I like oral histories, such as Studs Terkel’s Working and The Good War.

So when I picked up Rudy Tomedi’s No Bugles, No Drums: An Oral History of the Korean War at the AAUW’s used book sale, well, I was hooked.

Tomedi, a journalist and Vietnam war vet, came along too late to know the Korean war first hand. But by good fortune, he met three vets of that war – aging men, Tomedi calls them in his notes – who told him of their experiences in Korea, in our country’s forgotten war, in a war they went to nonetheless because their believed it was their duty to do so.

Said Tomedi, that wasn’t his experience in Vietnam. No one in his unit wanted to be there. So he tracked down other Korean war vets, more than a hundred of them, and their stories became this book.

I have an idea for a James Early book. Early, a World War II vet and a Kansas sheriff, goes to Korea to rescue a friend and one-time deputy who was ordered to war and turns up MIA – missing in action.

Something in Tomedi’s book may be helpful.

Tomorrow: The third book in my bargain bag