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Summary: Riveting, detailed account of USMC "reverse attack" in Korea
Review: Martin Russ' account of the USMC's pullback from the Chosin reservoir is riveting and provoking. While full of first person recounts and detail, it is fast paced and well organized. He is able to capture the chaos and terror of war and make the reader feel each attack, the freezing cold, the desperation and ultimate success. Others have derided the book as heavily one-sided in favor of the Marines. Those reviewers have obviously glossed over the credit that Russ gives to the Chinese. If the Chinese hadn't lacked the technology (firepower, air support, logistics), the outcome may have been very different. For me, Breakout was an entertaining and insightful read that I recommend to anyone interested in military history or the experience of men at war. It is a great read on its own or as one voice describing the experience in Korea.
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Summary: Marine Bias
Review: This is a well-written book and keeps a good pace up throughout. There is just the right mix of political groundwork, first person views, and the overall picture to make it a fascinating book. The book really makes one appreciate the efforts of the Marines given the conditions they fought in. The book is critical of Douglas MacArthur and the U.S. Army, and given the outcome of the next American war maybe this view was a precursor to the next conflict. I do have to wonder if the U.S. Army was that unorganized given it was just 5 years after WW 2. This is a good book that is well worth reading.
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Summary: The Greatest Men I Have Served With.
Review: ...God Bless those Marines who were at the Chosin... The stories they tell are unreal. I was lucky not to be there. I was in Korea the second winter as a Navy Hospital Corpsman with a rifle company (B-1-5). To my surprise, this book mentioned a Corpsman friend of mine twice. The last mention was how he was killed leaving the Chosin area. I could not read the remaining pages...
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Summary: Fiction at its worse
Review: The inside cover of this book has a publisher's note stating "This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental." Calling this book a work of fiction is demeaning good fiction. Seldom have I wasted [money] so foolishly. If the author actually believes the Marine propaganda that he spiels forth on the 436 pages of text, one cannot help but wonder if he contracted a little Manchurian Candidatis during his tour in Korea. I was hoping for history of Battle at the Chosin Reservoir. I got one ex-Marine's braggadocio.
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Summary: MUST READ-top of the list
Review: Anything by Martin Russ is on my "must read" list. As a former member of 3rd Bn. 5th Marines, (on Guam, but not in Korea)-it listed a number of familiar names.
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Summary: Unfair assault on the U.S. Army
Review: (...) Poor taste indeed by Mr. Russ. His unfair assault on the Army brings into question the credibility of the rest of his writing. Was the performance of his can-do-no-wrong USMC inflated? I found the much-maligned Hammel book more informative.
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Summary: Poor delivery of a good story
Review: The fight into and out of the Chosin Reservoir is a gripping, sad, and heroic tale. The ordeal itself kept me reading this book even though Mr. Russ's poor delivery of the story tempted me on several occasions to put this book down. This is a well-researched effort--the insights delivered by several of those that were there helped bring home the emotion and severity of the battle and the harsh weather. I have 2 problems with this version of the Chosin battle. First, this book sorely lacked decent maps to assist the reader understand the battles and the disposition of friendly and enemy units. Maps with unit identification assist a reader understand the movement of units and the significance of selected pieces or terrain. This book has only 3 maps and they do very little in terms of assisting the reader understand the finer points of the battle. None of the maps are sufficiently detailed or of an appropriate scale to assist the reader follow the numerous small unit actions that contributed to the Marine success. The second problem I have with this book is I found Mr. Russ's endless attacks against the U.S. Army's performance in this campaign to be excessive and well beyond good taste. He seems to want to reader to wonder how the U.S. Army ever won a battle in this war or any other war. Shamefully, Russ refers to Army soldiers who lost the will to fight as cowards yet Marines whose performance was less than commendable are just searching for their courage. This theme is so pervasive throughout the book that I can't help but think there is some other agenda on Russ' mind here beyond the fact that he was once a Marine.
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Summary: Real Life Combat
Review: I was very impressed with this book. Although the first quarter of the book didn't seem to flow as smoothly as the rest of it, Russ is a fabulous writer with a real ability to tell a story. It reads more like a novel than history. There is not one dry page or paragraph here. This does not give a lot of overall history on the Korean conflict particulary; it solely focuses on the entrapment of Marines and Army personnel in the Frozen Chosin, and the ghastly living conditions they endured there. Not only were the human wave attacks deadly, but the cold was mind blowing. This is one of those honest combat stories where the "winners" were simply those who survived. Excellent reading.
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Summary: It's a good book but......
Review: I've just finished reading "Colder than Hell" by Joseph Owen, and I've noticed that there are differences between these two books. For instance in "Colder than Hell" Owen says he just calmly told Sgt. Lunney to report to Captain Wilcox, but in "Breakout" he's quoted as having said "You [messed](really a harsher word from Breakout) up." to Sgt Lunney. And other descripencies like that concerning Baker-One-Seven between the two books. Is it misquoting on Russ's part or was did Owen tell two different accounts of what happened?
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Summary: Remembering the "Chosin Few"
Review: Korea is about the size of Florida. Divided north and south at the 38th parallel at the end of World War II, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north became a client state of the Soviet bloc; the Republic of Korea in the south, then as now, an ally of the United States. In the summer of 1950, it was in Korea that the Soviets tested the free world's resolve as at no time since the Berlin crisis of 1948; this time pushing a reluctant President Truman and the fledgling United Nations to the brink, and beyond. Moreover, when the Cold War inevitably erupted into real war on June 25, 1950, it also was in Korea that we would soon suffer one of the great tragedies of American military history. Breakout deals with the fate of 12,000 members of the 1st Marine Division who battled their way out of a trap sprung by some 60,000 Red Chinese at the Chosin Reservoir, North Korea, November 27, 1950. Outnumbered but never outfought, the "Chosin Few," as they're known, waged a three-week fighting withdrawal over 80 miles of narrow mountain roads in temperatures as low as 30-below zero. In so doing, they sustained horrific casualties to enemy action (700 dead, nearly 200 missing 3,500 wounded) and the unspeakable cold (6,200 non-battle casualties, mostly to frostbite). Enemy casualties are estimated at 25,000 KIA and 12,500 WIA between mid-October and mid-December. Well written and thoroughly researched--author and Korean War veteran Martin Russ interviewed more than 200 veterans of the Chosin fight--Breakout is also a study of personal sacrifice and heroism against overwhelming odds. Russ describes how the Chosin Marines lived up to their Corps' motto, Semper Fidelis (always faithful), bringing their wounded and dead and most of their equipment with them in spite of a fanatical enemy, impossible terrain, and unimaginable weather conditions. Observed company commander, Captain Robert Barrow: "I learned that only leadership will save you in such conditions. It's easy to say that a man has to change his socks; but getting him to do so when the temperature is twenty-five below is another matter. Boot laces become iced over, and it's a struggle just to get the boot off your foot." Many individual Marines in Russ's account of the Chosin Reservoir campaign stand out for their combat spirit and raw courage under fire. One, PVT Hector Cafferata, Fox Company, 7th Marines, was far from being a parade-deck Marine; yet when his company came under intense attack, he and other members of his squad showed their mettle. "'Every time [Cafferata] fired he exposed the upper half of his body,' Russ quotes a witness as saying: 'I saw this guy perform miracles...catching live grenades and tossing them back...One of them landed on the lip of the hole and Hector had to lean way back to scoop it up and sidearm it--but he wasn't fast enough and lost part of his hand in the explosion. He began spitting and cursing, then reloaded his rifle and fired off another clip. After he ran out we saw him swing the rifle like a baseball bat and knock a live grenade out of the park, thwock!'" Russ adds, "The official Marine history states that the failure of the Chinese to penetrate the Marine line at that point was largely due to the efforts of Hector Cafferata and [two other members of his squad], and that the three of them are credited with annihilating two enemy platoons." Cafferata received the Congressional Medal of Honor for this action. One controversial issue Russ meets head on is the generally sorry performance of U.S. Army units that participated in the Chosin Reservoir campaign. It is widely held that in addition to superb leadership, the more rigorous basic training received by the Marines, along with their esprit de corps, gave them the tenacity to continue their mission, where the poorly led, inadequately trained, and insufficiently motivated Army troops were at times unable to function. In fact, as they withdrew, the Marines recovered vehicles and weapons abandoned by overwhelmed Army units desperate to escape the bloody gauntlet. Russ recounts a classic Army-Marine confrontation. Informed that an Army unit assigned to protect the flanks of the column had abandoned its positions and joined the south-bound Marines on the road, a disgusted Marine officer told the Army officer in charge to let his soldiers stay on the road: "'I don't want troops as lousy as yours out there on our flank. We'll take care of that.'" After completing their ordeal, with the Chinese forces beaten back and fading into the distant hills, the battered Marines marched into the port city, Hungnam. Their courage, honor and commitment to their Corps and to each other had prevented what could have been a total rout. An epic struggle, the "Frozen Chosin" has taken its place in Marine Corps history alongside Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima. As the 1st Division sailed from the harbor on December 15, 1950, one of the most memorable chapters in Marine Corps history came to a close. "'The only way we got out of Frozen Chosin is because a lot of young guys knew how to fight,' Russ relates Henry Litvin, M.D., a Navy surgeon who made the trek as saying, 'God Bless the Chosin Marines.'" Martin Russ served with a Marine rifle company in 1952-53 during the final stages of the Korean War. With his combat insight and attention to the tactical imperatives and human costs of battle, Breakout is a hands-down winner. It's hard to believe these events--part of what has been called the "Forgotten War"--happened nearly 50 years ago, but when tensions in the region heat up--as they do from time to time--we would do well to remember them.
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