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Motorcycle Book Store > Motorcycle books beginning with C
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The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War |
Author: David Halberstam
Published: 2007-09-25 |
List price: $35.00
Our price: $23.10
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As of: November 21st, 2008 11:02:38 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 The Coldest Winter
The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam is not a perfect history of the Korean War. There were two historical facts missing which I think any credible historian would have to mention. One is the incident at the Bridge of Tokun Ri where hundreds of civilians were killed by American troops in what is euphenistically known as a "friendly fire" incident. The other is the disgraceful conduct of the all-Black 92nd Regiment which was disbanded as "unbreliable" after they broke ranks and ran to the rear after hearing their first gunshot. History is a moving target and the first casualty in war is the truth. Here's a tip. Go to any library and check out the books of history of the Vietnam War. If you find no reference to "fraggings", you know you aren't going to read the whole truth but one that has been sanitized. Fraggings refers to the murder or attempted murder of U.S. officers or non-coms by their own men. The weapon of choice was a fragmentation grenade which leaves no fingerprints. More than 1,000 U.S. officers and non-coms were murdered by their own men during the war with thousands more wounded. These are estimates. The U.S. army only kept records for about 18 months in 1970-71 and recorded several hundred fraggings. And this is just one service branch, not counting the Marines, Navy or Air Force. Always read history as a moving target and understand that in a war, the first casulty is truth.
 Too Much Ink
Being a little familiar with the topic, I decided to give this rather thick book a quick "test run". Being a lot more familiar with the Turkish Brigade history in the Korean War, I looked for it in the lengthy index. There was no entry on the Brigade, Turkey or Turks at all. Sure the book is about Americans, but Turkey was the first country to answer UN's call right after US, and suffered one of the highest rate and total casualties. Also the Brigade was closely attached to an American division. In disbelief I turned the pages to Kunuri battles, and sure enough, buried in a mountain of other details, they were there.
There was a very brief and superfluous description of them but little else or any background.
Secondly, there was this unflattering description of their action at Kunuri, where upon taking one look at the approaching Chinese forces they supposedly realized that they were out of their depth and pulled away. In reality, the massive Chinese caught all UN forces by surprise. Whole ROK army to their right simply disintegrated in the face of the brutal Chinese assault and exposed them to a force that was many times their number. They began to pull back fighting through the gauntlet while unknown to them 8th was already falling back, leaving them behind everybody. Their costly rearguard action delayed the Chinese by a few days and saved countless American lives as told by many there already. Their casualties in those few days in the coldest November was over a third of their total loss throughout the whole war. They are the first foreign military unit to be awarded a US congressional medal. None of this was placed in proper context. At that point I decided that it was not worth committing to over 600 pages of ink.
 Long on partisan prejudice and short on scholarship
In a word, a terrible read - long on partisan prejudice and short on scholarship (especially since this is a recent book and the declassification of information prior to its publishing should have at a minimum tempered much of the author's writing). But then again on should not be surprised by someone who others claimed covered the Viet Nam war from his desk in Saigon; and who likewise have said he created articles to coincide with his pessimistic view of the conflict. That said, one can skip the first 300 pages (which basically deal with MacArthur being a narcissist and Truman as the victim of circumstances - neither of which is fully true) if one wishes to read real life accounts of the brave men who were caught up in a deadly conflict. Likewise, one can skip the last 75 pages of this epic snooze fest as they deal with the aftermath of Korea in terms that are self-serving to the author's point of view.
As this is a long book (i.e. 661 pages), I thought eventually I would get into an interesting read. Needless to say the subject matter is compelling. Unfortunately, after reading The Coldest Winter I feel like I was snookered. All in all, if one values their time they should avoid this book.
 The Coldest Winter America and the Koren War
I have read numerous books on the Korean War including Martin Russ's "The Last Parallel" and " Breakout:The Chosin Reservior Campaign,Korea 1950 which I found to be excellent. David Halberstam has written I think the very best book of all the books I've read on this subject. The research on the politics,President Truman (the happenstance President), General MacArthur (the megalomaniac) and all of the other Generals who did his bidding (the Bataan "gang")is the tip of the spear. You will not find a more knowledgeable,interesting book to the point of not being able to put it down. To say I've enjoyed reading "The Coldest Winter" wouldn't be true.....I didn't want it to end.
A flawed history
I've been an admirer of Halberstam's for a long time, but I'm no fan of this book. Halberstam gets so carried away by his own prose, that he often commits errors of fact and/or context. In some cases, he produces some notable (and easily checked) whoppers. For example, in one chapter mostly focusing on Douglas MacArthur, he notes that in 1946, Mac was a four star general. Nope. Was awarded five stars in 1944. Worse, Halberstam claims that in the late 1940s, in spite of a growing conservative middle class, the "New Deal line" held. In fact, the New Deal line was crumbling, as evidenced by the Democrats losing control of Congress in 1946.
Granted, Halberstam is very good at quickly drawing a portrait of a character, of delineating the essence, say, of MacArthur's character (or lack of same). But the errors, the misstatements, and some serious misreadings (notably, of Truman) are very worrisome.
One historian I contacted echoed my concerns: "No, you're not wrong about Halberstam. He has a bad rep among serious "revisionist" historians of the Vietnam war; there's a blistering attack on his long record of sloppy, inaccurate, and biased reporting in Mark Moyar's "Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965" (Cambridge University Press, 2006). I think the Fourth Estate canonized Halberstam because he told his colleagues exactly what they wanted to hear, and helped set the stage for one of the most depressing episodes in the history of American Journalism, the "covering" of the Tet Offensive in 1968 (see Peter Braestrup's "Big Story" (Westview, 1977)."
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