Nothing Saved Us: Poems of the Korean War

Over the course of two years, Tamra J. Higgins interviewed her father, Wayne L. Case, Marine Corps, Private First Class, about his experiences on the front lines in the Korean War. The results of those conversations are poems found in the first half of Nothing Saved Us: Poems of the Korean War, poems that show how soldiers cope with war's absurdity and how luck plays a vital role in their survival. But the soldier's life is only part of the story of war that Higgins wanted to understand. In the second section of the book, she explores the impact of war on civilians, in particular on a Korean woman caught in the throes of the destruction around her, and the suffering, loss, and displacement that she and millions of Koreans experienced in the early 1950s while their country was under siege. Nothing Saved Us: Poems of the Korean War shows the resiliency of survivors despite war's effects, still raging in their lives after Armistice is called.