audiobook Eight Lives: A Study of the Hindu-Muslim Encounter by Rajmohan Gandhi in History

Description

The first year of the Korean Conflict was a dark and humiliating period for many of the troops who fought there. Against a backdrop of U.S. political indecision and reduced military capability; American soldiers fought a dedicated and numerically strong enemy force that was determined to overrun South Korea. One of these units; the segregated 24th Infantry Regiment; was made up of black soldiers commanded for the most part by white officers. Lyle Rishell; an infantry platoon leader; led a black platoon of Able Company in that regiment. This book tells the dramatic; often frustrating; sometimes heroic story of that platoon in that first; fateful year of war.From detailed notes he made at the time; and from his memories of those days; Rishell reconstructs the deployment and tactics of his unit; its day-to-day actions and survival. The story that unfolds is one of honor; fear; fighting spirit; fierce combat; and the cries of wounded men. The 24th Infantry Regiment has received bad press from many historians of the Korean War; who claim that the black soldiers and noncommissioned officers were undisciplined and even cowardly in battle. Rishell's moving account; based on his own experiences; describes his men as no better or worse than any other infantrymen in the first year in Korea. His troops fought well from July; 1950; to May; 1951; in nearly constant frontline action against the North Koreans and the Chinese Communists; despite a variety of significant fundamental obstacles; including the racial prejudice of much of their own army.It is a unique and compelling story of the relationship of a white officer and black soldiers before integration of the services and the civil rights legislation of the sixties. It is also an important corrective to a poorly understood aspect of one of America's most dismal conflicts.