Substance trumps style in a book that will appeal to military history buffs and veterans.
Engaging account of an important, sometimes overlooked battle of the Korean War.
Drury and Clavin (Halsey’s Typhoon, 2007, etc.) have mined archival material and conducted extensive interviews with veterans who participated in the Battle of Fox Hill, during which a Marine rifle company held Chinese troops at bay for five days. Facing enemies who were better equipped in temperatures reaching 30 degrees below zero, the Marines fought south through the Toktong Pass in North Korea’s Nangnim Mountains. The company’s leader, Capt. William E. Barber, was shot and severely wounded in the leg; refusing to be evacuated, he commanded his troops from a stretcher and was subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery. The authors are thorough, but they don’t overwhelm readers with minutia in this riveting narrative, which combines drama, military strategy and human interest. They provide a palpable sense of place by including interesting background material, such as accounts by missionaries who explored the terrain in the 1600s. The book’s best sections, however, paint vivid verbal pictures of the fighting: “A concussion grenade exploded in the slit trench and kicked [Pfc. Harrison] Pomers into the wall. Another bounced off his helmet and exploded just outside the trench, nearly knocking him out. He could move nothing but his left arm. He wiped his head, saw the blood on his left hand and, frantically reached for his helmet.” This approach offers a fine example of historiography examining war at the micro level. Those looking for a big-picture treatment of the war should consult David Halberstam’s masterful and elegantly written The Coldest Winter (2007). Drury and Clavin’s prose, by contrast, is rather pedestrian, but those who persevere will find the effort worthwhile.
Substance trumps style in a book that will appeal to military history buffs and veterans.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-87113-993-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2008
HISTORY | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
A compelling book dealing with the question of MIAs in Vietnam. As a journalist Keating has worked for Soldier of Fortune magazine and the conservative Washington Times. Nonetheless, in the present volume, she uses her skills as an investigative reporter to attack the notion that American POWs and MIAs were left behind in Indochina. A vocal lobby clamors for a full accounting of all MIAs, numbered by the federal government at around 1,200. Reported sightings add fuel to the belief that American soldiers were held hostage by the Vietnamese and abandoned by a government eager to put the war behind it. After all, the logic goes, hadn't it happened to the French in the 1950s? The truth, however, according to Keating, is that the US experience is not that of the French: No American POWs remain. And aside from a few known defectors, all the MIAs are dead. Citing the 80,000 missing from WW II, Keating points out that MIAs are part of the nature of modern warfare, in which the recovery or identification of remains is often impossible. In the case of the Vietnam POWs, however, the military had reduced the number of true ``missing'' to under 100 before a political hue and cry forced them to inflate the MIA list with the names of many men known to be dead but whose bodies were not found. Sightings of live POWs are hoaxes, says Keating, designed to fuel a political machine or to extort money from relatives on the slim hope that the men are alive. She slams, in particular, mercenaries like Bull Simons and Bo Gritz, who plan raids into Indochina (most of which never occur) in search of the lost. The real conspiracy, writes Keating, is not committed by a government bent on hiding a scandal but by those who prey on the hopes and fears of the ones truly left behind—the families of the dead. Highly persuasive.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43016-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
Historical hindsight is always 20/20, as this otherwise thoughtful and well-written comparative biography of two important Civil War commanders shows. On the surface, the lives of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the North and Edward Porter Alexander of the South have little in common. Alexander was a career officer, educated at West Point; Chamberlain was a citizen soldier who taught rhetoric in college before volunteering to fight. Alexander was born on a Virginia plantation; Chamberlain came from rock-ribbed Maine. Beneath these superficial differences, however, Golay (The Civil War, not reviewed) maintains that more united these men than divided them. Both fought in some of the major engagements of the Civil War, and though neither ever rose above middle-level commands, they enjoyed the ear of those more powerful, exerting an influence beyond their rank. Both reached the critical point of their careers at Gettysburg, where Chamberlain's bold defense of Little Round Top arguably saved the battle for the Union, while Alexander's confusion concerning orders and battle strategy led to the disastrous Pickett's charge. Following the war, both men went on to civilian success. Chamberlain became president of Bowdoin College and governor of Maine. Alexander was a successful railroad executive. But neither man, argues Golay—making use of their personal papers and writings—ever escaped his past. The two had found their greatest fulfillment and their true mÇtier as soldiers in the Civil War, and they both wrote and lectured extensively about their experiences. But the author occasionally judges his subjects with the wisdom of hindsight, as when he claims that the men never really understood the respective causes for which they fought (Alexander thought the war was an inevitable part of the country's evolution; Chamberlain viewed war as, Golay says, ``a test of character''). A riveting portrait of two men who felt they had outlived their historical moment.
Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59285-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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