Andrew GeerRecensioni
Autore di The Sea Chase
Recensioni
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I originally intended to read this book straight through, but I soon realized that the book was more or less a series of extremely detailed battle scenes, not chronically those battles on a broad scale, but instead focusing in on the experiences of small groups of Marines as they worked their way up hills, dug in to repel attacks and counter-attacks, awaiting relief or fought from trench to tree to boulder, with machine gun fire and mortar rounds coming in. I was afraid that, as extremely well created as these scenes were, they would begin to run together in my mind if I just kept reading. So I made the decision to break the book up and read it a chapter at a time as a "between book." You won't find much if anything here about the politics or larger command strategies of the Korean War. Instead, this is a report of the day to day experiences of soldiers within a hellish cauldron of war. It should be noted that as realistic and well written as the book is, it's also essentially a work of propaganda. No matter how poorly a particular battle goes, for example, it is never described as having been the result of a strategic mistake. And while there are occasional references to "slackers" or "stragglers" among the Marines, for the most part, everyone is a hero. There is, I am grateful to be able to say, no description of the war as a noble cause. The war is simply taken for granted as an assignment. So while the Korean War is not glorified, life in combat, it seems to me, is, albeit tacitly.