The Price Of Courage

A story of ground combat, as viewed from the level of combat command, The Price of Courage is written—as it should be—by a man who has himself led infantry forces in battle during the Korean War, where combat reduced itself daily to the awful task of getting one man at a time around one rock at a time in the face of fierce, inch-by-inch resistance.

Eric Holloway is assigned command of George Company on a cold and barren mountain when he least expects it and when, in the minds of some of his men, he least deserves it—after a day of horror, when his own blunders have cost American lives and frustrated the battalion’s advance. Under the grim pressure of necessity and in the face of bitter enemy fire, he leads his battle-weary company forward to take a mountain top. With only his courage, his instincts, and his combat training to guide him, Holloway must decide when to leave his post and risk his own life to lead a lost platoon to safety when to lay on the artillery preparation that may cost the life of one of his wounded officers, when to bully an inexperienced lieutenant into moving forward under fire—and when and if to ignore the orders of a “chicken” colonel who has had no combat experience.

The Price of Courage is an unusual book in many ways, rough and plainspoken and unprettified, without being larded with obscenity. It portrays unrelentingly the horror and waste of war while celebrating the patient self-sacrifice, nobility and workaday heroism of the plain soldier, giving a real experience of how it is to take men out on a cold and nameless mountainside to face death or disfigurement; it is mature and unsentimental and unromantic; and above all, it is a simple, fast-moving, well-plotted story that moves in a clear straight line, gripping the reader with the first sentence and nor releasing him until the final word.—Robert Smith.