One bugle, no drums: the marines at Chosin Reservoir.

• Author: Dickenson, James R.

One Bugle, No Drums: The Marines at Chosin Reservoir. The Korean War is a big hole in most Americans' knowledge of history. In obscurity, it ranks right down there with the War of 1812 and the Spanish American War.

But this "police action," whichlasted from 1950 to 1953, was a bloody business--nearly 55,000 Americans and almost a million Koreans and Chinese died on the harsh Asian peninsula. In winter, they wre struck by howling winds and temperatures that dropped to 40 degrees below zero. In summer, they were overwhelmed by heat. In the desperate fighting around the Pusan Perimeter in 1950, U.S. forces fuffered nearly as many casualties from heat exhaustion as from enemy fire.

But the Korean War was also,once the unprepared U.S. occupation forces in Japan and the hastily-raised conscript army were shaken down and hardened by combat, the occasion of some of the fines military feats in U.S. history.

Hopkins was the commandingofficer of one of the three infantry regiments of the 1st Marine Division--the division military historians contend was one of the finest fighting forces, if not the finest ever, in the long annals of warfare.

Hopkins's battalion made its surpriseattack in the middle of a sn ow storm on the Chinese 178th Regiment that held the hills over the Funchilin Pass. Although the Marines were outnumbered three to one, the Chinese regiment was nearly destroyed. That victory was crucial to the safe retreat of thousands of Marines and U.N. forces from the mountains near Chosin Reservoir.

If One Bugle, No Drums showsU.S. forces at thei rbest, it also shows some of their leaders at their worst. The tactical brilliance of General Douglas MacArthur, the U.N. forces' commander, deserted him after his daring amphibious landing at Inchon. The North Korean army was destroyed, and South Korea's territory was restored, but MacArthur convinced himself and most of his subordinate Army commanders that there was no reason to believe that the Chinese would enter the war even if the U.N. forces drove all the...