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Book Review
The Coldest Winter: America
and the Korean War.
David Halberstam
Hyperion, New York, NY, 705pp, ISBN 1-
4013-0052-9, $35.00 ($42.00 Canada).
By Arthur G. Sharp
David Halberstam’s
book about the
early stages of the
Korean War has generated
a lot of controversy,
especially among
veterans of the war.
Critics have cited
numerous factual
errors, biases towards
political and material leaders, and his
manipulation of history. Criticisms
aside, one thing can be said for sure
about The Coldest Winter: it has certain
similarities to its title. Like winter,
it is far too long and tedious.
Nevertheless, it is worth reading,
because there are some nuggets of
knowledge contained in its 705 pages.
It is just that readers have to wade
through too much extraneous material
to find them.
Halberstam did his homework in the
process of producing this book. But, he
went a bit overboard in including so
much of it in its pages. Readers can probably
start the book on page 250 and not
miss a lot. That is because Halberstam
provides far too much biographical background
about some of the major (and a
few of the minor) players in the Korean
War. Do readers really need to know the
ins and outs of the relationship and the
ultimate treachery between Chairman
Mao and General Peng?
For example, readers probably do not
need to know a lot about “Pinky”
MacArthur’s role in raising her son
Now Hear This:
Douglas. Nor do they need pages and
pages of background on her relationship
with her husband and his father, Arthur
MacArthur, the fighting between the
American troops and Filipino rebels in
1899, the roles of Elihu Root, William
Howard Taft, Teddy Roosevelt in late
19th-and 20th-century history….Yet,
Halberstam waxes eloquent for pages
and pages on such luminaries and their
significance, when the book is supposed
to be about Korea.
It takes Halberstam almost as long to
get to the actual war as it did for some of
the first troops to reach Korea from the
United States in 1950. Once he gets
there, though—just like for them—the
action picks up.
Halberstam does a thorough job of
analyzing the leadership qualities—or
lack thereof, in some cases—of Generals
Almond, Walton, MacArthur, and Smith
and delving into the political intrigues
between and among them and the politicians
in Washington. He writes, for
instance, about MacArthur’s dislike for
almost everybody and how it affected his
planning for the Inchon operation:
Back in Washington the Joint Chiefs
were wary, and MacArthur was very
much aware of that. Technically they
were his superiors, but he saw them as
small-bore bureaucrats, men who had
gained their power by accommodating
themselves to politicians whom he
despised. He knew that if he wanted
success at Inchon, he had two battles
on his hands and the first was with
them. (p. 296)
He wrote in a similar fashion about
the animosity between Generals Almond
(U.S. Army, Tenth Corps Commander)
and O.P. Smith (USMC, 1st Marine
Division Commander):
All comments concerning, or contributions for publication in The
Graybeards should be sent to Art Sharp, Editor, 152 Sky View Dr.,
Rocky Hill, CT 06067 or emailed to: sharp_arthur_g @sbcglobal.net
Even before they collided over the use
of the Marines in the Chosin-Yalu area,
Smith loathed Almond and was completely
distrustful of him. The two men
already had a history, of course. Even
before Inchon, Almond had postured to
Smith, an expert in amphibious landings,
about how easy they were, though
he had never been part of one. (p. 428)
In both cases mentioned above,
Halberstam discusses the differences
between and among the people involved
in excruciating detail, and explains how
they affected operations. These are the
parts of the book that are well worth
reading, especially for the individual soldiers
(and here I use the word in a generic
sense) whose little patches of turf in
Korea never gave them an overall picture
of the total war. This one of the reasons
reading the book is so exasperating:
readers have to work at finding the parts
that really describe the strategies and tactics
involved in fighting the Korean War.
One of the other problems with the
book is that is covers only the first few
months of the war—hence the title The
Coldest Winter (singular). He ended his
coverage with the battle of Chipyongni
which, he wrote, “had signaled the
beginning of a new stage in the war, one
that lasted two more years without granting
either side any turn-of-the-tide victory
(p. 624).” In the end, he wrote:
It became a war of cruel, costly battles,
of few breakthroughs, and of
strategies designed to inflict maximum
punishment on the other side without
essentially changing the battle lines. In
the end, there would be no great victory
for anyone, only some kind of mutually
unsatisfactory compromise. (p. 624)
It might be kind of difficult to sell
those ideas to the men and women who
were actually there and who have bristled
for so many years at the suggestion
that they “died for a tie,” which he noted
on p. 5 “became a favorite [phrase]
among the troops.” Based on a statement
like that, it might as hard to sell his
books as it is to sell the idea that the
troops “died for a tie.”
69
The Graybeards November-December 2007