Customer Reviews

Battle at the 38th Parallel: Surviving the Peace Talks at Panmunjom

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I have read a lot of books about the Korean War. This is one of the best. I read it from cover to cover in one day. It's an extraordinary account of the experiences of an infantry company in Korea during the last year of the War. The book is exceptionally well written by a veteran of Easy Company, 17th US Infantry Regiment, one of the most colorful and significant units that fought in Korea.

at the very time this blood-shed was happening. I sent him this book as a gift, and he called me immediately after receiving and reading it. Make no mistake, the description and accuracy of Gonsalve's accounts are dead-on accurate (no bad pun intended). My father, Bob, was a radio wireman attached to the unit directly behind the front lines and was responsible for running and maintaining the communication lines between the two. He said this book recounts the action so vividly and accurately that it sends shivers down his back.

Joseph Gonsalves makes a distinct contribution to a Korean War genre that has multiplied during the conflict's 50th anniversary years (1950-53). This isn't a personal reminiscence or an exploration of personalities and strategies. Rather, Gonsalves uses his old outfit--Easy Company, 17th Regiment, 7th Division--to illustrate how it was to fight and survive, and sometimes die, in a backwater country that, while geographically significant, no one cared much about, save the North and South Koreans, the Chinese, and the United Nations forces sent there to oppose the Reds...
Gonsalves offers enough geopolitical background to put the conflict in context, but concentrates on telling of a rifle company's experiences during the last year of the stalemated fighting. It's a GIs' world of war, where the action in 1952-53 was a dug-in, frustrating, freezing, sweaty, muddy, bloody exchange of propaganda and lethal ordnance, with counterpoints of crushing boredom and mindless terror. For the American soldiers--18- to 21-year-olds made up the bulk of Easy's ranks--"the experience became a time that lived with them forever," writes Gonsalves.
Ex-GIs, whether or not they served in Korea, will find the book engrossing. It will serve others equally well: those who had sons, brothers, fathers, uncles and cousins in Korea. With textbook thoroughness, Gonsalves presents the makeup of a rifle company, its armament, combat assignments, and life on the line. Through the voices and letters of enlisted men and officers, the book reflects what they were thinking, how they were reacting, and echoes the ebb and flow of human spirit as peace talks droned on at Panmunjom only a few miles away from Easy's sandbagged bunkers...
This book is more about dogfaces than heroes ("grunts" is a Vietnam-era term). There were heroes, to be sure, and citations of their exploits are interspersed in the text. But the GIs of Easy were Everyman, and could be found in any regiment...
The back pages offer a chronology of the peace talks with concurrent front-line action and Easy's involvement. In July 1953, for instance, Easy was committed in a major battle over Pork Chop Hill, a month after the Communists had accepted a U.N. peace proposal! It's picky to say more maps would have helped; that's true of most books. But if you know of Pork Chop Hill, have read the book or seen the movie, there's a photo of it--a rare good one--on page 158...
In straightforward but gripping fashion, Gonsalves and the boys of Easy Company offer a book-full of reasons to remember a war we forget at our peril.

I was an infantry officer in H Company of the 2nd Battalion when most of the actions reflected by this book took place. I not only learned some things from the book I didn't already know about the actions there, but anxieties and feelings of forebodings encompassed me as nothing has since I left Korea some 49 years ago. If anyone wants to find out what was going on in the mid-section of Korea in the fall and spring of 1952-53, he should read this book. I think that most will agree that this was something more than a "police action".

Battle At The 38th Parallel: Surviving The Peace Talks At Panmunjom is an eyewitness account of what the Korean War was like from April 1952 to July 1953 when violent and bloody battles took place resulting in the peace talks of Panmunjom which ultimately concluded into a truce that divided Korean between the Communist North and the Democratic South. It was to be a division manned for the next five decades by American troops with the help of United Nation allies. Battle At The 38th Parallel is a superb contribution to the history of what is sometimes referred to as "The Forgotten War". Joseph Gonsalves gives modern readers a vivid perspective on what it was like to spend eleven months on the front lines fighting with the 17th Infantry Regiment, manning an outpost line of the 7th Division, and draws upon original research at the National Archives, extensive interviews with participants, in addition to his own personal recollections. Battle At The 38th Parallel is a very welcome addition to any academic or community library military studies collection.

Good explanation of the facts on the ground and Easy co's participation. The roster did cover all of the members of the company as their were so many casualties from April to July. I was one of them. Richard Bertoli

This is the tenth book on Korea that I have read recently and the most rewarding. Most are written by historians looking at the macro level. This book was written by a combat veteran about a small unit. It tells the story of what it was like to be on the line during the extended talks. Highly recommended. Without this type of history the reader does not get a complete picture.