This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness

[Tinker to Evers to Chance]

Since today is the 60th Anniversary of Kim-Il Sung kicking off his three-year adventure, I figure it's as good a time as any to plug Fehrenbach's classic.

I'm really impressed by how comprehensive this book is.  You get a look at the strategic-level decision-making at President Truman's and General MacArthur's level, to the platoon leader freezing his ass off in the Chosin Reservoir, and everything in between.

SKO pointed out in the war movie thread the Korean War histories tend to be colored by the Vietnam experience.  Thanks to excellent timing, this work avoids that.  This book was written in 1963, with Korea far enough in the rear-view mirror for an analysis of the "big picture", but just before everything went apeshit in Southeast Asia.

As the subtitle indicates, the the book spends a lot of time discussing how fucked the Army was at the beginning of the Korean War, as well as the difficulty of a free society waging this kind of war.  A free society can handle a "total war", one that mobilizes the entire populace in a grand campaign to eradicate some evil force or another, but has difficulty dealing with "frontier wars" that are necessarily fought by legions.  Indeed, they chafe at the mere existence of legions.

Americans, even when they are proud of them, do not like their legions. They do not like to serve in them, nor even allow them to be what they must.

For legions have no ideological or spiritual home in the liberal society. The liberal society has no use or need for legions - as its prophets have long proclaimed.

Except in this world there are tigers.

The depictions of the war itself don't have much bearing in Iraq and Afghanistan (no COIN environment in Korea), but the overarching narrative (an unprepared Army adapts to the conditions of the war, all while dealing with backstabbing queerhomos at home) is surprisingly relevant.  It helps warmongers like me understand why pansies like RV and Oleg insist on being so wrong about everything all the time.

Four stars.  Check it out, or SKO's grandfather will come to your house and beat the shit out of you.

[Sterling Archer]

Four stars.  Check it out, or SKO's grandfather will come to your house and beat the shit out of you.

Sold.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

Four stars.  Check it out, or SKO's grandfather will come to your house and beat the shit out of you.

Sold.

Do you already have a "safe word" in mind?

[Sterling Archer]

Four stars.  Check it out, or SKO's grandfather will come to your house and beat the shit out of you.

Sold.

Do you already have a "safe word" in mind?

"Obama"

[Yeti]

My late grandfather served in the war. He never really opened up to people about it. I've only heard two things about it. Once when they had a flat late one winter evening, him and my mom went out to change the tire. He only said "There were many nights there that were this cold." Once he told me that he was told to go up to the front line and pick up woundeds and KIAs. His best friend had gone up there the day before. He was among the KIAs that he had to pick up. When he said it, I could see the pain on his face. Long story short, I have never read this, and now being educated to its existence, I must read it.

[SKO]

Four stars.  Check it out, or SKO's grandfather will come to your house and beat the shit out of you.
[/quote]

I wish he could, TEC. He passed away 6 years ago. I've been thinking about him a lot this weekend since you mentioned the anniversary of the war on Friday. Grandpa was a railroad worker from Iowa. He'd only joined the army because the railroad wouldn't hire anybody till they'd done their service because it seemed a waste of time to train a guy and then lose him to the army for three years. He joined in 1947. He was supposed to get out at the end of June, 1950. He spent three years guarding the Da Ichi building in Tokyo and was almost home when he got extended to go fight. He was there for all of the first year, from staring down certain defeat at the Pusan Perimeter to the banks of the Yalu. When the Chinese came in his unit got hit something fierce. At the Battle of Kunu-Ri the whole 2nd Infantry division (maybe numbering close to 20,000 at best) got hit by 100,000 screamin' Chinese and the lucky ones were the ones that managed to escape at all. One of the worst disasters in recent US military history.

He was a good man. I've mentioned before that he's the person who taught me to love the gutless fucking assholes and that's the only reason I've stuck with them this long. He didn't open up much about the war until I started asking questions when I was a kid. I don't know why. Maybe I was really the first person who was willing to ask. I remember about a year or so before his death he was going under anesthesia for a back operation and he started crying in the waiting room and asking why it was that he got to live and so many of them didn't (I found out later, through a Korean War online casualty site, that he was one of 12 out of a company of 120 that made it home unharmed). I don't know what a 13 year old kid was supposed to say to that. Really, I don't know what I was supposed to say the year before that when he told me about having to stab the Chinese soldier who fell into his foxhole in the dead of night, or about the time that they had to throw a grenade at a group of South Korean soldiers who couldn't understand them and were about to get the whole damn divsion in a heap of trouble by accidentally wandering into NORK lines in the middle of the night and alerting them to their presence. Maybe he hoped his grandson would give him the forgiveness he couldn't give himself. I hope he knows that I did.

I've also been doing some reading. I took out The Battle for Korea, by Robert Dvorchak this weekend. It's not a great book and it's rather dry, but the copy I have was Grandpa's and he's circled every battle he was at and traced his trip all the way through it's pages. For that, it's always worth looking at in my mind.

They call it the forgotten war for a reason. I don't really think most people know what really happened over there. I know I've been through US history classes in high school and college and it's barely a footnote, if that, that gets lost between WWII and Vietnam. We spend more time talking about the fucking Rosenbergs than we do Korea. That's why I'd like to see Hollywood do their bit and bring it back into the spotlight for a bit. It bothers me that this event that shaped so much of who my Grandfather was for the last 55 years of his life can be so easily overlooked. Almost 40,000 American boys died over there. That's not something that should ever, ever, be pushed out of the nation's consciousness.

I've just realized how long I've been typing this. I've probably shared more than anyone wanted to know or that I'm actually probably comfortable sharing, but whatever. I realize you never met my Grandfather. Hell, none of you have ever met me. And you may not know much about Korea. I suggest you fix that. I really hope you'll do me a favor and never forget either of them.

[flannj]

I've just realized how long I've been typing this. I've probably shared more than anyone wanted to know or that I'm actually probably comfortable sharing, but whatever. I realize you never met my Grandfather. Hell, none of you have ever met me. And you may not know much about Korea. I suggest you fix that. I really hope you'll do me a favor and never forget either of them.

I'm glad you wrote about this.
It's an interesting subject made all the more so by your personal experiences.
I'll make it a point to pick up the book.