This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History by T.R. Fehrenbach
Paperback, 483 pages. Published 1998 by Brassey’s. ISBN 1-57488-161-2
T.R. Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War may be the most oft-quoted history of the Korean conflict, specifically this lyrical passage:
Americans in 1950 rediscovered something that since Hiroshima they had forgotten: you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life–but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud (pg. 290).
Fehrenbach barely mentions Clausewitz, and yet the Prussian suffuses the book from the title to the final page. His title reflects Clausewitz’s dictum that anyone starting a war must understand both what he intends to achieve and how he intends to achieve it. Fehrenbach’s premise is that in Korea the United States understood neither. We did not understand our enemy or the terrain. Military leaders did not understand the political limitations that would restrict their tactics and scope. In Fehrenbach’s assessment there are two kinds of wars–crusades or jihads, which engage the entire nation and are fought without limitation; and limited frontier wars, fought with professional soldiers on the far edges of empires to hold back the barbarians. In Korea the United States tried to fight a frontier war with citizen soldiers, and the results were not good.
To the 21st century reader, Fehrenbach’s 1963 Cold War language comes across as archaic and simplistic, emphasized by the sonorous prose that would fit nicely in a newsreel or Victory at Sea, but his politics are more complicated that they seem at first. While clearly no fan of liberal social engineering or the Truman administration’s domestic policies, he maintains throughout that Korea did not merit full-scale war. In the age of nuclear weapons, it would have been foolish to risk the existence of civilization over a tiny, peripheral nation. Fehrenbach’s strategic sympathies lie not with MacArthur but with Truman. He also makes a fairly spirited defense of racial integration in the armed forces, albeit with language that jars the modern reader. He argues that all-black units often performed poorly because segregation stigmatized them and stripped them of pride. Once units were integrated, black soldiers performed on a par with all others.
As a combat leader who experienced the war firsthand, Fehrenbach’s primary point addresses the makeup of the army and the nature of soldiers. Prior to World War II, the U.S. Army consisted largely of societal rejects led by a small, insular cadre of professional officers. Some of the rejects took to authority and made good non-commissioned officers who could maintain iron discipline within the ranks of semi-literate, brawling, whoring, enlisted men. In From Here to Eternity one private tells another that he should not be a line infantryman because he graduated from high school. In Fehrenbach’s view, World War II broke the Army in two ways. First, the expansion to over 9 million soldiers broke the old social order, elevating privates to NCO and officer ranks without inculcating the values and norms of the old army. Second, the draft filled the army with “citizens,” by which Fehrenbach means the children of the middle and working class rather than the rejects who filled the pre-war army. The disciplinary methods that were tolerated for the tiny constabulary of 1930 were unacceptable to the mothers of middle America when applied to their own sons. During the war, the harsh discipline of combat masked the inadequacy of legalistic methods. After the war, the confrontation with the Soviets and later the Chinese necessitated a much larger army than the U.S. had ever maintained in peacetime, and therefore conscription. But peacetime conscription meant filling the Army with “citizens” without the discipline imposed by combat. Junior officers no longer had the authority to punish malcontents and shirkers. Soldiers enjoyed levels of due process never imagined by the lifers of the pre-war army. The result was a force unprepared for the harsh realities of combat against a ruthless enemy in pitiless terrain. Returning to his central theme, the United States had built an army for a crusade in Europe but then tried to use that army to guard the frontier on the far rim of Asia.
Fehrenbach’s book is a polemic rather than a comprehensive operational history. This edition includes no maps that would help the reader understand the geometry of the battlefield. His account moves chronologically and captures the general trends of the war, but it is by no means comprehensive. He tells various parts of the story by returning again and again to a few representative individuals–the company commander, the POW, etc. His sonorous prose and free editorializing move the narrative along at a novelistic clip, and he manages to convey the experiences of both front-line soldiers and generals with equal facility. He also pays more attention to Korean units and soldiers than many other historians, crediting them with fierce courage and even some fine leadership within the limitations of poor equipment and training and almost no trust from American leaders. This Kind of War is not sufficient for fully understanding the Korean conflict, but it is necessary.
James W. Vizzard 