Martin Russ, a Marine Who Wrote About Combat, Dies at 79

[douglas9]

Sheets of enemy gunfire and a hail of mortar shells pinned down Sgt. Martin Russ and his platoon of Marines when they ventured into the no man’s land between North and South Korea in the summer of 1953 — the last days of the Korean War.

“During the barrage,” Sergeant Russ later wrote, “I tried to draw my entire body within my helmet, like a fetus.”

For seven months, when he was back in the bunkers, he scribbled his thoughts in a small notebook. Diaries were prohibited, so when a lieutenant asked what he was writing, he said they were notes for letters home. Those notes became “The Last Parallel: A Marine’s War Journal,” which rose to No. 8 on The New York Times best-seller list in 1957.

Mr. Russ, a college dropout who went on to write other books about the chaos of combat, died Monday at his home in Oakville, Calif., his sister S. K. Dunn said. He was 79.



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/world/10russ.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print