Title: On Desperate Ground
Rating: 5 Stars
I guess that I’m officially a fan boy of Hampton Sides. I’d previously read Ghost Soldiers, about the Battle of Bataan, the Death March, and the rescue of some American POW’s deep behind enemy lines; and Hellhound on His Trail, about Martin Luther King’s assassination and the pursuit of his assassin, James Earl Ray. I thoroughly enjoyed both of those two works.
On Desperate Ground is about the Korean War. It is centered around the First Marine Division and their desperate attempt to break out of a Chinese encirclement at the Chosin Reservoir. This might be my favorite Sides history.
Sides has a special talent for pulling you into whatever historical event that he’s focusing on. Here he does it by both focusing on the grand strategy of generals and Presidents and focusing on nearly unimaginable acts of personal heroism.
First, let’s start with the grand strategy. It basically begins and ends with the narcissistic egomania of Douglas MacArthur.
North Korea launches a surprise invasion of South Korea. It is initially so successful that they nearly drive the South Korean / US forces into the sea. They manage to maintain a stronghold on the tip of the peninsula. The prevailing thought was that the US / UN would send forces to shore up this defensive line and then push their way back up the peninsula.
MacArthur has the idea to launch an invasion force much further North at Inchon. This seems suicidal, but MacArthur got his way and the invasion is completely successful. They effectively destroy the North Korean army as a fighting force as it somewhat chaotically retreats. The US/UN/South Korean army recovers the original line of demarcation and continues to press northward.
MacArthur sees this as a great opportunity to push all of the way to the Yalu river, eliminate the North Korean government, and unify the Korean peninsula under the South Korean government. The Truman government is not opposed to this but does not want to, in any way, antagonize the Chinese.
The Yalu river is the Chinese border. The Chinese are not at all interested in having an American imperialist lackey state on its border. It will do whatever it takes to save North Korea.
China openly communicates this, both in words and in actions. US forces encounter Chinese soldiers in North Korean territory. The US army captures Chinese soldiers that freely tell them how many Chinese soldiers are in North Korea.
MacArthur refuses to believe these eyewitness reports. At this point in his career, he simply imagines that he’s incapable of error. Right is on his side. His sycophantic intelligence chief echoes what he thinks MacArthur wants to hear. His hand selected general leading the invasion army insists that all evidence on the ground be ignored and that the drive to the Yalu, through mountainous regions in the bitter cold, be continued.
The First Marine Division is spearheading this advance. They stop one night up in the mountain ridges over the Chosin Reservoir. Although exhausted, they seem a little on edge, so they do take extra precautions and dig themselves into the frozen ground as much as they can.
That night, to whistles and bugle calls, the Chinese attack. The US forces are outnumbered at least 10 to 1. The Chinese do not have adequate supplies. In fact, some soldiers apparently in the charge do not have any weapons at all. But they do have numbers.
The area quickly becomes a charnal house. Sometimes, the Chinese get so close that they have to be driven off by the Marines using their guns as clubs. The Chinese throw hand grenades. One Marine in particular becomes adept at swatting at the grenades with his shovel to drive them back. Thousands of Chinese die. Hundreds of US soldiers die. Nearly all of the US soldiers are wounded, some of them horrifically. One soldier (Ken Benson), completely blinded, continues to fight by loading a gun while his buddy (Hector Cafferata Jr) fires another one. They then switch as one gun empties so that he can lay continuous fire.
Keep in mind that all of this is taking place in unimaginable cold. It is 25 degrees below zero. It is 70 degrees below zero with the windchill. At least one soldier was sleeping in his sleeping bag when the attack started. He didn’t even have time to put on his boots. He fought the entire night in that cold in his socks.
Unbelievable acts of heroism / survival are described. In one desperate battle, one soldier (Jack Chapman) continues to fire his truck mounted weapon even as he was repeatedly shot. He was shot seven times before he finally collapsed. He was then captured and spent 2 1/2 years in a POW camp.
Another soldier (Ed Reeves) suffered severe leg injuries that left him unable to walk. He was in a truck with other wounded soldiers when the entire caravan was completely wiped out by the Chinese. A Chinese soldier came into the truck and shot each of the wounded soldiers dead. However, the shot just grazed Reeves’ head. All of the other soldiers were dead. As the dead soldiers were being unloaded from the truck, one of the Chinese soldiers noticed that Reeves was still alive. The Chinese soldiers then repeatedly beat Reeves on the head. Reeves held up his hands to protect himself, which only resulted in having severely broken hands. Convinced that he was dead (again), the Chinese abandoned him. After the Chinese soldiers moved on, Reeves tried to escape. With both his legs and his hands now useless, he could only propel himself forward using his elbows. He did this for hours. He ended up crossing across the frozen Chosin reservoir, where he was one of the last soldiers to be recovered alive.
Surrounded, the First Marine Division has to fight their way back to a port from which they can escape. That fighting retreat is itself a fascinating story and fills the latter part of this history.
Hampton Sides tells the story of the Korean War in such a way that you simply can’t stop reading. I’ve noticed this in his other works as well. Even though it’s history, even though you know how it’s going to end, he manages to build up so much suspense that you find yourself compelled to read.
This is narrative history at its finest.
dorkenstein 