STRANGE WAR IN NO MAN'S LAND

This is a war of stealth by night.
The battlefield is the most treacherous in the world - a strip of mountainous land separating North and South Korea, less than a hundred yeards in some places, more than a thousand in others.
It's a hell of a war. You man the forward bunkers and listening positions. You take part in a body-snatching detail where you accidentally pull apart a decomposing Chinese corpse.
The enemy are just vague shadows in the dark. You never see them, except when you stumble across each other on a night patrol and exchange bullets.
Men die and are wounded. And to prove you're not afraid you do setting-up exercises with a rifle, a defiant target outlined against the sky.
When you get a leave, you head for Seoul. You drink and make love and drink some more. But you can't wait to get back. For you're a "gung ho Corporal" and you'd "rather be here at the front than anywhere else in the world."

MARTIN RUSS was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1931, and he has lived in New York, Connecticut, Mississippi and California. He went to South Kent School in Connecticut and attended St Lawrence University in Canton, New York for two years. In 1951 he left college to enlist in the Marine Corps. He served with the famous 1st Marine Division in Korea.

©1957 by MARTIN RUSS
First Printing, January 1958

Five men -  Five soldiers - Five lovers - their moments of despair and horror and ecstacy - in a novel that dissects fearlessly the anatomy of war.

• Fritz Krieger - denounced his family to the Nazis. Now he wondered what he had fought and killed and betrayed for.
• John Warrior - yearned for a new life, or a less cruel Hell, after the war deprived him of everyone and everything that mattered.
• François Guerrier - found the meaning of life in a woman's arms until the boots of battle trampled them both.
• Ivan Voin - hungered for peace as he fought to kill - and now he could not enjoy the coveted fruits of victory.
• William Fighter - went to war to protect his farm and family, but he found he could never go home again.

THE NOVEL THAT BLASTED A WAR WIDE OPEN!

ROBIN MOORE probes the secrets of THE GREEN BERETS, America's frontline guerillas, the U.S. Special Forces. Fiercely independent and undauntingly courageous, these fantastic fighters tangle with women spies, traitors, torturers, bandits and tribesmen. Only ROBIN MOORE, who trained with the GREEN BERETS, and fought hand-to-hand alongside them, could have told their tale which is more explosive than THE UGLY AMERICAN and has "the added dash of James Michener color and James Bond excitement."

© 1965 by Robin Moore
First Avon Printing November 1965
Third Avon Printing November 1965
Cover photo by Lester Krauss.