Honoring Those Who Paid the Price: Forgotten Voices from the Korean War

In December 1950 Donald Hamilton, a medic with the Eighth Army's Seventh Division, became trapped with the rest of his comrades under a fierce onslaught by Chinese troops at the Chosin Reservoir. As Hamilton prepared to escape to safety, he heard a fellow soldier scream for help. Disregarding a friend's plea not to return, Hamilton went back to offer aid. He was never seen again.

Donald Hamilton is one of the 927 Hoosiers killed in the Korean War. The story of those who died, those who served, and the loved ones back home who struggled to understand the horrors of war are examined in this book. Randy K. Mills personally interviewed a number of Hoosier veterans of the war, reviewed letters from veterans to loved ones back home, perused local and national media accounts, and consulted definitive historical studies about the conflict.

Mills explores America's shock and lack of preparation for the war and the heroic defense of Pusan, the successful landing at Inchon, and the shocking introduction of half a million troops by China. Finally stopping the Chinese at the thirty-eighth parallel, American troops and their United Nations allies fought to a stalemate as negotiations dragged on to end the war, which finally ended in July 1953 with a truce.