In mid-October 1950, Gen. Douglas MacArthur met with President Harry Truman at Wake Island to report on the state of what was euphemistically called a "police action" in Korea. Organized resistance by the North Korean Communists would be ended by Thanksgiving, MacArthur told the president. He thought U.S. troops would be home in time for Christmas that year.

Arrogant, hubristic and out-of-touch with the realities of what was happening on the ground in Korea, MacArthur would eventually get his spanking. But for now, he was his own supreme commander of U.S. forces in Asia. As an infamous measure of disrespect toward Truman, MacArthur let the president land first on the island for their meeting and failed to salute the commander in chief when he arrived.

Instead of coming home by Christmas, U.S. soldiers in Korea, who had been sent all the way to the Yalu River on the border of China's Manchuria by MacArthur's command, were mugged there by tens of thousands of veteran Chinese soldiers. For weeks, Mao's forces had been surreptitiously crossing the Yalu into Korea, where they gathered around the X Corps, a mix of Marine and Army units on the eastern side of the Korean peninsula. When the Chinese forces emerged from their positions, just after Thanksgiving, they were everywhere in numbers that astounded American troops. "A Christmas Far From Home: An Epic Tale of Courage and Survival During the Korean War," by Stanley Weintraub, is the story of the terrible exodus that followed.

The terrain was awful and the weather far worse. Trapped in mountainous countryside around the Chosin Reservoir, where temperatures continuously dipped below zero, the X Corps had to fight its way to safety over mountain passes and through a gantlet of relentless Chinese fighters. After weeks of brutal combat and horrible sacrifice, U.S. troops, trailed by thousands of Korean refugees, finally reached a port of evacuation at Hangnam. The disaster nearly drove U.S. and U.N. forces, which were fighting elsewhere on the peninsula, entirely out of Korea. It was only through the extraordinary efforts of the men on that frigid and bloody march that the X was salvaged at all. The war would continue for three more years, mostly without MacArthur, who was relieved of command the following spring. No one, save the wounded, was home in time for Christmas.

Weintraub, an award-winning historian, author of more than 50 books and a Korean War veteran, tells this story with the sort of growl toward incompetent command earned by a man who himself served in the trenches. Although the early parts of the book are encumbered a bit by military history exposition, the prose flows more freely as the narrative picks up speed. "A Christmas Far From Home" ultimately warrants its subtitle: It is an epic tale of courage and survival in a war that is too often forgotten by folks back home.

Tim Brady's most recent book is "A Death in San Pietro: The Story of Ernie Pyle, John Huston, and the Fight for Purple Heart Valley." He lives in St. Paul.