Recalling a Forgotten War

O'NEILL, WILLIAM L.

Recalling a Forgotten War The Korean War: Pusan to Chosin, An Oral History By Donald Knox Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 690 pp. $24.95. Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Professor of History,...

...Three battalions of the 7 th Infantry Division were surrounded near Chosin...
...What saw them through were leadership, discipline and pride...
...In similar circumstances Marine units held together and fought their way to safety...
...Knox ends his chronicle arbitrarily on January 1,1951, a time when Hungnam had been successfully evacuated but most American divisions were still in retreat...
...Unlike World War II, the fighting in Korea did not end in triumph...
...Accordingly, the more knowledge you have of the subject the more you will get out of any oral history...
...No wonder the troops undergoing the ordeals described here resented President Truman's characterization of the Korean War as a "police action...
...Now Donald Knox has assembled an oral history that reminds us the real conflict was fierce and bloody and largely devoid of humor...
...Knox has made an additional demand on readers by presenting his material in chronological order...
...Because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, the book should be read straight through...
...One might wish, as I do, that there were fewer and longer excerpts, more biographical information about the major figures, ampler introductions, and fuller historical explanations...
...You learn a great deal about what individuals went through, much less about the actual events...
...Rather than printing long intact reminiscences, as in the oral histories of Studs Terkel, he has broken up his interviews into fragments—sometimes very small ones—mixed them together, added some bits and pieces from official documents and publications, and strung the whole thing out to approximate a narrative line...
...Fit for a Xenophon, this story is nevertheless effectively told by various participants, including the intrepid Marine commander, Major General Oliver P Smith, who had to battle higher-ups in addition to the Chinese and unbelievably cold weather while leading'his men to Hungnam where the Navy waited...
...Months of hard fighting lay ahead before the battle lines stabilized, and afterward as well, although the outcome was no longer in doubt .Knox tells us nothing about subsequent events, and adds precious little to the words of the individuals speaking in his book...
...Anyone wishing to learn about the War as a whole should read Joseph C. Goulden's history, Korea: The Untold Story of the (far (1982...
...That was one of many small actions as the 1st Cavalry Division fought for its life during the North Korean Army's last offensive before the Chinese intervened...
...All the same two chapters stand out...
...He was mortally wounded in the attempt, and without him Task Force Faith disintegrated...
...A startling one was the collapse of Task Force Faith...
...After its battalion repelled an enemy counterattack, what was left of I Company went up the hill again and took it for good...
...By September 14, when Item attacked, Hill 174 had changed hands seven times in four days...
...This does not diminish his achievement by much...
...With all due respect for M*A*S*H, The Korean War is a long overdue corrective to it...
...Of some 3,000 men only about 20 per cent reached Marine lines, traveling singly or in small groups...
...An outstanding officer, Faith decided to break out of the encirclement...
...Let me first note the difficulties in using the book, however...
...One, called simply " Item," masterfully reconstructs the taking of Hill 174 on the Pusan Perimeter by I Company of the 5th Cavalry Regiment's 3rd Battalion in September 1950...
...Numerous acts of heroism are recalled in the chapter, and so are some lamentable failures...
...But to a large extent these are questions of taste and do not materially affect the result...
...For personal accounts by men who were there, a few of them quite vivid and occasionally touching, see Donald Knox's The Korean War...
...Thus the reader confronts a sea of names, few of which stick, and seldom is able to keep track of individual stories...
...Even so, the unit sustained 89 casualties capturing the hill, losing more than half its strength apparently, and then had to withdraw in the face of heavy fire...
...Another gripping chapter recounts the 1st Marine Division's epic fighting retreat from the Chosin Reservoir, where it was trapped when China came in...
...In exchange for what was lost, moreover, much has been gained...
...From viewing the show, every young person knows that the Korean War was fought against the Chinese somewhere in California, and that its main function was to provide alienated physicians with opportunities for mordant jokes...
...Item was well led too by Captain Norman Allen, the book's most quoted man and its central figure...
...I Company was exceptionally well trained compared with most of the U. S. Army units, which had been on guard or garrison duty when the War broke out and were at very low states of readiness...
...Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Professor of History, Rutgers This book reminds us of America's most neglected modern war...
...As the battalion moved out a few days later Captain Allen counted 300 men, all that remained of some 900 who had landed in Pusan three weeks earlier...
...Oral history trades perspective for experience...
...Unlike Vietnam it was, for some reason, easy to forget, and would be completely unknown today except for television's M*A*S*H...
...For lack of all three a great many soldiers perished...
...This is the War as remembered by those who fought in Korea, and is about as close to the real thing as we are likely to get...
...After suffering heavy casualties they grouped together under the surviving battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Don Faith...
...Though Knox includes excerpts from official documents, memoirs and other printed sources, the work depends chiefly on recollections—most of them plain and artless, some achieving a kind of eloquence...

Vol. 69 • January 1986 • No. 1


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.