I wanted to get this up yesterday, but, there are still two days left to the Memorial Day holiday.  Here’s a list of books that I’d recommend for this holiday in which we honor our service men and women. I’m focusing on battles that have mostly been forgotten by the American public, or anyone who’s younger than 85.  I’m also calling out where I believe members of my family served.

 The Coldest Winter, by David Halberstam

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/coldest-winter-david-halberstam/1100538541?ean=9780786888627

David’ Halberstam’s history of the Korean War. This is Halberstam, so it goes without saying that this book is monumental. But, also because it’s Halberstam, it’s both epic history and journalism dramatically rendered and imminently readable. Don’t let the heft of it put you off.  You won’t be able to stop reading.

This is not a military history of the Korean War, though he does cover with great detail and drama the valor of American soldiers in places like the Pusan Perimeter, Incheon, and The Chosin Reservior.

I will call out that one of my uncles, Charlie Moff, served at Pusan. He served in the artillery.  I’m forgetting the details, but he told me that the artillery they were operating had a maximum range of x hundred yards if well maintained.

“But, ours didn’t go that far,” he said. I asked why, and he responded, “well, we were using them a lot.”

The book is also a social and political history of the war and America going to war again only five years after the end of World War II. The account of Truman’s conflict with McArthur—the unpopular president prosecuting an unpopular war and facing open insubordination from the most popular general on the planet and the defacto emperor of Japan. Truman’s handling of the crisis puts the lie to any assertion that a president can just surround themselves with good people who will run that country. Truman had courage, character, and a sense of self that guided him through the crisis.

 Chosin, by Eric Hamel

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/chosin-eric-m-hammel/1102559177?ean=9781890988142

More Korean War. The battle of the Chosin Reservoir is right up there with Iwo Jima, Peleiliu, and Guadalcanal in the annals of Marine Corp valor, but too few people remember it.

This book is a military history so lacks the sweep and drama of a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist like Halberstam. But, the events of Chosin don’t need much embellishment.  McArthur, in the wake of brilliant success at Incheon, revealed his full megalomania, narcissism, and incompetence by driving an ill –equipped army (along with 30,000 Marines under army command) right up to the Chinese border, despite the numerous indications that the Chinese would respond.

When the Chinese did attack it resulted in one of the most devastating retreats in U.S. Army history. It was during this retreat that my mother’s uncle, Mario Del Costello was taken prisoner of war.  He’d remain a prisoner until the end of the war. He was tortured. Among other things, his captors would make him stand bare foot on blocks of ice for long periods of time. When I met him as young boy in the seventies, I wondered why Uncle Mario had such a hard time walking around.

This book tells the story of the 30,000 marines who were encircled by a Chinese force four-times their number.  They were at high altitudes, in the winter, with no winter gear. They engaged in a ferocious fighting retreat over the next 17 days.  As one veteran said, “We weren’t retreating. We were attacking in the other direction.” By the time they broke out of their encirclement, they had smashed two Chinese Army divisions beyond repair, inflicting staggering casualties.

 The Battle for Leyte Gulf by C. Vann Woodward

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/battle-for-leyte-gulf-c-vann-woodward/1101999183?ean=9781782899112

Leyte Gulf is the largest naval battle in the history of the world, the most ships committed to combat over the largest theater of battle. It was not the decisive battle of World War II, that was Midway, and so it’s largely forgotten.  It was the Japanese Navy’s desperate last effort at victory in the Pacific.

At one point during the battle, a large fleet of Japanese war ships bore down on a group of U.S. tender and transport ships that were in a position thought to be safely away from the battle.  In what came to be called The Charge of the Light Brigade, the three U.S. destroyers protecting the tender and transport ships engaged the much larger Japanese fleet. They fought so desperately—and to the last full measure—that the Japanese fleet broke off the attack, thinking that they were facing a much larger force.

My uncle, John Emile was a sailor on one of the tender ships that was saved by the “Light Brigade”.