Accordion War: Korea 1951--Life and Death in a Marine Rifle Company

by Charles Hughes

When the first wounded Marines arrived from Korea in the fall of 1950, Charles Hughes was a Navy hospital corpsman working on the wards at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. He was gripped by the stories those young men told. Too young for World War II and having missed that opportunity, Hughes now discovered in himself a strong desire to escape routine ward duties and travel to the country whose existence he had just recently learned about and find out what combat is really like. He and his friend Ollie Langston decided to volunteer for the Fleet Marine Force. Just days after they submitted their request they found themselves undergoing combat training at Camp Pendleton, the Marine base at Oceanside, California. Their desire to see what combat was like was more than satisfied in the months that followed.

Accordion Korea 1951 - Life and Death in a Marine Rifle Company is a detailed personal account of combat in the Korean War during its most violent "blitzkrieg" phase, the first third of the three-year war. While the descriptions of battles are up close and graphic, the conflict is also viewed from the perspective of the 21st century, from a keen awareness of the wars since —Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror. Interwoven into the narrative is a meditation on life, death and war —on the question of why men spend so much treasure and blood fighting one another. The setting is the Republic of Korea, a beautiful country whose citizens fought for their freedom alongside United Nations forces, a people who have, since the war, emerged from the shadows of history to become cultural and technological leaders in the modern world. But Accordion War is first of all the story of a band of brothers and the battles they fought half way round the world in the rugged mountains of the country known as "the Land of the Morning Calm".

Fifty years before all America and the world were horror-struck by images of exploding planes and falling towers, September 11 was seared into the memories of the men in How Company, Third Battalion, Seventh Regiment, First Marine Division. There is a connection between those two days exactly a half-century apart. That connection can be found not far from Ground Zero in the village of Stewart Manor on Long Island inscribed on a memorial plaque dedicated to victims of 9/11 — and in this book.

416 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 13, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See:

Charles Hughes, born 1851
Charles Hughes, born 1854

Reviews

[Robert Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

First-hand account of a war that far too many people know little about, peppered with some of the author's philosophies on war and life itself.

Robert M. Lynch, Author, THE BED I MADE: A journey of fulfilled hope, fifty years in the making.

[Philip Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't end up finishing this book. It was OK, but the chronology was pretty spastic, and the author kept on having random digressions that would go on for pages at a time-- there was no form to this book. At the same time, he had some great insights. I would have loved to have seen a bit more structure in this book instead of a format of random storytelling, but it was nice to read a first-hand account of a largely (and unfortunately) forgotten war.