The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat Paperback – November 3, 2009

I've read military history for decades. This book is one of the best ever done on a specific unit in one battle of the Korean war. Well researched and brilliantly written, you are taken back to the place where this happened. As each chapter unfolds, you are on the ground with those Marines in this fight. It was a true miracle any of them survived despite the intense cold, lack of supplies, wounds, and huge number of enemy soldiers fighting them. An incredible tale and so worth your time to read. A superb choice for all military history buffs. A great job of heroism and courage on an epic scale.

t was a last stand for more than one side in World War II. On one side of the equation was the last of the Imperial Japanese Navy. But what a group of lasts. It included the mightiest battleship in the world, the Yamamoto, several other battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Their mission, to catch transports loaded with supplies and troops and sink them, and then to blast the beachhead the American Marines had in the Philippines. Through brilliant tactics and deception, they lured away the American aircraft carriers and heavy warships so that when their task force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers arrived, only a few small ships stood between them and the transports and Marines.On the other side of the equation, a handful of destroyers, destroyer escorts, and escort carriers. They called these small ships “Tin Cans” since they had minimal armor, and small guns. They were ships that were never built with the idea of going up against battleships. Horribly outgunned, outnumbered, and with no prospect except death, this handful of men and machines began a fight they couldn’t win, and fought it to the death.Based upon interviews, and official records, Hornfischer paints a picture of courage under fire. Of men somehow snatching victory from defeat, and those same victors spending two hellish days in the water clinging to hope and survival in a situation where there is no hope except death.This is easily one of my favorite books, and I recall vividly the first time I read it. I had a friend at Denver Seminary who was a history buff. I told her about it, and she looks at me with wide eyes, and says, “My father was on the USS Johnston.” The Johnston was one of the destroyers at that fight, and she it was at the center of it. Her father never spoke of the battle, she said, but now that he was gone, she might learn something about what he went through.All I could do was put out my hand and say, “It’s a pleasure to shake the hand of the daughter of one of those men.”A perfectly awesome book for the history buff, filled cover to cover with humanity at it’s very best.

With the proliferation of first person, common-soldier accounts it is easy to assume this style of history is becoming a bit worn. Fortunately, this book which was first published in 2008 breathes new life into this genre. While it is full of action and memorable characters, the authors' ability to develop these characters while keeping track of the local situation and putting the conflict in its global Cold War context is outstanding. In a very crisp, flowing narrative you come to know these characters backgrounds, their individual and group struggles during some of the war's most brutal fighting, and then are treated with excellent summaries of each men's lives (very much in Paul Harvey's "and that's the rest of the story" style). The American military's breakout from encirclement by Chinese Communist Forces in the Chosin Reservoir area was a mixed bag at best with Army units disintegrating into small groups of armed men and the Marines succeeding to remain in cohesive units albeit suffering great casualties as well. I have previously read accounts of both Army and Marine Corps units in this action, but I must say this book is the best written of them all. I highly recommend The Last Stand of Fox Company to anyone interested in people's reactions to extreme situations, the Korean War, United States Marine Corps history, or just military history in general.