Read for the War Challenge with a Twist 2014 at War Through the Generations
This Kind of War:
A Study of Unpreparedness – T. R. Fehrenbach, 1963
This is a sweeping account of the Korean War drawn mainly
from personal narratives. Fehrenbach’s thesis is implied in the sub-title. That
is, the Korean “police action” was a limited kind of war for which American
soldiers were not politically or psychologically prepared. Politically
unprepared in that Fehrenbach asserts that during their training, instructors
never told them why the United States was fighting in Korea. Psychologically
speaking, soldiers were not given a clear sense of what fighting would entail –
e.g. much foot-slogging and steep hill climbing due to the ineffectiveness of the wheel and armor in a
harsh country with inadequate roads.
Fehrenbach ‘s view is that the war in Korea was the only
rational choice in an either / or situation of either surrender to communism or
face global upheaval. Neither side, Fehrenbach
thinks, realized that the other could not and would not tolerate an alteration
in the balance of power. So, the Communists mistakenly thought the US and the
rest of the world would tolerate its invasion of the south of Korea.
Furthermore, the US failed to halt at the 38th parallel
after the amazing victory at Inchon and chasing the remnants of the People’s
Army out of South Korea. The invasion of North Korea, however, was a provocation
which the Communist world in its turn could not tolerate. This prolonged the
war and probably cost more than two
million lives. It was also yet another lesson of the 20th century of
man’s inhumanity to man, not to mention the more typical exasperation and
frustration of the grinding stalemate, the endless truce talks, and the
acrimonious discussions over the repatriation of Chinese POWs to Taiwan or the
People’s Republic.
Fehrenbach narrates the action largely from the point of
view of the foot soldiers and local commanders.
Readers into serious military history will get much out of the detailed
and thoroughly researched accounts of major battles and small tactical
engagements. On this point, Fehrenbach is like S.L.A. Marshall. But much
smarter and willing to pull back and consider
the general background and the strategic principles, and politics involved.
Overall, he is
sympathetic to the foot-solider though he has a mixed view of men who underwent
the POW experience, ironically one of the few sides of that war much remembered
today (perhaps because of the brainwashing in the movie The Manchurian
Candidate?). Evidence that he was as troubled about this issue as we are
even today is that on one page he argues the "Old Army," like
that on Bataan, "exhausted and sick" in prison camp "would have
spat upon its captors, despising them to the end." 30 pages later, however, he writes
"Americans and Britons in Japanese prisons retreated into dream worlds,
and some informed on their buddies."
Fehrenbach predicted in the early Sixiies that the US
would fight other “brushfire” wars so the country had better prepare. Too right
he was, as we can see from the vantage point of 2014.
Interesting that this one seems like a more well-rounded view of the war compared to Marshall. I'll more likely check this one out
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