A Christmas Far from Home: An
Epic Tale of Courage and Survival during the Korean War. By Stanley
Weintraub. Da Capo. $26.99.
Christmas in wartime is
always a little strange. Strangest of all was Christmas 1914, when British and
German troops met in no man’s land in exactly the spirit of comity and good
will that was notably absent during (and before and after) that devastating
conflict – and then, when the day was done, immediately resumed trying to kill
each other. It is testimony to the inherent peculiarities of the human mind,
and perhaps to the special madness that is all-out war, that this World War I story,
while extreme, is scarcely the only one relating to a holiday of peace and good
will at a time and place dedicated to mass killing and destruction.
Stanley Weintraub’s A Christmas Far from Home shows the
importance – and, alas, the ultimate irrelevance – of the Christmas spirit in a
different way, during a different war. The Korean conflict, which has never
formally ended (it concluded with a cease-fire agreement, not a peace treaty),
is sometimes considered a forgotten war in the United States, where the historical
focus in recent decades has been more on World War II and Vietnam. But
Weintraub has certainly not forgotten: he served in Korea, being awarded a
Bronze Star there, and in this book – the latest of several Christmas-themed
war books he has written, others being Silent
Night and Pearl Harbor Christmas
– he gives readers a “you are there” feeling for the Christmas season of 1950,
five months after the war started.
This is not a place or time
that readers will be comfortable visiting. Weintraub tells the story largely
through first-person accounts by troops, but at the same time he puts what
happened in perspective through his own looks at tactical plans and the
political strategies that largely shaped those plans. This means that the book
is, on the one hand, the story of General Edward Almond’s X Corps and General
Oliver Smith’s Marine division within it – and, on the other hand, the story of
President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur at a time before the
famous clash that led Truman to fire MacArthur in 1951. In A Christmas Far from Home, MacArthur is riding his success at
Inchon with an eye toward his own political future, in the course of which he
promises to have the troops home from Korea by Christmas 1950. MacArthur as
seen here is arrogant, ego-driven and politically ambitious, scarcely the
strong and determined military leader that his many defenders still make him
out to be. And Truman comes across as weak-willed and passively accepting of
MacArthur’s proclamations, strategy and tactics, even though MacArthur himself
was only occasionally in Korea: he was stationed in Tokyo, and he relied for
intelligence on such military “yes men” as Major General Edward “Ned” Almond,
MacArthur’s Far East Command deputy.
The result of these circumstances
is chilling – and was literally chilling for troops forced to fight a brutal
and relentless winter campaign in some of the most rugged mountains in Asia. MacArthur’s
ego and his overreaching through his Christmas-themed promise made him oblivious
to the brilliant strategy of Mao Zedong, who allowed the United Nations troops
under MacArthur’s command (most of them American) to advance with little
resistance to positions near the Yalu River. These troops of the X Corps –
which was newly created as an east coast parallel to the Eighth Army, which was
marching up Korea’s west coast – were unaware that the North Koreans and their
Chinese helpers were massing their forces at the Manchurian border, secretly
slipping them across the Yalu River by night in sub-zero temperatures. Soon the
X Corps faced overwhelming numbers of highly disciplined and determined enemy
troops – forcing a casualty-laden retreat through ice-clogged mountains where
the very landscape, which included a 4,000-foot-deep abyss, seemed to turn
against MacArthur’s forces. Eventually, led by the Marines in their midst, the
surviving soldiers of X Corps did escape, with the ship waiting for them
ironically weighing anchor on Christmas Eve. MacArthur’s strategy lay in ruins,
and the foundation was laid for the eventual unresolvable conflict between him
and Truman.
The heroes here are the
fighters on the ground, not most of their commanders and certainly not the
politicians directing them (and Weintraub makes it clear that MacArthur here
acted more like a politician than a commanding general). A Christmas Far from Home includes the same sorts of scenes of fear
and courage, trial and triumph, death and survival that are central to
Weintraub’s other military-history books and many others in the genre. Also
like those other books, it is a celebration of the common soldier and a
condemnation of the know-nothing (or know-little) command structure. Well-written,
with a strong sense of place, by an author who, after all, himself served in
the conflict, the book will be of most interest to other Korean War veterans
and to those interested in military history for its own sake. It is decidedly a
niche publication, but it is a very well-done one that contains some genuinely
thoughtful reconsideration of the more-common notions about the determination
and heroism of MacArthur and Truman – suggesting that the truly determined
people, the true heroes, were the members of X Corps desperately trying to
escape from overwhelming odds so that at least some of their number would
indeed be out of Korea by Christmas.
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