T. R. Fehrenbach (1925–2013)

Wow for an older history, wow a five star read. T.R. Fehrenbach’s, This Kind of War The Classic Korean War History is an outstanding history of the long under studied war A classic small unit history that doesn’t fail to address high level leaders both civilian and military.

A full war history from the origins to the final outcome and analysis. Fehrenbach touches those who fought and died in the war in numerous small unit engagements at the platoon, company, regimental and division level. He paints a picture of war entered by a nation that neither wanted or was prepared for war either emotionally nor politically with soldiers ill trained to fight a war.

I would definitely recommend this to all interested in the study the war.… (meer)

Now, I can find Korea on the map, but not much more. And here we have a book about the Korean War without any maps —or photos or graphic illustrations—whatsoever (in the Kindle version anyway), which made understanding the narrative of the battles difficult. Sometimes Fehrenbach gets lost in the “fog of war” as he writes quite a bit about foxhole-level fighting. While important, it distracted from getting the big picture of the war. Some of the author’s opinions were insightful and some left me scratching my head…again to the detriment of understanding history.… (meer)