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You could get captured, and slowly starved, and worked to death
You could get captured, and tortured, until you take your last breath
Or, you could get overrun and doomed, and were scared to death."
Burning tanks, trenches of bleached white skeletons, dark nights that terrify men and cause insanity, endless rains, a landscape littered with wounded, and rats eating the dead—these are just some of the vivid images that permeate Rasmussen’s narrative. Here, he recounts his service in the Korean War as a member of Fox Company. Among his comrades-in-arms, Rasmussen witnesses the hellish, gruesome horrors of combat, where the “thief death” hides around every unseen hill and callous bloodshed impacts everyone.
Written in candid and military lingo, Rasmussen touches on the convoluted machinations of war, the brutality of men fighting men, and the deep traumas that linger afterward. In the epilogue, Rasmussen informs us, “we are still at war in Korea” more than sixty years since the war’s end. This is a sobering thought and one that puts into perspective the profound complexities of world relations amid the actions of leaders and dictators.
The stylistic choice to write this as a long poem is an interesting one. It takes a bit to get into the narrative’s rhythm, but once you do, there’s a genuine flow that works. Even at the book’s start, Rasmussen declares that “Poetry Should Be Read a Bit Slower, And In A Kind Of Rhythm.” Some lines make you pause at the visceral image painted from Rasmussen’s memory. These include lines like “Bloody knuckles, broken bones, the devil gave the cues,” or a sky where “planes, drop jellied gas on fire,” alluding to “nasty napalm.” And then there’s the breathtaking morning when Rasmussen “woke up in heaven, the clouds down below” and “the puff, was all aglow.” There is much to respect in this brutally honest and arresting chronicle. It is a salient work that will stay with you long after you finish.