Broken Soldiers

Author: Raymond B. Lech
The true stories of what really happened to American POWs in Korea
Cloth – $28.95
978-0-252-02541-9
Publication Date
Cloth: 01/01/2000
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About the Book

Traversing the no-man’s-land of political loyalty and betrayal, Broken Soldiers documents the fierce battle for the minds and hearts of American prisoners during the Korean War. In scorching detail, Raymond Lech describes the soldiers' day-to-day experiences in prisoner-of-war camps and the shocking treatment some of them received at the hands of their own countrymen after the war. North Korea brutalized thousands of American soldiers into speaking and writing in favor of communism and against the United States. Why were only a handful charged with collaboration? Why did each branch of the armed services judge parallel circumstances differently? Why were service members not realistically prepared for capture? Lech draws on sixty thousand pages of court-martial transcripts to examine the never-told stories of Korean War POWs and the miscarried justice they endured.

About the Author

Raymond B. Lech is an independent scholar and a past national director of the Navy League of the United States. He is the author of All the Drowned Sailors.

Reviews

"Lech reconstructs the POW experience in Korea and its aftermath, exposing the brutality of the captors and the inconsistency of US military justice. He supplies the most comprehensive account to date of the subject." -- Library Journal

"A well-balanced history of the war that treats the issues fairly and comprehensively..."--Journal of Contemporary History


Blurbs

"This is a unique and important book, a top-notch investigation into the POW issue in the Korean War, which had been kept under wraps. Based largely on materials Lech was able to pry out of the government using the Secrets Act, Broken Soldiers amounts to a world scoop on the subject."--David C. Smith, coeditor of American Women in a World at War: Contemporary Accounts from World War II