Rating: 
Summary: "Korea wasn't a walk in the park."
Review: This is a brilliant book but not the typical war novel. It is a novel but Jim Brady's own demons pop up relentlessly and the reader does himself a great service if he or she first reads "The Coldest war," Brady's autobiographical recollection of his life as a Marine Rifle Platoon Commander. 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Marine's Story of Korea
Review: James Brady's Korean War novel tells the story of the first autumn of the war from a U.S. Marine's perspective. Brady, a Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War, presents a compelling portrait of a typical Marine officer called into action at an inconvenient time. 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.
Rating:
Summary: Death and Honor in a Frozen Land
Review: Background: As autumn approached in 1950, it appeared to Supreme Commander Douglas McArthur that a U.N. victory in South Korea's war against its northern neighbors was all but won. Beginning with a brilliant and daring assault at the western port of Inchon, allied forces had wrecked the war machine of the North Koreans, who were retreating on all fronts. Then, as the U.N. forces drove across the 38th parallel, MacArthur made a critical mistake. He split his forces into two elements, and ordered them north along either side of the bony spine of North Korea, the Taebaek Mountains, to press the communist troops all the way to the Yalu River - Korea's border with China. When China suddenly intervened, reinforcing the North Koreans with hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened infantry, the U.N. forces were isolated from one another and critically vulnerable. In the west, the U.N. 8th Army was routed with significant losses, and thrown all the way back beyond the South Korean capital, Seoul. 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.
Rating:
Summary: "Korea wasn't a walk in the park."
Review: This is a brilliant book but not the typical war novel. It is a novel but Jim Brady's own demons pop up relentlessly and the reader does himself a great service if he or she first reads "The Coldest war," Brady's autobiographical recollection of his life as a Marine Rifle Platoon Commander. 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A Marine's Marine
Review: James Brady borrows heavily from his memoire "The Coldest War" in this novel about a recalled reservist officer, Tom Verity, a professor of Chinese at Georgetown, who finds himself thrown into the campaign to push the North Korean forces all the way north to the Chinese/North Korea border in the fall of 1950. General MacArthur thought this campaign would be a walk in the park, refusing to believe, despite many indications to the contrary, that the Chinese Communist Forces would become involved. Brady has done much research on the campaign, and I found some of his asides, personal opinions and commentary which combine his personal knowledge of the war as a reservist rifle platoon commander with his study, to be most compelling. I recommend that no one read both Brady's personal memoire of his experiences in Korea and this novel back-to-back, as I did, because Brady lifts some descriptive sections or small incidenc es almost word for word from the memoire. The troop ship which carries the Marines north to the mustering area for the march to Chosin has the name of the troop ship which transported Brady home from his duty in 1952. This doesn't in any way detract from the novel, but a little distance between the two books would erase some of the familiarity. I also found the repetition of the fact that "three marines traveling alone in a jeep towards the north made for a good target" was somewhat disconcerting. Bardy writes in fairly short chapters, and perhaps felt that most would read his novel a little bit at a time, not in one sitting as I did, and therefore the fact bore repeating. But I fault Brady's editor, not the writer, who should catch such things. But if that's my only criticism (and it is), then it is a trivial matter about a book which, for both its ease of reading, its marvelous insight into a war about which not enough has been written, and the incredible density of senior commanders, an entire country removed from the battle (MacArthur and his staff were in Japan, the general himself making one flight to "see" the objective terrain for himself in a transport plane, seeing nothing because the Chinese were dug in and camouflaged, receiving a Distinguished Flying Cross for his flight after returning to his cushy headquarters in Japan, nicknamed "The Palace") is a marvelous story. I recommend this book highly. War isn't pretty when told in stark reality, without overly dramatised violence thrown in for shock value. Brady doesn't do that. He doesn't need to.
Rating:
Summary: Book Review for Marines of Autumn
Review: I have just finished reading the book Marines of Autumn. It was written James Brady. It is a war novel. The book is set in the 1950's during the Korean War. The main character is Tom Verity is in the reserve, but his daytime job is being a teacher of Chinese History at Georgetown University, Tom has a daughter and his wife just passed away. He can speak Chinese in six different dialects (which was a very un common thing for a white American). Since the United States is starting to believe that the Chinese could become involved in the conflict they decide that Tom could become a very good resource for intercepting Chinese radio waves And sending it to headquarters. On his way up to the Yalu River (the border between China and North Korea) he meets many Marines trying to go through the hardship of staying alive in the -30 degree weather and the continuous onslaught of the Chinese Regular Army. The only thing keeping Tom alive in this confusing and extremely deadly war is the fact that he is the only parent left to his daughter Kate and the fact that he promised her that they would dance on the bridges of Paris with her.
I liked this book very much it went into great detail about how the Marines were going through a great ordeal. I don't want to give away the ending but the ending could have been better.
Rating:
Summary: THE MARINES OF AUTUMN
Review: The Marines Of Autumn The Marines of Autumn was an ok book on the Korean war. It focused more on Verity's personal life an problems it also jumped thought time a lot, from him, to his wife, child and the present war at hand. So far this book has taught me a lot about the Korean war and codes they used during the war. It taught me also that there are numerous Chinese dialects and that their army was actually organized, and wasn't just a mob. I thought that this book jumped around a lot, but it also told a lot about the war and what happened. This book uses a lot of racial comments such as, calling the Chinese chinks and some of the abbreviations for their armies.
This was a well written war novel and I would request reading it.
Rating:
Summary: haunting
Review: A complete look into the real world of war. You will never forget this book. Read it with his memoir of Korea.
Rating:
Summary: The Marines of Autumn
Review: Even though I lived during the time of the Korean War, I never really knew much about it. I learned more from this account that I ever learned from history books. This was a great read! Very thought provoking.
Rating:
Summary: Cold realism, heated battles
Review: This was a highly readable, fast paced book that seemed to end too soon. Brady writes clearly and concisely; while I read the first few chapters, I thought "this sounds like the prose of a former journalist or army regular" (or should I say Marine regular). He wastes no sentences, nor does he add superflous descriptions. Instead, he gets to the point in a marvelous economy of words.
This probably accounted for the shortness of the book; my only complaint is that Brady does not add alot of depth to his characters due to this style. The fleshing out of the main character Captain Verity and his wife is very good, though. The other main players, Izzo and Sargeant Tate, are not given much personal history; but Brady manages to reveal their personalities through their interactions with Verity. Another complaint, which is actually a compliment, is that the battles are good, but too short. I would like to have seen more battles or longer descriptions, since Brady writes the battle scenes so realistically. He does a fine job of placing you in the snow-covered trenches with the marines, who are shivering to death as well as being shot at. Overall, a good, quick read that respects the men of the Korean War without romanticizing it.
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