Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 09 - Under Fire

And there really was a naval reserve lieutenant, Eugene F. Clark, a Mustang like my fictional character Lieutenant David Taylor, USNR, in this book, who did in fact seize the islands in the Flying Fish Channel with the assistance of a handful of Marines, and Korean national policemen.

I learned of Lieutenant Clark's exploits from my friend Ed Ivanhoe, who is the historian cum laude of the Special Operations community, and who was himself involved in Korean War Special Operations. And some others, in other places.

The exploits of the real naval hero also came to the at-tention-from other sources-of the distinguished histo-rian Thomas Fleming. He published an article based on what he had learned. Shortly after it was published, Lieu-tenant Clark's family got in touch with Mr. Fleming and told him that on his return from Korea, Lieutenant Clark, now deceased, had written a book about the Flying Fish Channel operation but never submitted it for publication.

Would Mr. Fleming have a look at it to see if a publisher might be interested? They thought it was a good story. When he read it, so did Mr. Fleming.

Several weeks later-ay he was actually editing the seg-ment of this book that put my fictional character David Taylor on Tokchok-kundo Island-Lieutenant Clark's man-uscript landed on the desk of Putnam's publisher and editor in chief, Neil Nyren.

Putnam published Lieutenant Clark's memoirs of the Flying Fish Channel Operation, titled The Secrets of In-chon.

W. E. B. Griffin

Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

August 23,2001

The End

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