Millett, Allan R.

Mills, Randy K.

Mills, Roxanne

English

U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons

Naval War College ReviewVolume 56Number 4 Autumn Article 252003Unexpected Journey: A Marine Corps ReserveCompany in the Korean WarAllan R. MillettRandy K. MillsRoxanne MillsFollow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-reviewThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted forinclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contactrepository.inquiries@usnwc.edu.Recommended CitationMillett, Allan R.; Mills, Randy K.; and Mills, Roxanne (2003) "Unexpected Journey: A Marine Corps Reserve Company in the KoreanWar," Naval War College Review: Vol. 56 : No. 4 , Article 25.Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol56/iss4/25Mills, Randy K., and Roxanne Mills. UnexpectedJourney: A Marine Corps Reserve Company in theKorean War. Annapolis, Md.: Naval InstitutePress, 2000. 271pp. $32.95For authors unschooled in MarineCorps history and newly self-taught inthe history of the Korean War, Randyand Roxanne Mills do an acceptable jobin following the Reserve Marines ofCompany C, 16th Infantry Battalion, toKorea and back, from 1950 to 1951. Thestrength of their homage to their neighbor-veterans of southwestern Indiana is theirsympathetic, sensitive reconstruction ofpersonal combat experiences in Koreaand the general trauma of sudden war-time service. Its weakness is their han-dling of contextual and organizationalissues. The authors sometimes seem asmystified as their veterans did when theywent off to war in 1950.When Company C formed in 1947, itsofficers and noncommissioned officerswere World War II veterans withouttroops. They recruited obvious candi-dates such as Boy Scouts, high schoolathletes, younger brothers of Marines,and adventurous farm boys. The Millsescapture the bucolic, Currier and Ivescharacter of 1950 Indiana (I was thereas a teenager visiting my grandparents);the recruits might well have been theIndiana volunteers of 1861. The authorsdo not press the point, but the rein-statement of the draft in 1948 proved amighty weapon for recruiters—join theU.S. Marine Corps and escape theArmy. It was an empty threat, however,although the recruits didn’t know it;virtually no one was drafted into theshrinking Army between 1948 and1950. It appears that the excitement offield training, company athletics, and alittle spending money sufficed as a lure,and the requirements were minimal:drill usually on Monday nights and twoweeks annual training duty (“summercamp”). There was no initial active dutytraining requirement, no boot camp.Company C, not aggressively officered,coasted through its limited trainingfrom 1948 through 1950.No doubt there was tension betweenregular Army and reservists at the trooplevel, as the Millses note, but the Ma-rine Corps wanted fresh reservists withno prior experience for its twenty-oneinfantry battalions, nineteen othercombat and combat support battalions,and a mix of independent companies.The1950 drill-pay reservists numberedalmost forty thousand units, a smallpercentage of the nearly 129,000 Ma-rine reservists, but the best source ofunbloodied infantry replacements for ashort-handed active duty force. Theauthors are vague on mobilizationdemographics, providing a roster ofeight officers and 202 enlisted men atthe station of initial assignment, CampPendleton but no statistics on delaysand physical disqualifications.The Millses are unclear about howCompany C fared in its readiness triageat Camp Pendleton as the company dis-integrated in three days into a pool ofreplacements. Reservists and half thedrill-pay reserves were judged combatready by virtue of prior active duty(more than ninety days) or two years ofMarine training that included at leastone summer camp and no less thanthirty-six drills (with two camps). An-other 30 percent were judged combatready after two to four weeks of inten-sive field training and weapons instruc-tion. Twenty percent went to bootcamp and became “real” Marines theB O O K R E V I E W S 1 7 91Millett et al.: Unexpected Journey: A Marine Corps Reserve Company in the KoreanPublished by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2003old-fashioned way. The problem withthe deployable 65 percent was theirrank (too much) and lack of thoroughweapons training. Other problems werelittle more than irritations born by allMarines, which was interpreted as prej-udice by the reservists.After the readiness triage, the book be-comes a mishmash of personal KoreanWar experiences—especially combat inthe frozen crucible of the Chosin Reser-voir campaign—and operational his-tory. The authors recount the personalexperiences well but bungle the generalhistory in several details (none fatal)—for example, Major Courtney Whitneywas not FECOM G-2.Their Indiana Marines have tales to tell,but the stories will not move non-deployable readers. They are neverthe-less the true ordeals of real people.There is good coverage of the veteransof Company C that includes forty-threeinterviews, several with wives. However,apart from the interviews, the Millsesuse predictable secondary sources,sometimes without much real under-standing. (This reviewer served twenty-seven years in the U.S. Marine CorpsReserve, nine as a commander and staffofficer in two infantry battalions, com-manding 3d Battalion, 25th Marines,from 1980 to 1981.)On balance, Unexpected Journey givesthe 1950 Marine Corps reserve mobili-zation a human face and an emotionaldimension. As a tribute to Company C,this book succeeds and deserves inclu-sion in the personal literature on theKorean War.ALLAN R. MILLETTThe Ohio State UniversityBeach, Edward L., Sr., with Edward L. Beach, Jr.From Annapolis to Scapa Flow: The Autobiographyof Edward L. Beach, Sr. Annapolis, Md.: NavalInstitute Press, 2003. 344pp. $34.95This charming and insightful memoiris among the most vivid and enjoyableportraits of the late nineteenth andearly twentieth–century Navy ever writ-ten. Originally drafted in the 1930s fol-lowing Captain Beach’s retirement, it isthe story of the fascinating career of anofficer who began at sea by learning tohandle sail as a midshipman in 1888and ended by commanding a seventeen-thousand-ton steel battleship at ScapaFlow during the Great War. Full ofequal parts delightful sea stories, har-rowing maritime adventures, andthoughtful diplomatic insights, this isindeed a sailor’s story. The volume wasedited with loving care by the author’sson, the late Captain Edward L. Beach,Jr., who was known for his famouswork Run Silent, Run Deep (Naval Insti-tute Press, Classics of Naval Literatureseries) and a dozen other histories andnovels. Beach the younger inserts manywry and sometimes poignant asides thathelp to set in context his father’s story.And what a story! Beginning in the late1880s, Beach senior served alongsideCivil War veterans as he learned histrade in wooden sailing ships. He sawfirsthand the naval renaissance of thelate nineteenth century, powered by theintellectual energy of Alfred ThayerMahan and Stephen B. Luce, and the po-litical dynamics of Theodore Roosevelt.Beach began his commissioned ser-vice as an engineer and served as suchuntil the merger of the engineeringand line communities (amidst much1 8 0 N A V A L W A R C O L L E G E R E V I E W2Naval War College Review, Vol. 56 [2003], No. 4, Art. 25https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol56/iss4/25

Unexpected Journey: A Marine Corps Reserve Company in the Korean War

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Unexpected Journey: A Marine Corps Reserve Company in the Korean War

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