Review of Rudy Tomedi’s No Bugles No Drums

Review of Rudy Tomedi’s No Bugles No Drums

Rudy Tomedi presents his audience with a different view of the Korean War; one that is up close and personal. The oral histories told through edited transcripts in No Bugles No Drums: An Oral History of the Korean War, show the reader the Korean War through the eyes of the men who were active in combat. However, as Tomedi puts it, “firsthand accounts have their limitations, but they also catch things that often fall through the cracks of a conventional history” (Tomedi, vi). Tomedi provides his reader with a short background of the situation, placing the interviewee into context within the war. This ultimately gives the reader a little insight into the position the person was in and clarifies some parts of the following interview.

One limitation Tomedi’s book has is that it is very subjective, allowing the reader to only see a portion of the war through a single person’s view. For example Fred Lawson, an interviewee, stated “We has no idea what was happening over on the other side of the mountain” (Tomedi, 87). Tomedi does not present his readers with a story of “what was happening over the mountain.” The book also neglects various perspectives, such as officers and women in the war. The compilation of stories strictly focuses on combat veterans, many of whom did not know what was going on; they were simply “a bunch of kids…trying to do [their] job” (Tomedi, 8).

Despite these minor flaws, the book has many positive aspects to it. Probably most important, the book gives the reader an up close and personal account to the war. Each battle comes alive for the reader as a veteran vividly describes what he experienced. For example Vincent Walsh describes his first encounter with a violent death as follows: “we had occasion to pick up a dead pilot. They fingerprinted him and then he was wrapped in a piece of canvas and he went into a meat box” (Tomedi, 155). Lines such as this, puts a personality behind the speaker and makes it more personal. Also, the stories in the book present the same situations as other oral history novels. A good example of this is when Robert Roy claims “…I could see a line of tanks coming down the road, which we never expected…I could see the rounds explode against the tank, but the tank just kept going” (Tomedi, 10-11).