For decades, Harry Truman's police action in Korea was called The Forgotten War. Suddenly it was remembered with Pulitzer-winning revelations of atrocities (murder) allegedly committed by American GIs at NoGun-ri, the Naktong River, and elsewhere. That was the newspaper version. Honor Clean tells a far different story. It is fiction, based on fact and the experience of Marines who fought from the Pusan Perimeter to the Chosin Reservoir and on into the savage months thereafter--which led to 2 years of trench warfare. About sixty thousand American troops were killed during the war (1950-1953), two hundred thousand were maimed, some twelve thousand were reported missing in action-and they still are.
The book focuses on daily life and death during the most crucial and brutal days of the war. The characters tell the story, as they were then, how they are now. Two of them finally confront the accusations of murder and tell the tale which the newspapers did not.
Of war, it is said: See one, you see them all.
This is what it is, and what it does to kids on the battlefield.
