Word: cordura
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Dates: during 1958-1958
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THEY CAME TO CORDURA (213 pp.) -Glendon Swarthout-Random House...
...novel's outset, the major-driven by a pitiable need to search for whatever goads some men to bravery-has got hold of one medal candidate. Thorn gets permission to escort him, and whomever else he finds worthy of the medal, back to the rear-area encampment at Cordura. Next day he watches his old regiment clatter through a last cavalry charge, and with judgment perhaps clouded by shame, picks the four most spectacular performers of the battle to receive the medal. With his five picked soldiers and a saddle-toughened woman prisoner of war, he begins the long...
...with rifle fire, and Thorn, rather than risk one of his heroes, hands over their horses. The men call it cowardice. The plot becomes as thorny as a Chihuahua cactus until, with the last shreds of his officer's prestige. Thorn flogs the men and the woman toward Cordura. By the time the wanderers, addled by the sun and gut-racked by the alkaline water, reach the hideous end of their journey, Novelist Swarthout has sketched a powerful case against the military. Some of the characters, including the woman prisoner and a fugitive criminal, have a prefabricated, Hollywood patness...