Get the book, if necessary from the library, and read it.

You will find it instructive.

Fair enough. Freddo’s summary is spot on.

Now, instead of printing selected extracts which make today’s Chinese military massing opposite Taiwan smile, why not delve into the very interesting issue — How did the US/UN (lots of dead Brits etc in Korea) turn this sorry situation around and end up crushing the mighty North Korean army?

The US/UN side accomplished this in the middle of an ongoing war. The US could not suddenly give the troops there 5 years of combat experience. How did this North Korean “superior enemy” with the advantage of a surprise attack end up getting beaten so completely? (The later entry of China into the war really is a separate chapter).

UK Field Marshall Slim wrote a book “Defeat into Victory” about an analogous situation for the Brits in Burma in WWII. That kind of analysis would be instructive.

Freddo is more right than not. This book does not outright condemn the politicians (from memory, it’s been about 25 years since I read it), but it is a blistering attack on the lack of preparedness of the US military at the time, and it prefigures a lot of the criticism that was justifiably leveled at US conduct of the Vietnam war only a few years later.

Amazing how quickly the institutional experience from WWII was either forgotten or ignored at the highest level of civilian and military leadership.

Thanks, Real Kurt. That is useful! A genuine review of the book would be helpful to those of us who are not familiar with it.

On the other hand, repeatedly printing selective quotes which show no deep meditation, only criticisms of the American soldiers who were put ill-prepared into an impossible situation? That sounds more like something the Chinese government is paying for.

While I don’t know where he got the impetus to post these excerpts, I am pleased.

TKOW is one of the most important books of 20th Century history, a deep meditation on the role of the military in an open society.

At the very least, consider that it’s on the required or recommended reading lists for each of the major branches of the US military.

After all, the American soldier who got his ass kicked by the mighty North Koreans turned around and beat those same powerful North Koreans all the way back to the Yalu River. Or was that later success entirely due to contributions from socialist European countries to the the UN command?

It would be possible to write a book about the debacle US forces experienced at the Kasserine Pass in North Africa in the first major use of US land forces in WWII — and completely ignore the longer-term successes. But such a book would read more like agitprop than history.

In war, the side which launches a surprise attack almost always gets the initial success of one free shot. Combat is always messy. Leaders always have failings — military leaders and especially political leaders. The grunts always pay for their leaders’ many mistakes. War is hell — we all know that. So what is Fehrenbach’s book adding to our understanding?

That North Korean troop once more a combat vet of Stalingrad and the Chinese Civil War and ready.