Fallen Comrade
Fallen Comrade: A Story of the Korean War presents an account of three young men from Clinton, Mississippi, who served in the US Marine Corps during the Korean War. Waller King, Joe Albritton, and Homer Ainsworth were childhood friends who grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same schools, attended the same church, and eventually joined the same Marine Corps reserve unit in Jackson. Through extensive interviews with people who knew them, as well as excerpts from their letters and journals, this volume traces the life experiences of King, Albritton, and Ainsworth through their adolescence and into the war.
Despite their shared origins, the three young men met different fates. Ainsworth was in Korea just two months before he was killed. Albritton and King returned home after the war, but Albritton died tragically in an automobile accident mere weeks later. King went on to college and experienced success in business, the joys of a family, and the rewards of community service, all of which were denied his childhood friends by their early deaths. Part biography and part military history, Fallen Comrade examines what happened to three young men from Clinton, their childhood in small-town Mississippi, their service as Marines in Korea, and their legacy to their hometown.
Fallen Comrade is a great story for readers interested in the Korean War, US military organization and operations of the era, the culture of the US Marine Corps, and the personalities of President Truman and General MacArthur in that period, as well as the experience of combatants in general and Americans and Mississippians specifically.
Walter Howell is a former mayor of Clinton, Mississippi, and he was appointed city historian in 2013. He is a former professor of history at Mississippi College and author of Town and Gown: The Saga of Clinton and Mississippi College and Preachers and the People Called Methodists in Clinton, Mississippi Since 1831.
Military Units
United Nations Support in Korea
List of Maps
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Backstory
Chapter 2: American Intervention, June–August 1950
Chapter 3: Inchon and Seoul, September–October 1950
Chapter 4: Chinese Intervention, October–November 1950
Chapter 5: The Saga of the Chosin Reservoir, November–December 1950
Chapter 6: An Entirely New War, December 1950–April 1951
Chapter 7: Fallen Comrade, April–June 1951
Chapter 8: The Fight for Hill 749, June–November 1951
Chapter 9: The Armistice, December 1951–July 1953
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
