Should You Study the Korean War?
A question for junior officers
Lieutenants have much to learn. In addition to dealing with daily duties that are, or, at the very least, ought to be, extraordinarily challenging, you must also devote a great deal of attention to the institutions in which they serve and the gargantuan task, faced by all persons of tender years, of making sense of life, the universe, and everything. In your spare time, moreover, you should be laying a solid foundation for the serious study of your profession, and that means that you need to learn a great deal of military history.
In his classic essay on The Use and Abuse of Military History, one-time lieutenant Michael Howard encourages you to study the annals of wars, campaigns, and battles past in width, depth, and context. Width and context come from the nets that you cast widely over many different eras and events. Depth results from the intensive, ideally to the point of obsession, study of a single conflict.
In giving this advice, Sir Michael declines to tell you which war you ought to study ad profundam. Rather, he leaves that up to you. After all, if you are going to spend a great deal of the time you set aside for serious reading, serious listening, and serious wargaming on a particular struggle, you ought to have some say in the matter.
So, with those things in mind, I would like to suggest that you consider adopting the Korean War of the middle years of the last century as the object of your enduring enthusiasm. For one thing, the Korean War covers but three years and the territory of single, somewhat compact, country. For another, the consists of a wide variety of campaigns, from a railroad-riding Blitzkrieg and an improvised holding action to position warfare and the full range of amphibious operations.
The literature on the Korean War, moreover, strikes me as particularly well-suited to the needs of a junior officer. When compared to works on the other wars, the books written by the likes of S.L.A. Marshall, T.R. Fehrenbach, and Roy Appleman display admirable clarity of expression, freedom from jargon, and, best of all, honesty. When, moreover, you wish to make a deep dive into a particular battle or engagement, you will be able to obtain, for little in the way of time or trouble, and no treasure at all, lots of journal articles and student papers on the subject, as well as a variety of primary sources.
The fact that contingents from a large number of countries fought in the Korean War offers many opportunities to compare techniques, training, equipment, organization, and philosophies of leadership. Better yet, the fact that most national contingents (save those of the US and the Republic of Korea) were relatively small means that accounts of many battles benefit from a high ratio of historians to events. In other words, where the authors of the official histories of the world wars chronicled the deeds of armies, army corps, and divisions, those of the Korean War have been able to devote their attention to brigades and battalions.
The dragon’s hoard of resources available to the student of the Korean War also includes a number of feature films (Retreat Hell and Pork Chop Hill come to mind), a series of newsreels made within a few days of the events they depict, several war games, and a splendid podcast.
Unfortunately, none of the above-mentioned items offer much information about the Communist forces, whether North Korean, Chinese, or Soviet, that fought in the Korean War. For this, you will have to rely upon such books as Communist Logistics in the Korean War (which covers more than the title suggests) and Enter the Dragon (which has nothing to do with Bruce Lee).
TR Fehrenbach’s book is one of the best books on the Korean War. If you go to Korea you will see the terrain & understand that no matter your MOS you were going to be an 11B. I was stationed there 87-88. Also there war museum is excellent & great memorial to those that died fighting for the ROK. My uncle Tony was an assigned to the Columbian Brigade as a translator which I didn’t find out about until he passed. Do you know of any good articles or books on this units activities in the war?
I think it’s of the most importance to study, especially with our rival China and lesser so North Korea. In particular for China, it’s 1 of 2 major wars that the communist party partook in, and it forms a massive amount of their military cultural Mythos.