Books: Black Marks THE FORGOTTEN WAR by

Troops were flabby, commanders aging and equipment faulty. In the sub-zero temperatures, automatic rifles jammed, canteens burst, blood plasma froze ! solid. The enemy attacked in overwhelming numbers, blowing horns and letting out blood-curdling whoops. Such was the situation faced by U.S. infantrymen in the early days of the Korean War. No wonder Military Historian Clay Blair, in this meticulously documented account, describes their initial performance as miserable.

But in the lore of the time, as well as in the estimated 300 books since written about the war, one group of soldiers has often been singled out as having failed more abysmally than the rest: the then segregated black units. Tales persist of black troops breaking ranks before the enemy, throwing down their weapons and fleeing, while valorous white officers tried to stem the retreat. That view, argues Blair, is inaccurate and blatantly racist. It arose, he suggests, from disgruntled and sometimes incompetent white officers, and was uncritically absorbed by Army historians. For example, Blair cites the scathing official account of the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment’s defeat at Battle Mountain in August 1950. Several white regiments, he asserts, fared equally poorly in early battles but are not denigrated in official histories. Such prejudice, Blair says, is unworthy of the government.

In its place, he offers vignettes of black heroism drawn from his own research and hundreds of interviews with veterans. One is of Lieut. Ellison C. Wynn, executive officer of a half-black company pinned down when the Chinese swarmed over the Yalu River in November 1950. When ammunition ran out, Wynn waded into battle, throwing rocks and canned C rations at the enemy. He was finally dropped by a Chinese grenade but survived to collect a Distinguished Service Cross. The maligned 24th Infantry, Blair points out, arrived from Japan 17 days after the North Korean attack, and within a week had taken the town of Yechon in what some observers regarded as the first U.S. victory of the war.

One portion of the Army history remains to be released: the long-delayed Volume II, covering the war from November 1950 through June 1951. It seems a safe bet that, thanks in part to Blair’s revisionist book, the volume will get a rigorous prepublication inspection for racial bias. Already the Army has set up a task force under General Roscoe Robinson Jr., a black and a Korean War veteran, to lay the groundwork for a separate history of the 24th Infantry.