WAR IN KOREA: Purgatory

The dillydallying in the truce tents continued, like drops of water in the old Chinese torture. It was eight months since the U.N. and Communist negotiators had sat down to turn the war that is not a war into a peace that is not a peace.

On the U.N. side of the battle line, 450,000 men—much of the cream of U.S. military manpower—burrowed dismally into the Korean snow and mud, to wait for they knew not what. On the other side, 900,000 of the enemy did the same. Occasionally, on either side, a man died—a...