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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
An American War classic!,
By
This review is from: They Came to Cordura (Hardcover)
They Came To Cordura is the first novel ever set against the backdrop of 1916's American Army campaign into Mexico to capture the bandit Pancho Villa, whose troops crossed our border on March 8th, 1916, at Columbus, New Mexico, and killed 8 civilians and 7 American soldiers posted there, wounding 7 more people. America was outraged and President Wilson forced to act, authorizing General John J. Pershing to lead a punitive expedition of four regiments of Cavalry and support units after the Villistas. For eleven hot months they chased these irregulars all over northern Mexico by horse, truck, train, motorcar, and aeroplane, never catching Pancho, but fighting a number of largely forgotten engagements, including a battle at Ojos Azules, which was the last mounted charge against an enemy in the history of the United States Cavalry.They Came To Cordura details the results of that last battle, as a disgraced Major is ordered to take 5 soldiers who have distinguished themselves in the fight back to base at Cordura and write them up for Medals of Honor, which they'll be shipped home to the States to receive. An American woman prisoner, the ranch owner who aided these Villistas, is also being sent home for trial, and it is in their confrontations with bandits and increasingly, each other, that this historical adventure across a burning desert for six days is made of. Cordura describes with unsparing accuracy the conduct of the human spirit under stress. Its setting is a small corner of military history, but its concern is with war and the qualities that it unchangingly demands. It is a remarkable novel for its creation of tension and its probing into the motives which make men behave couragelously and selflessly on the battlefield. They Came To Cordura was a top 10 New York Times bestseller and became a major motion picture from Columbia in 1959, starring Gary Cooper in his final action film, Rita Hayworth in one of her best late roles, and Van Heflin and Tab Hunter in a couple of their best performances. The book was published internationally to more rave reviews and was Random House's nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for 1958. In 1980, Cordura made the Western Writers of America's initial list of the 30 Greatest Western Novels written in the 20th century. Reviews -- "A superb piece of storytelling...guaranteed to hold the reader absolutely absorbed from beginning to end." Saturday Review Syndicate "Bloodcurdling excitement from start to finish." The New York Times "One of the most gripping novels I've ever read...Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Faulkner can move aside and make room for Swarthout." Cleveland Plain Dealer "Tight as a saddle girth...a strong, harsh, haunting novel which will outlast most of the season's fiction...An ironic and revealing study of courage and cowardice." Chicago Tribune "A vivid, bruising story...Its dramatic impact is immediate...it conveys a concept of heroism that is both profound and thought-provoking." New York Herald Tribune Book Review "This novel is above all sheer story-telling...But Glendon Swarthout is a real writer, and his story is much more than a what-happens-next epic. He asks and seeks to answer a question: what is courage? The central human situation he has invented is both intriguing and ironic...It is a pleasure to report that he winds the book up at the top of his form, with a wonderful last paragraph that recaptures the heart of his story...We close the novel feeling that we have been given a sharp insight into the mystery of courage." Benjamin Appel, the Saturday Review "This immensely powerful novel is written in language that is stripped bare of emotion, as flat and barren as the desert in which it is set. It has the same bleak majesty." London Evening Standard
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