Ice Men: A Novel of the Korean War
As I did the research for this novel, I was impressed with the valor, the endurance, and the humanity of the over one million Americans who served during the Korean War. Many of these men and women are with us, still. One or two may live in your neighborhood. They were part of a huge and brave effort to save a nation from a fate that can be appreciated only by assessing the state of North Korea today. Many gave their lives and many more were wounded, or lost toes and fingers to frostbite in the bitter cold of the Taebek Mountains in North Korea. Even so, they are our forgotten veterans. The citizens of the United States, wishing to be shed of war after the climactic close of World War II only five years before, did not have the same attitude toward veterans returning from Korea as for those in WWII. Mostly, returning Korean war vets were ignored, except by their families. I wrote this novel for them, the dead and the living. I spoke with many of the survivors and read the accounts left by others. I worked hard to include all the historical detail I could find to make sure each event of this novel happened when and how it appears in this novel. For the Korean War, the record isn't nearly as full as for other wars, but I persisted and I'm confident of the historical validity of this novel. My wish was to show readers this war through the eyes of three ordinary people down in the ranks--a marine sergeant and two army lieutenants. I include text at the beginning of each chapter to describe what was happening in the grand strategic sense at each point in the first year of the war, from Pusan to the Chosin Reservoir. But, first and foremost, this is an account of how it felt on the ground from the eyes of three people whose lives are inextricably bound up with each other's. The novel offers romance, medical history, the heat (and frozen cold) of battle, and an accurate military history, but above all, ICE MEN is meant to capture some of the memories of those real veterans who died and those who are with us still, and to make those memories real for you, in their honor.