The Anatomy of Defeat

THE RIVER AND THE GAUNTLET (385 pp.) S.LA. Marshall--Morrow ($5).

Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall is a newspaperman (Detroit News) and a World War I doughboy who became the Army's chief historian in Europe in World War II. As historian, he quickly learned that the usual military records convey neither the look nor the sound of battle. But by questioning everyone from rifleman to army group commander--and fitting the answers together--"Slam" Marshall soon developed a way of describing war, e.g., Island Victory, Bastogne, that made other service histories sound like business balance sheets.

Historian Marshall is at the top of his technique in The River and the Gauntlet, and his official account of the defeat of the U.S. Eighth Army in Korea by the Chinese in November 1950 bears comparison with anything written about Americans in war. Marshall makes some things clear that will have many a U.S. reader trembling. Here was a whole modern army on the move caught completely by surprise, its units scattered, its communications faulty, its foremost elements short of ammunition to fight off a primitive army that could move only at night and on foot. How it happened--in that one week, south of the Yalu--is superbly and terrifyingly described. It is inconceivable that it could happen in the future to any commander who has read The River and the Gauntlet.

The 2nd and 25th Divisions formed the center and right flank of the Eighth Army's line and took the brunt of the Chinese assault. It is essentially their stark story that Historian Marshall tells.*

It was B company of the 9th Infantry which was ambushed first, at 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 25. The men of B company averaged less than a grenade apiece, and some carried as little as 16 rounds of ammunition. All but twelve of the men were without steel helmets. When the Chinese struck, the surprise was complete. B company quickly ran out of ammunition, but the Chinese seemed to have plenty. One U.S. lieutenant covered the retreat of his men by throwing rocks and canned rations, and the company fought with bravery throughout. But 26 hours after the battle began, all but 34 of B company's 129 men were dead or wounded.

Company by company. Historian Marshall describes the tragedy of defeat. The crescendo is reached in the last 80 pages, which describe the pullout of what was left of the 2nd Division. By this time it was every man for himself. For six miles, men and vehicles ran a one-road gauntlet lined by steep hills occupied by the Chinese. The valley became a shooting gallery and a common grave. Heroism was as common as death, but heroism was not enough. What broke out of the gauntlet was perhaps the most completely smashed division in U.S. military history.

During the winter of Valley Forge, Washington lost 3,000 of his 7,000 men. Historian Marshall says that 2nd Division's losses in the gauntlet were roughly comparable, "but it all happened in one day." Except for the bravery of U.S. men & officers, only one redressing fact emerges from this harrowing story: the rout ended on Dec. 1. "By Christmas Day, 2nd Division was again a going concern, en route to a new battlefield."

*"Another epic story [that] someday must be told," says Marshall, is the vain and valiant struggle put up by units of the X Corps and the First Marine Division manning the eastern sector of the U.S. front.

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