Book review of book listed below

¶ … Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea, a novel written by James Brady. This paper clearly outlines the summary of the book and highlights some of the events written by the author in his book. This paper explains Brady's purpose behind writing his masterpiece and clearly defines its theme. Critical analysis of the novel and information about the author are also included.

The Coldest War: A Memoir Of Korea

The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea written by James Brady gives a first person's account of the second Korean war. In the book the author compares the tactical approach of the army vs. marine rifle companies. Serving as a young marine lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps for a year, Brady tells the story by illustrating to his audience the deplorable conditions of the soldiers and the critical experience they underwent, through his analysis and encountering. The author talks about the everyday events that went on while living in Korea during the war and thus presents to his audience an interesting guide on leadership.

The book tells a story about a young marine officer from his days as a boxer at Notre Dame to a Lieutenant fighting in the Korean conflict. The main character in the novel undergoes various situations and while his career is progressing well he is asked to serve as a young officer in the Carlson's Raiders. The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea is one of James Brady's most brilliant works, which he presented to his audience worldwide during the year 1990. The author now writes weekly for Parade Magazines and Advertising Age and resides in Manhattan and in East Hampton in New York. He has written three novels about the Hamptons and recently signed a contract to write at least two more. His enthusiasm for life is perhaps the reason why old age hasn't been around to pencil in a few furrows on his face (Dennis Duggan, The Forgotten War Is Remembered).

The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea is journal about the real life of soldiers in a war. When Brady got to Korea as an officer, the war had disintegrated into a trench affair, similar to World War I. These events gave the author a chance to muse and reflect on topics such as morality, the terror involved in the battle, although on a small platoon scale. The book focuses on the survival of men through snow, cold, mud and deprivation.

According to the author, the public and the media took a lot of hype in World War I and II and the bloody war that was fought in Korea but little attention was paid to the deathly war that was fought in Korea. The prime reason of writing this novel was to narrate to the public the calamity that occurred during the Korean War. Brady dedicated his novel to the Chosin Few, referring to his beloved Marines who "fought and defeated the Chinese army in the autumn of 1950 in the mountains of North Korea near the Chosin reservoir.. It was my honor to serve with some of them" (Dennis Duggan, The Forgotten War Is Remembered).

The novel highlights the events that took place during the Korean War. Their were 25,000 Marines fighting against a large number of perhaps 270,000 Chinese troops, trapped in the frozen mountain wilderness some 70 miles from the Sea of Japan. Maj. Gen. O.P. Smith's Marines, thwarted by thousands of routed and disheartened U.S. Army and South Korean troops and also by thousands of frightened noncombatants, battled the chilly cold and fought the Chinese, bringing out with them their injured and dead people and much of their equipment (Smith Hempstone, Tales Making Courage, Hardships In Korean War).

Gen. Smith, who contemptuously rejected an Army offer to fly him out of the barricade, disavowed that his Marines were retreating. "Hell, we' re just advancing in another direction," he quipped. Col. Lewis B. Puller, commander of the first Marines and the most decorated Marine of his or any other time said he felt sorry for the Chinese: "After all, they've got us surrounded" (Smith Hempstone, Tales Making Courage, Hardships In Korean War).

The Chosin campaign was seen through the eyes of Capt. Tom Verity, a reservist widower who was a Chinese scholar teaching at Georgetown University. He was called up and sent to the Chosin Reservoir on an intelligence mission, but ended up fighting for his life with the rest of the trapped Marines. The novel is a saga of how each man went to war alone and fostered his personal fear. Verity's is that he will be killed, leaving his three-year-old daughter an orphan. His radioman, the phlegmatic Gunnery Sgt. Tate, having spent four World War II years in a Japanese prison camp, fears the possibility of Chinese captivity more than death (Smith Hempstone, Tales Making Courage, Hardships In Korean War).

In the novel, the author tells his audience about the various events that took place in the war. Brady had arrived in Korea when the war was just four months old. Their General named Douglas McArthur was promising his battalion that they would surely be home by Christmas. General McArthur quickly faded away when he was called back to America for insubordination. His battalion however, stayed behind to fight and suffer the tortures of the snow and cold their frozen bodies stacked up head to foot and foot to head alongside narrow roads where U.S. trucks took live soldiers back to the battlegrounds (James Brady, The Coldest War: A Memoir Of Korea).

In another event the author tells his audience about the time when the Chinese soldiers had to fight the war wearing their tennis shoes. Their feet froze, and in the account, they made the sound of marbles being rolled along a frozen tundra (James Brady, The Coldest War: A Memoir Of Korea).

The author writes, "The cold was an impartial enemy to both the Americans and their foes. Skin pulled away from frozen guns, mortar tubes shrank and many of the shells fired failed to explode. Nighttime temperatures fell to 24 degrees below zero" (James Brady, The Coldest War: A Memoir Of Korea). The author recalls all these events from the challenging situations that he faced while serving the United States Corps in Korea.