Short Fiction of the Korean War


COMPILED BY PHILIP K. JASON pjason@aol.com	See also Novels of the Korean War

The stories marked with an asterisk, along with excerpts from novels by James Drought and Rolando Hinojosa, can be found in the new anthology "Retrieving Bones: Stories and Poems of the Korean War" edited by W. D. Ehrhart and Philip K. Jason [paperback] [hardback]

Frank Alex, "Rats," American Vanguard 1956. Eds. J. Ernest Wright and Frederic Morton. New York: The New School for Social Research / Cambridge Publishing Company, 1956 -- pp. 233-40.

Richard Blum, "The Late Lt. Dessin," in The Late Lt. Dessin and Other Stories. Francetown, NH: Marshall Jones, 1967.

Robert Boswell, "Little Bear" in The Iowa Awards: The Best Stories from Twenty Years. Selected by Frank Conroy. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991. Originally in Boswell’s volume Dancing in the Movies (1985).

*Robert O. Bowen, "A Matter of Price," Prairie Schooner 28 (Summer 1954): 113-22. Reprinted in The Best American Short Stories 1955. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955.

*Eugene Burdick, "Cold Day, Cold Fear," Collier’s, March 24, 1951 - p. 22+. Collected in Burdick’s A Role in Manila: Fifteen Tales of War, Postwar, Peace, and Adventure. New York: New American Library, 1966.

*James Lee Burke, "We Build Churches, Inc.." Cimarron Review (October 1983): 19-26. Reprinted in The Convict. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.

George W. Campbell, "The Saboteur of the USS Rockland," Saturday Evening Post, March 8, 1952 - p. 28+. [No engagement, off-shore problems near Pusan straits.]

Whitehouse, Arch. "Assignment to Korea" in Combat in the Sky. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1961. [A prolific military writer, Whitehouse has several other collections of "air war" stories.]

William Chamberlain, Combat Stories of World War II and Korea. New York: John Day, 1962. Paperback reissue titled Hellbent for Glory. New York: Paperback Library, 1965.

_____, "The Enemy Beach," Saturday Evening Post, November 25, 1950, - p. 32+. Reprinted in Tibbets’ Courage in Korea.

_____, "The Chaplain of Company C," Saturday Evening Post, February 10, 1951, p. 20+. Reprinted in Chamberlain’s Combat Stories.

_____, "Trail by Combat," Saturday Evening Post, June 16, 1951, - p. 32+. Reprinted in Tibbets’ Courage in Korea.

_____, "The Penalty of Command," Saturday Evening Post, January 19, 1952, - p. 24+. [Story of duty post-Korea; one of Chamberlain’s many stateside military stories.]

_____, "The Vengeance of Yat Chuen," Saturday Evening Post, September 20, 1952, – p. 22+. Reprinted in Chamberlain’s Combat Stories.

_____, "Star Over Korea," Saturday Evening Post, December 6, 1952, – p. 37+. Reprinted in Chamberlain’s Combat Stories and Albert B. Tibbets’ American Heroes All. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966.

*_____, "The Trapped Battalion," Saturday Evening Post, January 3, 1953, – pp. 64-71. Reprinted in Chamberlain’s Combat Stories.

_____, "The Zone of Sudden Death," Saturday Evening Post, October 30, 1954, – p. 37+. Collected in Chamberlain’s More Combat Stories of World War II and Korea. New York: John Day, 1964. Paperback reissue titled The Zone of Sudden Death and Other Stories of Combat. New York: Scholastic Books, 1969.

_____, "Heroes Don’t Sound Off," Saturday Evening Post, September 13, 1958, - p. 30+. Reprinted in Tibbets’ Courage in Korea.

Francis Chase, Jr., "Tank Attack," Saturday Evening Post, May 3, 1952 - p. 24+.

_____, "The General Disobeyed," Saturday Evening Post, June 28, 1952 - p. 31+. [Political issues]

_____, "The General from the Pentagon," Saturday Evening Post, July 4, 1953 - p. 25+. Reprinted in Tibbets’ Courage in Korea..

Laurence Critchell, "Combat Jump," Saturday Evening Post, August 11, 1951- p. 24+.

*John Deck, "Sailors at Their Mourning: A Memory," in Greased Samba and Other Stories. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.

*Donald R. Depew, "Indigenous Girls," Harper’s Monthly, March 1953 – p. 81-84.

William H. Dickenson, "Roses," Anthology of Best Short-Short Stories: Volume 5. Ed. Robert Oberfirst. New York: Frederick Fell, 1957.

T. R. Fehrenbach, "Combat Chaplain," Saturday Evening Post, August 5, 1961 – p. 18+.

Robert Flynn, "Land of the Free" in Living with the Hyenas. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1995. [Story of racial tension in Texas backgrounded by integrated Marine unit combat experience in Korea.] [hardback]

_____, "Write Me a Love Story," Collier’s, February 19, 1954 - p. 29+ [homecoming tale]

John Godey, "The Wrong Way to Win a War," Collier’s, April 3, 1953 - p. 36+; also in Tibbets’ Courage.

Arthur Gordon, "Old Ironpuss," Saturday Evening Post, May 12, 1951 - p. 35+. [Stateside hospital recovery of Korean War wounded.]

Alec Hudson, "Korean Patrol," Saturday Evening Post, September 16, 1950 - p. 40+.

Lt. David R. Hughes, "Shank’s Bootees," Ladies Home Journal, July 1952 – pp. 38-9.

W. Douglas Lansford, "Caught between the Lines," Saturday Evening Post, January 24, 1959, pp. 28-9. Reprinted in Tibbets’ Courage in Korea.

Salvator La Puma, "The Hangman," in Teaching Angels to Fly. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. [Yokohama Harbor story of preparation for Korea.]

Alan Le May, "Missing in Action," Saturday Evening Post, December 8, 1956 – pp. 34+.

Richard Macaulay, "Sneak Attack," Saturday Evening Post, April 7, 1951 - p. 40+.

Bill Mauldin, "The Affair of the Wayward Jeep," Saturday Evening Post, June 27, 1953 - p. 34+. [Rear echelon humor.]

Jacland Marmur, "The Bloodstained Beach," Saturday Evening Post, July 12, 1952 – p. +; reprinted in F. Van Wyck Mason’s American Men at Arms. Boston: Little, Brown, 1964. Also in Tibbets’ Courage in Korea.

*Mark Power, "Graves," New Directions in Prose and Poetry 18. Edited by James Laughlin. Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions Books, 1964.

John Schultz, "Morgan," in The Tongues of Men. Chicago: Big Table Publishing, 1969.

Emile C. Schurmacher, "Sky over Pyongyang," Saga Magazine, date unknown. Rpt. in Tibbets’ Courage in Korea.

_____, "Spy Mission to Inchon," Saga Magazine, date unknown. Rpt. in Tibbets’ Courage in Korea.

Jules Siegel, "In the Land of the Morning Calm, Deja Vu," Esquire (November 1969) – pp. 142+. Reprinted in The Best American Short Stories 1970. Ed. Martha Folley and David Burnett. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970.

Sidney Herschel Small, "Brainwashed Pilot," Saturday Evening Post, March 19, 1955 – p. 31+.

*Vern Sneider, "A Long Way from Home," Argosy, 1951. Collected in Sneider’s A Long Way from Home and Other Stories. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1956.

*Henry Steiner, "Rice." Antioch Review 11.1 (September 1951) - pp. 279-89. Reprinted in

_____, "The Gook and the Cat," Prairie Schooner 26 (Fall 1952) – pp. 296-305. [Occupied prewar Korea.]

Albert B. Tibbets, ed. Courage in Korea: Stories of the Korean War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1962.

Melvin B. Voorhees, Korean Tales. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952. [A collection of fiction and nonfiction narratives.]

*Stanford Whitmore, "Lost Soldier." Accent 13.1 (Winter 1953) – pp. 48-53; reprinted in Prize Stories of 1954: The O. Henry Awards (Garden City: Doubleday, 1954).

C. S. Young, "A Roll of Coarse White Cloth," Antioch Review 18.2 (Summer 1958)- pp. 198-207. [Interaction between American serviceman and Korean laundry woman at American air base.]