The River and the Gauntlet; Defeat of the Eighth Army by the Chinese Communist Forces, November, 1950

New York: Time Incorporated, 1982. Time Reading Program Special Edition. Trade paperback. Good. H. Garver Miller (maps and Drawings). [16], 373, [3] pages. Wraps. Illustrations. Maps. Glossary of Main Weapons. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling. Ink notation inside front cover. Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall (July 18, 1900 - December 17, 1977) was a chief U.S. Army combat historian during World War II and the Korean War. Known professionally as S. L. A. Marshall, and nicknamed "Slam" (the combination of all four of his initials), he authored some 30 books about warfare, including Pork Chop Hill: The American Fighting Man in Action, which was made into a film. During World War II, Marshall was an official Army combat historian, and knew many of the war's best-known Allied commanders. He conducted hundreds of interviews of both enlisted men and officers regarding their combat experiences, and was an early proponent of oral history techniques. Marshall favored the group interview, where he would gather surviving members of a front line unit together and debrief them on their combat experiences of a day or two before. Recounts how the Eighth Army was forced to the retreat being cut off by a large Red Chinese force. Derived from a Kirkus review: This is as absorbing a record of defeat and heroism as modern war has given us. Brigadier General Marshall was Infantry Operations Analyst with the 8th Army in Korea at the time of the Chinese attack. He has set down this record, in minute and personal detail because he feels that in studying the reasons why our forces were deceived and how they reacted to the situation, lessons are to be drawn. The pre- invasion handicaps, the inadequacies of intelligence, the failure to use procedures perfected in World War II (due to demobilization largely), the lack of maps -- all these were factors. He examines the oriental pattern of deception and its significance. He goes on to tell the story of one day, comparable percentage- wise to the decimation and disaster of the winter at Valley Forge. It is a story of men against defeat, superbly told, with no minimizing of the inadequacies as well as the achievements.