Recommendation
Author's Preface
Acknowledgements

Part 1: Beginning
Chapter 1: Saturday Night in Seoul
Chapter 2: Ito Hirobumi's Crimes
Chapter 3: To start a war
Chapter 4: General Chae Byeong-deok's Plan
Chapter 5: The Great Disaster
Chapter 6: The Cloak of the United Nations

Part 2 Battle
Chapter 7: Special Task Force Smith
Chapter 8: The Lost A Company
Chapter 9 Daejeon
Chapter 10 Retreat
Chapter 11: The Line of Defense
Chapter 12 Fire Brigade
Chapter 13: Death on the Nakdong River
Chapter 14: The Turning Point
Chapter 15: The Recapture of Seoul
Chapter 16: Revenge
Chapter 17 Sweet Victory
Chapter 18 In the Land of Dreams
Chapter 19 Gunuri
Chapter 20: Into the Valley of Death
Chapter 21: The Night of Terror
Chapter 22 Jang Jin-ho
Chapter 23: Jipyeong-ri
Chapter 24: Caesar's Grief
Chapter 25: The Proud Legion
Chapter 26: Gloucester Hill
Chapter 27: The Valley of Death
Chapter 28: The May Massacre

Part 3: Blundering
Chapter 29 Armistice Talks
Chapter 30: Bloody Ridge
Chapter 31: The Captain's Ridge
Chapter 32 Deadlock
Chapter 33 Beyond the Barbed Wire
Chapter 34 Frustration
Chapter 35 Geoje Island
Chapter 36: Twenty rolls of toilet paper and one liter of Mercurochrome
Chapter 37 Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall
Chapter 38: The Last Spring
Chapter 39: Armistice
Chapter 40: Lessons

Chronology
Major weapons used in the Korean War

Translator's Note

The Korean War was caused by lack of preparation and misjudgment about war.
It was a strange war created by the fear of escalation into World War III!
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Influencing American foreign and security policy to this day
The best book about the Korean War!
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Fehrenbach, a veteran of the Korean War and a historical writer
A compilation of vivid testimonies and extensive data from American soldiers who participated in the Korean War.
The unprecedented history of the Korean War

In this book, author Fehrenbach strongly criticizes that the United States was completely unprepared for war in terms of training, equipment, and discipline during the Korean War, that it ignored information about the possibility of North Korea invading South Korea before the war broke out, and that after the war broke out, it confidently misjudged that the Chinese military would not intervene. In addition, although it held nuclear weapons, it avoided an all-out war with the Soviet Union for fear of it escalating into World War III using nuclear weapons, and instead waged a limited war by advocating a containment policy to only block the expansion of the communist bloc's power, showing no will to fight.


Author Fehrenbach said, “A nation that is not prepared for all kinds of war should renounce war as a national policy.
A people who are not ready to fight must be mentally prepared to surrender.
“It is foolish, bordering on criminal, to force soldiers and civilians into limited, bloody ground operations without preparing them for such,” he said, adding, “From the rapid retreat at Osan to the withdrawal from the Chongchon River, to the heroic resistance at Jipyeong-ni, the Imjin River, the Soyang River, and Pork Chop Hill, these are lessons the United States and other nations must learn from Korea.”
This kind of foolish, almost criminal, act actually occurred during the Korean War, which claimed over two million lives across the bloody valleys, hills, and ridges of Korea.
The author says, “The lesson of the Korean War is that this kind of war actually happened.”

The author also said, “The Korean War was not a war that tested strength, but a war that tested will.
…the great test facing the United States was not whether it had the power to completely destroy the Soviet Union (which it did), but whether its leaders were willing to fight for a more orderly world rather than succumb to fanatic violence.”
What matters in war is the will to fight, and the U.S. government at the time had absolutely no will to fight.
During the Korean War, the U.S. government had no intention of fighting alone, nor did it intend to wage an all-out war against the Soviet Union.
That is why, under the guise of collective security, we had no choice but to wage a limited war, with one foot in the more important Europe and the other in the less important Asia, while wearing the mantle of the United Nations and allies.
The United States did not call the Korean War the "Korean Conflict," but rather the "Korean War," and entered the war with the hope that it would be resolved within a few days or months, only to face the disaster of that hope soon turning into despair.
And the price was paid entirely by soldiers who were sent to Korea without any noble cause and without any knowledge.


This book covers the history of the Korean War in detail, chronologically, from the situation in South Korea before the outbreak of the Korean War, to the background of the war, the defeat of Task Force Smith, the first US military unit to engage in combat at Osan after the outbreak of the war, the desperate defense of the Nakdong River defense line, the Incheon Landing Operation that turned the tide of the war, the moving recapture of Seoul, the UN forces' advance toward the Yalu River, the unexpected intervention of the Chinese army, the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in sub-zero cold, the US Marines' evacuation from Hungnam, the Battle of Jipyeong-ri, President Harry Truman's dismissal of UN Commander MacArthur due to disagreements, the Battle of Gloucester Hill, the issue of prisoners of war, the armistice talks that lasted for two years, the Battle of Bloody Ridge and the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge, the subsequent stalemate in the war, the Geoje Island POW camp, and the signing of the armistice agreement. It is therefore of high historical value.

Author Fehrenbach also participated in the Korean War as the commander of the 72nd Tank Battalion of the 2nd US Division, but he does not mention his participation anywhere in this book.
It seems that he tried to look at the Korean War objectively from a third-party perspective, completely excluding his own experiences and emotions.
In this book, he demonstrates remarkable insight and foresight in identifying the nature, attributes, and dilemmas of the free world and the communist world, war and humanity, politicians and soldiers, society and the military.


Above all, the book's virtue lies in its moving, and at times painful, portrayal of the soldiers who had to bear the brunt of the wrong decisions made by political leaders and military commanders.
This book delves into political and military mistakes and gives a raw look at the brave souls of soldiers who bled and died because of these mistakes.
This book contains a human drama of life and death that cannot be expressed simply by the number of casualties.