Marines Of Autumn [Hardcover]

The protagonist of the novel, Thomas Verity, is called from his teaching post at Georgetown University to serve as an observer of Chinese action in North Korea. A veteran of World War II, Verity is an officer in the Marine Corps Reserve. Upon the beginning of action he is recalled because the government "needs" him. Verity leaves his young daughter with a nanny and sets off for a "short" tour. Early in his service he frequently writes letters to his daughter telling her of Korea and promising to return to take her to Paris. As time passes, the weather grows bitterly colder, the situation in North Korea grows more desperate, the letters become less frequent--it is no longer possible for him to keep his letters cheery and optimistic. Verity becomes a pawn whose expertise in Chinese is no longer needed but who is used by the military to lead Marines in battle.

Brady presents a typical Marine view of the war which strained their sense of duty. The American troops are directed by "Dugout Doug" McArthur (a reference to McArthur's escape from Bataan peninsula in WWII) who never spends a night in Korea and oversees the war from a hotel in Japan. The force is divided, separated by a range of mountains, making it easier for the invading Chinese troops (whom McArthur never believed would attack) to reek havoc. As the Chinese move in, the Americans are forced to retreat quickly and, in the process, many dead and wounded are left behind--a violation of the Marine promise to leave no one behind.

Captain Tom Verity, Gunnery Sgt. Tate, and their driver Mouse Izzo maintain their commitments to one another and to the Marine Corps ideal, in spite of the situation, and each is honorable in his own distinct way.

A good read, this is a true-to-life story about a time when Americans were sent into harm's way without proper planning or appropriate leadership. Yet, these soldiers still performed in a way that should make us proud of their service.

William Manchester writes of his youth while staring through a glass of (I think) bourbon, on a flight west to recall "the young man he had been," (ironically as I now recall also as a Marine.)Writing of the war a half dozen years later, Brady does the same with brief, terse, vivid, sparingly used prose.

Tom Verity, called back into service in the Marine Corps after serving as a Rifle Platoon Commander in the Pacific, reluctantly leaves the girl he loves at home. But this time it's a different love story because the girl is his three year old daughter, Kate, an orphan if Verity dies.

There's a lot of Harry Brubaker, the Navy Panther Jet pilot estranged from his wife and daughters in a similar situation in Michner's classic about Korea, "The Bridges at To Ko Ri."

Verity, a Chinese linguist sent over just for the "walk in the Park," finds himself at the Chosin Reservoir surrounded by 120,000 Chinese infantry soldiers. This is where Colonel Lewis "Chesty" Puller, commanding the Marines, supposedly remarked when being told he was surrounded by 10 Chinese infantry divisions, "now we got the B******* where we want 'em." I don't know if it's true. Made great legend though.

We owe it to these men and women caught up in the ego of Commanding Generals and comfortable politicians to read as much about Korea. Read "Truman," McCullough's brilliant biography esp. the section on MacArthur, as well as Brady's non-fiction and even Michner's work. This is great stuff. 5 Stars.

Unlike the 8th Army, the eastern U.N. force, called X Corps, did not run. X Corps was bolstered by 25,000 troops of the U.S. 1st Marine Division. The Marines, dug in at points around a kidney-shaped lake called the Chosin Reservoir, were engaged and quickly surrounded by about 120,000 CCF (Chinese Communist Forces) soldiers. In late November, they fought a nightmarishly bloody, desperate battle in arctic temperatures and snow - the Chinese trying to annihilate the Americans before they could escape the trap. By the time the 1st Marine Division managed to withdraw in good order with their wounded to the port city of Wonsang, they had lost about 6,000 killed, wounded, or missing - while killing at least 25,000 of their foes and wounding over 12,000. Although they had to relinquish the Chosin, Marines consider the fight one of the proudest engagements of their history.
The Marines of Autumn is a novel of the Chosin Reservoir battle. Its hero is Tom Verity, a captain in the Marine Reserves who at the outset of the war is teaching Chinese language and culture at Georgetown University. He is a recent widower; his young daughter Kate and the still-fresh memories of his dead wife are the centerpieces of his life. Activated by the Corps in October of 1950, Verity is ordered to travel with the Marine 1st Division and monitor Chinese radio traffic, to ascertain whether the Chinese have begun sending military forces into Korea. Along the way, Verity picks up two enlisted assistants, a laconic gunnery sergeant named Tate and a wiseguy PFC driver, Izzo. Finally catching up to the Marine field headquarters in Yudam-ni on the western shore of the Chosin, Verity and his crew are just in time to be caught up in the battle when the Chinese launch their offensive.

Author James Brady was a young Marine rifle platoon leader in the Korean War. Though he wasn't engaged at the Chosin, he fought the following year in the surrounding Taebaek Mountains. So it's no surprise that his writing on the subject feels entirely authentic, rivetingly first-person. What is a surprise is the grace and power of his prose. This man can flat write. One reviewer compared Brady's prose to Hemingway's, and it's an apt comparison: ruthlessly spare, haunting, colloquial and yet elegiac. In a market (military fiction) that is filled with ponderous ... tomes, Brady's books are remarkably lean.

Brady's protagonist, Verity, is an atypical combat fiction hero. He goes to war reluctantly, fearful of death not for his own sake but for that of his daughter. (He writes to her frequently from Korea, rendering the grim, snowy campaign as a benign Christmas fantasy to alleviate her fears.) His companions, on the other hand, are archetypes from any number of books and movies - the salty, competent gunny and the streetwise grunt. What saves them from being cliches is Brady's fine eye for detail and ear for nuance. We see the campaign mostly through Verity's eyes, but Brady maintains a layer of detachment from his main character, just as Verity himself regards his fellows and his situation from an objective distance. Interestingly, the restraint implicit in that finely maintained distance gives this tale of doom a kind of poignancy and gravity that no amount of overwrought drama could achieve. The protagonist's name is significant - Verity, honesty, in Webster's parlance "a fundamental and inevitably true value." It's a good choice; for Tom Verity is at once a completely authentic mid-century man, and a credible everyman representing "fundamental and inevitably true values" like reluctant courage and frightened resolve. A story of bitter war with a core of Truth, The Marines of Autumn can hardly be a happy story, and it isn't. It is, however, a very satisfying tale about a campaign - and a war - that in the annals of our history have been vastly underserved.