special operations of the United Nations Partisan Infantry Korea (UNPIK). Operating form a clandestine camp on the island of Paengnyong, Malcom coordinated the intelligence activities of eleven partisan battalions, including one known as the White Tigers. While Ben Malcom's experiences are the focus, White Tigers examines all aspects of guerrilla activities in Korea. This story of small-unit operations involving Korean troops led by Americans fills an important gap in the history of special operations.
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From World War II to high above the Earth to Vietnam, this memoir tells the story of fighter pilot Howard C. "Scrappy" Johnson. Beginning with his early years in Knoxville, Tennessee, the book follows Johnson through his career at the University of Louisville and his enlistment as an Air Force cadet at the onset of World War II. After World War II, Johnson served a tour of duty in the skies over Korea and in 1958 broke the world's altitude record by over 14,000 feet, soaring at 91,249 feet in his F-104A Starfighter. For this remarkable feat he was awarded the Collier Trophy, aviation's highest honor. In Vietnam, he was director of operations for the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing and was instrumental in founding the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots, a group dedicated to the remembrance of fallen and captured airmen. Written with panache, this work records the bigger-than-life adventures of one of America's finest.
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When North Korean forces invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, Otto Apel was a surgical resident living in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife and three young children. A year later he was chief surgeon of the 8076th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and constantly near the front lines in Korea. Immediately upon arriving in camp, Apel performed 80 hours of surgery. His feet swelled so badly that he had to cut his boots off, and he saw more surgical cases in those three and a half days than he would have in a year back in Cleveland. In addition to his own story, Apel answers the questions anyone interested in a "Mash" unit would ask: What were the operating conditions like? What was a typical work load? What level of care did patients get? How did the doctors, nurses, and enlisted personnel get along? And, perhaps most obviously, how realistic was the TV series? Along the way, he tells the history of the MASH and the appalling lack of training received by the newly drafted doctors staffing those units. He also reveals many significant medical innovations in emergency medical care, from advances in arterial repair to the use of blood plasma in the treatment of hemorrhagic shock.
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In the first war Americans didn't care to understand, young M*A*S*H surgeon Mel Horwitz finds himself in a dusty hospital tent on the Korean front. He and his new wife--back in Manhattan--exchange letters in which they express the timeless urgency of young love and a mutual contempt for war. 31 photos.
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While current events have focused the public's attention on Korea once again, many veterans of the conflict that occurred there half a century ago worry that their time spent fighting in this "Forgotten War" will not be remembered or understood unless their story is told. Award-winning nonfiction author Linda Granfield has collected the personal accounts of thirty-two men and women who served with the U.S. and Canadian forces in Korea during the years 1950--–53 and has written her own introduction describing the main events of the war. The veterans in this book represent a variety of service areas, including medical, supplies, infantry, and naval, and their moving, sometimes graphic, recollections are illustrated with their own personal photographs. As commemorative ceremonies mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War this year, attempting to understand the human face of war is more important than ever. Timeline, glossary, bibliography, Internet resources, index.
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COMBAT AND DEATH, SACRIFICE AND HONOR
Maurice Jacques served for thirty years with the U.S. Marine Corps, nearly six of them in combat. An accomplished infantryman, parachutist, recon patroller, marksman, combat swimmer, and record-setting drill instructor, Jacques personifies the hard-fought, hard-won legacy of the Marines.
Now, with the help of Bruce Norton, he recounts the lessons learned in blood and the courage tested under fire--from the razor-backed hills and icy cold of Korea to the steamy, VietCong-infested jungles of 'Nam. In this tough, hard-charging narrative, he reveals the emotion and chaos of close combat and the sacrifice and valor that have made the Marines legendary around the world.
During his long, colorful career, Jacques held the position of regimental sergeant major in three different commands and was awarded two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart. Maurice Jacques is a true warrior, unique as the Marines are unique, expected to train harder, fight harder, sacrifice more--and proud to be part of the pain, the pride, and the triumph that is USMC.
"A must read! The story of a true warrior with close to 50 months of combat."
--Lt. Col. Oliver North, USMC (Ret.)
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They were warriors, trained to fight,
dedicated to their country,
and determined to win.
At Guadalcanal, the Marine Corps’ machine gunners took everything the Japanese could throw at them in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II; their position was so hopeless that at one point they were given the go-ahead to surrender. Near the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, as the mercury dropped to twenty below, the 1st Marine Division found itself surrounded and cut off by the enemy. The outlook seemed so bleak that many in Washington had privately written off the men.
But surrender is not part of a Marine’s vocabulary. Gunner’s Glory contains true stories of these and other tough battles in the Pacific, in Korea, and in Vietnam, recounted by the machine gunners who fought them. Bloody, wounded, sometimes barely alive, they stayed with their guns, delivering a stream of firepower that often turned defeat into victory–and always made them the enemy’s first target.
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Even as a boy growing up amid the green hills of rural Pennsylvania, Robert W. Black knew he was destined to become a Ranger. With their three-hundred-year history of peerless courage and independence of spirit, Rangers are a uniquely American brand of soldier, one foot in the military, one in the wilderness—and that is what fired Black’s imagination. In this searing, inspiring memoir, Black recounts how he devoted himself, body and soul, to his proud service as an elite U. S. Army Ranger in Korea and Vietnam—and what those years have taught him about himself, his country, and our future.
Born at the start of the Great Depression, Black grew up on a farm at a time of great hardship but also tremendous national determination. He was a kid who toughened up fast, who learned the hard way to rely on his strength and his wits, who saw the country go to war with Germany and Japan and wept because he was too young to serve. As soon as the army would take him, Black enlisted. And as soon as he could muscle his way in, he became a Ranger.
As a private first class in the 82d Airborne Division headquarters, Black withstood the humiliations of enlisted service in the peacetime brown-shoe army. When the Korean War began, he volunteered and trained to be an Airborne Ranger. In Korea, this young warrior, his mind and body bursting with the lusts of adolescence, grew up fast, literally in the line of fire. In clean, vivid prose, Black describes the hell of giving his all for a country that lacked the political resolve to give its all to a war against the North Koreans and the Chinese.
If Korea was frustrating, Vietnam was maddening. The heart of this book is devoted to the years of action that Black saw in Long An Province starting in 1967. Black writes of the perplexity of collaborating with South Vietnamese officers whose culture and motives he never fully understood; he conjures up the sudden shock of the Tet Offensive and the daily horror of seeing fellow soldiers and innocent civilians slaughtered—sometimes by stray bullets, often by carelessness or treachery. Vietnam challenged everything Black had come to believe in and left him totally unprepared for the hostility he would face when he returned to a war-weary America.
Written with extraordinary candor and passion, A Ranger Born is the memoir of a man who dedicated the best of his life to everything that is great and enduring about America. At once intimate in its revelations and universal in its themes, it is a book with profound relevance to our own troubled time in history.
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Odyssey of an Infantryman
Condensed from Colonel David H. Hackworth's blockbuster New York Times bestseller, About Face, Brave Men is an explosive battlefield chronicle from one of America's most decorated soldiers. Vividly recalling his experiences as an infantry leader, Hackworth takes you to the steep, razor-backed hills and bone-chilling cold of Korea, to the steamy guerrilla-infested jungles of Vietnam, to the real wars fought in the chaos of close combat. Here is Hackworth himself, jumping onto tanks to fire .50 caliber guns...charging through the smoke of frag grenades to land in front of the enemy...taking prisoners at bayonet point with an empty rifle...revealing the brutal emotions of battle...and witnessing heroism of the highest order.
Here is the hard-fought, hard-won legacy of one man, who in 25 years amassed more than 110 medals. Brave Men stands as one of the most extraordinary military memoirs of our time.
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Korea, "The Forgotten War" occurred only five years after the end of World War II.The American citizens, weary of more carnage, but President Harry S. Truman was determined to stop the spread of communism in the Far East. He petitioned the United Nations to get other nations to send troops to support the United States.It was my misfortune to be drafted into the United States Army during this miserable "Police Action" as it was called at that time. I spent thirteen months in Korea from April 1952 to May 1953.You will be taken across the Pacific on the troopship, General Black along with many other seasick G.I.s and Canadian troops into Inchon harbor to the forboding hills of Korea to replace combat worn soldiers who have spent their time in purgatory.You will get to meet my friends and comrades from all parts of the U.S. who make up the 955 Field Artillery Battalion You will listen to their gripes and the occasional raw humor that get them through the misery of day-to-day routine. Listen to the ungodly din of the big howitzers and the Long Toms blasting away day and night. It''s enough to drive you nuts.For eight months I worked as one of a three man forward observation team, in the bunkers and trenches with Republic of Korea infantry who do not speak English. Hide in a bunker as "Joe Chink" fires rockets at you. Feel the claustrophobia of being trapped in a freezing bunker at night as the enemy surrounds you. C''mon. Join the adventure! It''s all true. With photos.
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Selflessness and courage comprise those who join the military and go off to foreign lands to defend our country. Leaving behind family, friends and spouses, these men and women face their enemy and mortality to recognize a much grander concept: freedom.The Korean War has often been overshadowed by the power of World War I and II and the revolutionary years of Vietnam. Yet the men who were in Korea and fought on behalf of the United States sacrificed just as much as their fellow men in previous and later wars. In the autobiographical work "Sacrificial Lambs," author Raymond Colton tells his story of joining the military at the age of eighteen with grand notions of Army life only to realize the illusions of what constitutes a hero.
Telling and honest, Colton’s "Sacrificial Lambs" allows readers to experience his pain in serving a country that, upon returning home, treated him differently as a disabled veteran. Colton gives voice to all who fought in the Korean War and portrays the "real life" experiences of a Korean War soldier and hero.