This Kind of War: The Classic Military History of the Korean War

by T.R. Fehrenbach

Boatner looked around his HQ. There were combat troops down the road, the 38th Infantry, one battalion of the 9th. But everywhere else there were MP troops, engineers, quartermasters, most of whom were unaware there was a war on. Nor were many of these service troops typical of their services—many officers relieved on the line as unfit had been sent to Koje-do as POW guards, and the replacement pipeline had funneled some of its worst into the island, considering the need there the less. Boatner loved the Army, and he loved the American soldier, though he had a firm belief that the American soldier was only as good as his officer made him. A man unconsciously profane, Boatner thought, Jesus Christ, what a mess!

The Korean War, never declared, never ended. More than two million human beings had died, forty thousand of them American soldiers and airmen, in what was a skirmish, nothing more. Nothing had been won, nothing gained—except that the far frontier had been held.

the end