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.
When Hell Froze: A Marine Combat Photographer at the Chosin Reservoir
When Hell Froze: A Marine Combat Photographer at the Chosin Reservoir
AN EPIC STORY OF SURVIVAL, TOLD BY THE MARINE WHO PHOTOGRAPHED IT
Fought during the Korean War from November 27th to December 11th, 1950, the famed Battle of the Chosin Reservoir pitted 12 Chinese Divisions, over 120,000 men, against a vastly outnumbered force of United Nations troops fighting for their lives in the cold and forbidding mountains of North Korea. On the 75th anniversary of that legendary engagement, former Marine SSgt. Frank Kerr shares his extraordinary experience as a young combat photographer chronicling one of the most savage and storied battles in United States military history.
This rare, first-hand account of the Chosin campaign features over one hundred combat photos by the author, recognized as "the ablest military photographer of the Korean theater." by General Oliver P. Smith, former Commanding General of the U.S. 1st Marine Division. His wartime photography can be found in books, magazines, documentary films, and on the walls of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia.
Frank Kerr enlisted with the United States Marine Corps in 1948 and went to war in 1950 as a combat photographer with the 1st Marine Division in Korea, where he was awarded the Bronze Star and Navy Commendation Medal for valor, and recognized by former Commanding General Oliver P. Smith as the "ablest military photographer of the Korean theater". His photographs can be found in books, magazines, documentary films, and on the walls of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia.