KOREAN WAR
In the dry and clinical description of the annalist, the Korean War may be defined as a war between North Korea allied with China and the Soviet Union and South Korea allied with the United Nations and the United States of America. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. As always, wars have complex backgrounds. Reasons and factors and inevitabilities are dominoes that later historians set up in the worthy cause of warning the present time and future times not to go down that path.
I will keep this personal and small-scale. My father was a veteran of the Korean War. He was there 1953-1954 with the 7th Infantry Division and was awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious service. He was 23-24 years old there, fresh out of Michigan State University’s ROTC program. We always traded military history back and forth. Late in life he began to tell me stories of his time there — and of his experiences in the Dominican Republic and in Vietnam. As a bookseller I provided him with books on “his” war, which he appreciated for the larger canvas they provided. Here are some of the good ones I have found over the years. I know I don’t have enough of the Korean perspective of the war, and I don’t have many big strategic maps that situate the war within the Cold War. But this listing is a beginning. History is always beginning over. As a discipline, as a way of thought, history never tires of trying to get the story not only right but understandable.
The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea
The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea
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.