book reviews and summaries, comments, analysis
This book is a technical analysis of, and informative description about, Outpost warfare. It begins with an excellent summary of the compelling reason why the US, China, and Russia all agreed to confine the war to the UN peninsula. Then its down into the trenches and listening posts along the Jamestown line (a great map provided) with its very thin defenses: 1 Division responsible for 60,000 yards of line...six times the normal expected from such a force. Thus outposts were expected to 'hold' (cheerful thought, eh?) until reserves could be brought up. The solution: Patrols, patrols, patrols. Listening patrols; ambush patrols; observation patrols; reconnaissance patrols; snatch patrols. No, not that snatch. Those snatch patrols occurred when on reserve. When not on patrol, sleep in a foxhole or bunker.
Readers will enjoy this book for its numerous accounts of outpost battles and patrol skirmishes. Many were published previously in the Marine Corps Gazette. It is a remarkable assemblage of facts.
--50% of Marine casualties in early weeks of the outpost war were from landmines laid by ROK forces and poorly marked...if marked at all.
--Large numbers of Marines owed their lives to old, unnamed Korean men, unfit for military service, who frequently put their own lives on the line to carries supplies to, and wounded men from, outpost strongholds.
--Marines were surprised to find how informed Chinese POWs were: quite a bit of tactical and operational details were shared with Chinese infantry by their commanders.
--The Bunker Hill story is lengthy and rivals Norman Allen's account of hill 174 (See Pusan to Chosin by Donald Knox) in detail and drama. The summary of what the Marines learned about enemy tactics from this battle is useful also.
--Recon patrols were thin and untimely; company commanders needed their own recon patrols. Psywar was amusing but largely ineffective. Sergeant O'Hagan's missive on barbed wire should earn him a free ticket to the Barbed Wire Museum in Kansas. (Yes,, Dorothy...in Kansas.)
--Lieutenant Wilson's description of his Detroit patrol is a classic; Lt. Conway's appendix and purgation is agonizingly painful. "I was not Achilles, the god like, but tried to be Hector, the citizen-soldier." In another example, compare the Battalion report on Sgt. Smalley (recipient of the Navy Cross) with the firsthand account of Howard Davenport, the Marine whose life he saved. You'll see why as a reviewer I like books written by combatants, not journalists.
--In his recount of the brief and bloody battles at the Hook in the fall of 1952, Ballinger makes it clear that it was rationing of ammunition that enabled the Chinese forces to mount their attack.
Of course, it was not easy for such an offense-oriented organization such as the USMC to adjust to the often dreary reality of Outpost warfare. Innovate and learn it did, as summarized in the final chapter. When done with this book you'll understand far more about the Korean War's 'stalemate' phase.
