Review of Rudy Tomedi’s No Bugles No Drums :: Rudy Tomedi Bugles Drums Essays

Review of Rudy Tomedis No Bugles No Drums Rudy Tomedi presents his audience with a different view of the Korean warfare ane that is up close and psycheal. 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 Tomedis declare has is that it is very subjective, allowing the reader to only see a portion of the war through a single persons view. For manakin Fred Lawson, an interviewee, stated We has no idea what was happening over on the other side of the circumstances (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 kidstrying 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 speake r 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 expectedI could see the rounds explode against the tank, but the tank just unbroken going (Tomedi, 10-11).