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History and Fiction Meet:
A Marine Raider's Story
Archie Smallwood got a strict assignment from his Quaker
grandparents who in 1900 endured the Siege of Peking: Try to
live through this violent twentieth century. And Archie, a dashing,
half-Chinese Marine officer, thought that would be easy. Money,
languages, and women all came easy to Archie. The world was his
oyster. His grandparents in Peking and his father in the Banana
Wars and into the first World War surely had this century all
squared away.
But getting caught in his total starkers fleeing the D.C.
hotel room of a missionary's wife seems to have started a string
of bad luck. Next thing he knows, he is under the protective
left wing of Carlson and his gung-ho Raiders. And even though
an intelligence officer, he is getting shot at on the Makin Island
Raid. Even his new-found true love, a spunky Cherokee named Heller
Highwater, tells him we're not yet smart enough to avoid war
and that there's no place to hide. So Archie becomes one of Carlson's
rifle company commanders and goes off to face the remainder of
the century and all its disputed barricades.
Archie Smallwood and the Marine Raiders is sound history,
if brightly colored by Archie and a few other fictional characters.
"An authentic historical hoot," Lieutenant General
D'Wayne Gray has called it. A comic novel with serious intent,
others have said-a subtle and touching antiwar novel by a Quaker
who spent more than thirty years in the Marine Corps.
About the Author: Verle
Ludwig commanded rifle units during World War II, the Korean
War, and in Vietnam in his more than thirty years in the Marine
Corps. He also has written two works of history for the Corps.
He lives and writes in Twentynine Palms, California.
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