On Desperate Ground Quotes

“Luck in combat is fickle,” Barber once said. “But I’ve noticed through the years that those who make the best preparations enjoy the best luck.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“War is the unfolding of miscalculations. —BARBARA TUCHMAN”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“Some asserted that Acheson’s omission had so emboldened Kim that it may well have been one of the precipitating factors of the invasion.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“The men found one mine—also Russian-made—that had a particularly diabolical design. A dozen ships could pass over it without incident, but the thirteenth ship would cause it to detonate. “It took a curious sort of mind to come up with a notion like that,” wrote one Marine, wondering if the number thirteen had a “sinister connotation for Russians as it did in the States.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“quote Euripides: “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”)”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“this Navy Corpsman, lying there with his scissors in one hand and a roll of bandages in the other. He must have been hit just as he was going to treat some wounded Marine.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“The next star shell revealed a horrific panorama: The snow was smeared with blood. Twisted corpses and shorn body parts had been flung in all directions.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“Almond, proving a master of damage control, found his way to promotion.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“the man was incapable of accepting blame, or assuming responsibility, for the mistakes that had been made. Already he was beginning to cover his tracks, to write his own posterity papers. He had started to formulate a defense for himself, a counter-narrative that, in many ways, would appear to be delusional. He would argue that he had known all along that the Chinese were going to intervene en masse. He had seen it coming for many weeks.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“A hero, he’d once heard, was a person caught in the right place at the wrong t”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“Much was made of the “Oriental” need to save face, but Americans were not immune to the phenomenon.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“He proved a master at broadcasting his own legend, exaggerating his exploits as a fighter; among North Korean peasants, stories circulated about how Kim could render himself invisible during battles”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“but Rhee’s police-state tactics concerned the Truman administration enough that it refused to provide the republic with much in the way of heavy arms—thus leaving South Korea vulnerable to attack.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“The reason it looked simple,” Smith later boasted, “was that professionals were doing it.” 2 TRAITOR’S HOUSE Seoul Twenty miles to the northeast, the citizens of Seoul waited anxiously, bracing themselves for the coming Americans.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

“War, he said, quoting John Stuart Mill, was “an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things….A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free.”
― Hampton Sides, On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle