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Lt. Lee H. Miller,
Forty-odd years ago, a young Korean War veteran named Lee Miller wrote a novel based on his experiences and sold it to a major publisher. Before it could see print, the political climate took a one-eighty and his contract was dropped. Miller tucked the manuscript into a closet, where it lay forgotten until his widow passed it to their son after her husband’s death. Korea’s Sleeping Ghosts follows Pete Mullins, a “reluctant dragon” who joined the Reserves to keep his job and suddenly finds himself on a ship bound for battle. With no combat experience and very little enthusiasm, he is given command of a front-line platoon where he begins a journey of self-discovery destined to change not only his view of himself but the world as well. It is inevitable that there will be comparisons of this book to M.A.S.H. Both deal with a time in history that is sorely neglected. Both combine humor and poignancy to deliver their message that war isn’t healthy for children and other living things but, at the same time, can have a profound and positive effect on those willing to ponder its lessons. The main difference, of course, is that the setting of this book is the other side of the battle line, the place where the patients Pierce and Hunnicut repaired came from. The autobiographical nature of the work is what makes it so compelling. While the style is fiction, there is an underlying sense of reality that derives from its being based on real events and real experiences. There are just as many quirky characters here as in M.A.S.H., but they never stray outside the lines of believability. Perhaps more important, the reader is always aware on some level that the bodies in this narrative had real-life counterparts, that the lost friends went home to real graves. The Korean war-that-was-not-a-war has been all but relegated to being a footnote in post-World War II annals, a situation that is now coming back to haunt us as North Korea rattles nuclear sabers. Despite its humor, Korea’s Sleeping Ghosts sharply reminds us that this is one moment in history we do not want to repeat. It is certain to appeal to veterans of the war, and should be on the reading list for everyone not old enough to have been. Korea's
Sleeping Ghosts
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