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

by T.R. Fehrenbach

DURING THE FIRST MONTHS of American intervention in Korea, reports from the front burst upon an America and world stunned beyond belief. Day after day, the forces of the admitted first power of the earth reeled backward under the blows of the army of a nation of nine million largely illiterate peasants, the product of the kind of culture advanced nations once overawed with gunboats. Then, after fleeting victory, Americans fell back once more before an army of equally illiterate, lightly armed Chinese. The people of Asia had changed, true. The day of the gunboat and a few Marines would never return. But that was not the whole story. The people of the West had changed, too. They forgot that the West had dominated not only by arms, but by superior force of will. During the summer of 1950, and later, Asians would watch. Some, friends of the West, would even smile. And none of them would ever forget.