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T. R. Fehrenbach

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This Kind of War: The Classic Military History of the Korean War 50th Anniversary Edition, Kindle Edition

by T. R. Fehrenbach (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The book that former Defense Secretary James Mattis recommends as America faces the threat of conflict with North Korea.

In a recent story, Newsweek reported: “Amid increasingly deteriorating relations between the U.S. and North Korea, as President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un exchange barbs and the threat of a nuclear conflict looms, Mattis responded to a question on how best to avoid such a war.

“An audience member asked: ‘What can the U.S. military do to lessen the likelihood of conflict on the Korean Peninsula?’

“Mattis responded with a direction to read This Kind of War, stating: ‘There’s a reason I recommend T.R. Fehrenbach’s book, that we all pull it out and read it one more time.’”

This Kind of War is “perhaps the best book ever written on the Korean War” (John McCain, The Wall Street Journal), the most comprehensive single-volume history of the conflict that began in 1950 and is still affecting US foreign policy. Fifty years later, not only does this enlightening account give details of the tactics, infantrymen, and equipment, it also chronicles the story of military and political unpreparedness that led to a profligate loss of American lives in Korea.

T. R. Fehrenbach, an officer in the conflict, provides us with accounts of the combat situation that could only have been written by an eyewitness in the thick of the action. But what truly sets this book apart from other military memoirs is the piercing analysis of the global political maneuverings behind the brutal ground warfare that marked this bloody period of history, one that has been all but forgotten by many, but has become crucially important again.

“A 54-year-old history of the Korean War that’s much better known in military than civilian quarters . . . Interspersed with this high-level narrative are gritty, close-grained accounts of the grim ordeals, heroic sacrifices, and sometimes, tragic blunders of individual soldiers, from privates to generals.” —Politico

Edition

50th Anniversary
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Open Road Media
Publication date

April 1, 2014
Language

English
File size

4337 KB
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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"The author has chosen to alternate the broad view of events on the Korean and international scene with narratives of the contemporaneous experiences of individual soldiers at the front and in rear echelons," said LJ's reviewer (LJ 1/15/63). Fehrenbach's assessment is frank and often unflattering to America's abilities and the motivation of the common soldier.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"The lesson of the Korean War as it has not yet been told by anyone . . .terse, machine-gun bursts of common sense." -- Life

"Immensely readable." -- The New York Times

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00J3EU6IK
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media; 50th Anniversary edition (April 1, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 1, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4337 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 762 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #202,990 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #9 in History of Korea
- #10 in Korean War History (Kindle Store)
- #59 in Korean War History (Books)

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2,226

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T. R. Fehrenbach

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During World War II, the late Fehrenbach served with the US Infantry and Engineers as platoon sergeant with an engineer battalion. He continued his military career in the Korean War, rising from platoon leader to company commander and then to battalion staff officer of the 72nd Tank battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to his military involvement, a young T. R. Fehrenbach, born in San Benito, Texas, worked as a farmer and the owner of an insurance company. His most enduring work is Lone Star, a one-volume history of Texas. In retirement, he wrote a political column for a San Antonio newspaper. He sold numerous pieces to publications such as the Saturday Evening Post and Argosy. He is author of several books, including U.S. Marines in Action, The Battle of Anzio, and This Kind of War.

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Karl Gallagher

A fantastic portrait of men at war - In a Terrible Hash of an eBook

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2014

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I first found T. R. Fehrenbach's This Kind of War when it was discarded from my dorm's library. I recently bought a Kindle copy to save having to carry around the heavy hardcover. It's a brilliant book, covering the Korean War from the viewpoint of American troops being shoved into a war their government hadn't prepared them for. I've heard an excerpt is mandatory reading for Army Generals. It covers war's horrors in depth--incompetent leaders, cowardly troops, atrocities, friendly fire, and the deaths of many, many civilians caught between the army. It also shows how ordinary men rose to become heroes and other learned to do their jobs well.

I recommend it to everyone with an interest in war.

What I can't recommend is the eBook edition. "Open Road Media" did the conversion. They butchered the book.

It's clear the original book was scanned, OCRed, then spell-checked. Numerous words had r/f or rn/m confusions. The spell-check cleaned that up for most of the text, well enough that I could follow it. Having read the book before I could usually guess what the proper word should be. A new reader who didn't know that units in the field would lay wires to have telephone communication with each other would be very confused when the "wife" was cut. The many Korean and Chinese names were also messed up. The common name "Il" was replaced by "II" throughout. Non-English words were frequently botched, for example "Wehrmacht" becoming "Wehnnact."

Captions and pull-quotes were mixed in with the main text, sometimes inserted directly in the middle of a sentence.

Worst for understanding the material was the total omission of the book's graphics. Fehrenbach provided over two dozen maps. They were crucial to understanding the tactical situations where units were outflanked and moving relative to each other. He also included scores of photographs, including some originally distributed by Communist news agencies, vividly showing the impacts of what he described. I particularly miss the last picture in the book, one of the most poignant glimpses of war's cost I've seen, the infant Francis Colton Hammond Jr. clutching the ribbon of his father's posthumous Medal of Honor.

3 people found this helpful

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M Tucker

War On The Far Frontier / Asia

Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2018

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TR Fehrenbach has done a very good job of describing what that conflict was like for the men who fought it, what went wrong, what went right (very little), and how the US ended up as the eternal protector of S Korean sovereignty. From the beginning the author unambiguously and without apology describes the pathetic state of readiness of the US Army. It is just shocking to imagine soldiers forward deployed to Japan who could not field strip and clean their weapons! Standards in the US Army had radically degraded in the five years since the end of World War II. Thankfully the Marines did not suffer that same disgrace. But all the combatants did not know what they were being asked to fight and die for and all did not want to be there.

This was a monstrously bloody affair. The soldiers not only had to fight the N Koreans but also the Communist Chinese and the brutal weather and tortuous terrain as well. We learn that the ROK Army did an adequate job of fighting a delaying action until US dominated UN forces began to arrive within weeks of the N Korean attack. Stabilizing a defensive perimeter was not easy given the radically poor state of readiness of the US Army. However, the army still had massive firepower and used it. The US Navy and the Air Force were prepared and quickly established air dominance over the battlefield.

Really the only thing that went right was MacArthur’s Inchon landing. Quickly reversing the status of the conflict the invasion set the N Koreans on a rapid retreat and much of their force was destroyed. Pursuing the shattered remnants of the N Korean Army north of the 38th parallel triggered the movement of large formations of the PRC Army south into N Korea.

It is shocking to imagine army commanders and non-coms who would tolerate near complete lack of discipline to the point of insubordination. The author, early on, says this is due to “pampered” young men. I take exception with that description. These guys were brought up during the Great Depression and the most destructive war in modern world history. Not pampered! Just abysmally trained! The dereliction that must have gone on to graduate soldiers from basic and advanced training only to have them unable to keep their carbines functioning is really, for me, not possible. I served for three years and whatever else was wrong at the time we knew our jobs and could maintain our weapons and equipment. We understood discipline and the chain of command and we knew how to follow orders. The soldiers we sent to Korea at the beginning did not have even those basic minimum requirements and standards.

The last two years of the war slowly dragged out while the N Koreans and the United States negotiated to end the war; S Korea was not involved until a deal was reached. The author says, “…politically unable to win, strategically unable to withdraw…the [US] government, from failure to understand clearly that Communists negotiate fairly only when it is in their interest to do so, or when unbearable pressure is placed upon them…” found itself in a trap. Reading this book and Halberstam’s book, makes it extremely clear that no one learned any lessons from this conflict. Not a GD thing. All that blood and treasure. All the domestic discontent. Truman’s decision to not seek another term. No one learned anything! The idiots in our government and military did it all over again in Vietnam. And we still didn’t learn anything!

What is evident from the history is that our civilian and military leaders have never learned anything from our previous wars. It always starts with the civilian leadership and they are as uninformed as the general public when it comes to American history.

The author has written a very good history of the war that really focuses on the ground combat. It is reasonably well written but I did find fault with the author’s style. One reviewer said his writing style is “laced with bold aphorisms and narrative brio that recalls H.G. Wells, Winston Churchill.” While true, at times his prose do become rather tortured. He is from an earlier era but, even in the early 1960s, referring to the Japanese as Japs would not have passed a scholarly review. He does not make it a habit but slips into using the derogatory name at one point in the narrative and then slips out again. Despite his obvious knowledge he did seem to think Puerto Rico was a separate nation state. In the end, all of this, for me, was trivial. What Fehrenbach accomplishes is a very complete telling of the circumstances surrounding the causes of the war, how the war progressed and how it eventually ended.

I put this book in my “to read” list because I wanted a good history of this conflict and this book was considered a classic. Originally published under the title of This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness in 1963, its longevity recommended it. Then Defense Secretary Jim Mattis gave it a solid plug in 2017. So, I thought it would be the one-stop place to get a good idea of what happened in Korea in 1950. Then I ran into David Halberstam’s book and decided to make it two books on Korea.

TR Fehrenbach actually fought in the Korean War commanding men from the platoon level through to battalion reaching the rank of colonel although he does not mention his service at all in this book. I think it was his personal experience that allowed him to so eloquently describe the horror of fighting in that miserable war.

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Jacob Main

Really interesting and enjoyable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 4, 2022

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I really enjoyed the book and helped me learn about a forgotten conflict

Amazon Kunde

Leadership =Character + Knowledge + Doing

Reviewed in Germany on May 16, 2019

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The Book made me understand (1) the requirements of military training in times of peace , (2) the consequences of decisions made by prominent people without skin in the game on the life and suffering of soldiers who must bear the burden of those decisions, (3)
the strengths and weaknesses of Douglas MacArthur, probably one of the best actors in history, (4) how unprepared and helpless the EU would be in case of a conflict.

Brian Stokes

A must read for any military history buff

Reviewed in Canada on January 1, 2018

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A well written dissertation of the Korean War and lessons for all of those at the tip of the spear and those that command them

Markmnk

An excellent account of the Korean War and its impact on democratic society.

Reviewed in Australia on December 18, 2023

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I have read a number of accounts of the Korean War. This work focuses on the American experience of the war from the strategic context to the tactical fighting. It also does a wonderful job discussing the fighting quality of the men and women who fought the war and why there challenges at the start of the war. This is a must read for military professionals, particularly those responsible for training soldiers for war.

Frederico Baeta Guimaraes

Vale a pena ler pela raridade do tema

Reviewed in Brazil on December 24, 2014

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Excesso de análises políticas com premissas ancoradas em sua ( do autor ) época.
A parte factual é ótima e atraente.

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