Much of the commentary on this page is erroneous. In Korea, Marshall was not a reporter or a journalist, but the U.S. Army's chief combat historian. His book was written primarily from official after-action military reports. That certainly doesn't guarantee their accuracy -- indeed, some of Marshall's other wartime writing has come under attack concerning its accuracy -- but he was not an ignorant newspaper reporter unfamiliar with military matters.

Detailed account of squad level fighting. Lots of names to keep track of, but there are plenty of maps. SLAM states he did multi hour debriefings on site after the battle, with entire units. Great book so far. There is really detailed information here, and it grows on you a you progress through the book.

Trying to decide how large of a pompous ass this guy was, and what his role in the US Army actually was. How does a General also act as a war corespondent or researcher?

I’m not a military history buff; keep that perspective in mind. Picked it up some time ago and meant to take a look after seeing the movie on TV. The movie, to my recollection, gives the wrong impression of the actual events which can be characterized via the old military term SNAFU. The book is more a collection of pieces, not a single continuous narrative. Historically, this is a near contemporary account (1956) of 1953 military action occurring toward the end of the Korean conflict, some time after China entered and effectively took over for the North Koreans, more specifically when negotiations were taking place at Panmunjon that would shortly end the fighting that began in 1950. At that point, the military situation appears to resemble the type of trench warfare associated with WWI: both sides are elaborately fortified and the fighting consists of night time probes by the Chinese communist military that attempt to breach the UN fortifications. The UN forces are generally fighting only on the defensive. Geographically, all of the events take place at or in the vicinity of Pork Chop Hill, but the PCH conflict figures in only the last 4 chapters in Part 1. The main chapters are indeed about the Pork Chop Hill fight, but the first two chapters describe fighting at the Arsenal and Erie Hills and the Dale Outpost, which by the map appear to be rather distant from PCH. Part II is a series of independent pieces describing successful and unsuccessful patrols that took place nearby. The Chinese military tactics were a lot more rational than the Western tactics during the first World War, where the generals were still fighting the musket wars of Napoleonic times with human wave frontal attacks, resulting in massive casualties due to the machine gun and more advanced artillery. It is noteworthy that in the Korean fighting the determining factor for the UN forces is the accuracy and volume of artillery fire rather than small arms wielded by soldiers, and that most of the hand to hand killing is done with grenades rather than rifles, which are often jammed or simply not fired by the terrified GIs. The Chinese military were much better fighters than the Americans, the principal UN combat troops. For some reason, US personnel were rotated out of combat every 19 days, which meant the routine loss of experience under fire; the Chinese fighters were not rotated, at least at that frequency. Their tactics resemble Native American fighters of the frontier period, lightly armed and thus able to move silently; I suppose they handed on their experiences to the North Vietnamese military. Due to lack of experience, the US commanding officers communicated poorly both to their superiors and the soldiers under their command, and were often lost, confused, and made bad decisions. Marshall has 2 chapters on the UN Ethiopian battalions that had no more experience than the Americans but had far better fighting skills and discipline. Hopefully the US military learned something from this book and was able to put out better trained personnel in later conflicts. Criticism: the chapters are relatively barebones reports culled from the reporter’s interview notes. Lacking literary skills, most of the participants described by the author come across as just names. As a result, who’s who can be a problem, as well as where’s who—following the geography is difficult unless you’re a military buff, even with the help of the maps. Where the area is relative to Korea as a whole is also unclear. ( )

A very readable book about an almost forgotten battle in almost forgotten war.S.L.A. Marshall went to Korea as a war correspondent . At the request of the army he spent his time intereviewing the troops as they came back from patrols and battles to analyze our methods to see if they were working (this is the same thing he was doing in WW2). This book is the result of those interviews and gives an almost minute by minute account of the battle. A must read for any military history buff. ( )