Book Review/Invisible Hero
Invisible Hero
A novel
By ROGER K. MILLER
iUniverse Publishing
A print on demand publisher
$28.95 hardcover
$18.95 paperback
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
Roger K. Miller insists this book is fiction, but readily admits it was inspired by a real person and true events that took place in post war America in the 1940s and 50s, which he describes as a time when jobs were plentiful, cars were shiny and the magic of television was flickering in every living room. His central character is Tim Davis, growing to manhood in a small town in Pennsylvania, a life that is charmed, blessed with simplicity.
All that suddenly changes with the outbreak of the Korean war and Tim being drafted into the Army and eventually being shipped to Korea as a rifleman. He is captured by the Chinese after a fierce battle and is made a prisoner of war.
While the story basically is about the Korean war with all its horrors, especially the Prisoner of War camps run by the North Koreans and Chinese, it is also a coming of age book for the people who are now in their seventies. For those of us who were of an age to be called to serve in the Korean War, it is a telling novel of the sacrifices made by young Americans during that sometimes forgotten conflict.
Miller recounts the battle of Chosin Reservoir when the First Marine Division and elements of the 3rd and 7th Army divisions, plus a contingent of British Royal Marines were encircled by a Chinese army outnumbering them ten to one on the frozen battlefield of northeastern North Korea. In great detail Miller tells of the heroic breakout of the troops. To Miller it is a timeless story of how American youth is swept up in wars of someone else’s making.
Interestingly, Miller bases the novel on a real soldier, James E. (Jimmy) Williams, his wife’s cousin, who was a prisoner of war in Korea and died in Changsong POW camp in North Korea on Jan. 31, 1952. Even the photo on the cover of the book is of James Williams. Miller said he used the photo because I wanted to show "an appealing photo of an all-American guy." Miller also dedicates the novel to him.
Miller, a longtime newspaperman, said the novel took years of research and interviewing. When asked why he did not simply write a non-fiction work, he explains that he wanted to achieve what the novel form could do better than nonfiction. He explains: "I wanted to tell a true story not just about the war, or about one individual, but about what might be called a ‘niche’ of time in America that few know much about, when a prospering society was preparing to send young men off to a war no one then comprehended and few now remember."
This is not as strange as you may think. Most fiction is based on fact, Miller was just honest enough to admit it in an interview. "The story follows the general outline of William’s life and that of his family," Miller said. "The places in the novel using the protagonist, Tim Davis, are the same as ones that Jimmy Williams was associated with, though sometimes fictionalized. He was a POW and fellow POWs have told me they are sure he died around Dec. 8, 1951, not the date officially listed."
While Miller concedes this, he said most of the story is pure imaginative re-creation. "The love story in the book is a primary example. The period detail recorded in the book for historical re-creation is real of course, but the relationships of the characters to them is pure fabrication. The large combat movements are very close to what actually happened," he said. "Tim’s participation in them is imagined from what I have read and from my extensive interviews with Korean war vets, especially ex-POWs of that war."
Tim Davis’ regiment, the 88th, he said, is fictional, and he explains that in the front of the book. "Jimmy Williams was in the 38th Regiment," Miller said, "but I didn’t want vets of the 38th to think I was maligning their unit in case they found fault with some details."
While all this explanation may sound mechanical, the story Miller tells is an important one today because the Korean war is the forgotten war. Those who served in that war are often overshadowed by all the conflicts that followed and were the "invisible heroes" — a tag line Miller uses in the Rev. Riemenschneider’s long eulogy for Tim Davis at the very end of the novel.
(Bill Duncan is editor of The Senior Times. He also writes a weekly column on the Opinion Page of The News-Review every Thursday.)