The Korean War

 

The Korean War – Max Hastings

As I’ve mentioned in countless reviews I’ve written over the years, it’s a blessing and a curse finding a wonderful book by a ‘new’ author. The temptation, for me at least, is to find as many other works by the author, and if the joy is consistent, it means yet another pile of books to add to your ‘to read’ list.

Such was the case with author Max Hastings after I read his wonderful (yet harsh) account of the Vietnam War.  A search on Amazon shows a host of other offerings, many devoted to 20^th century conflict. When one reads multiple offerings about the same subject matter, it takes an awfully impressive account of something you’ve read before to make you pursue other offerings. Such was the case with Hasting’s Vietnam account (the best I’ve read), so it wasn’t at all an internal debate to snag up his account of the Korean ‘police action’.

The good news is that is it very enjoyable reading.  Unlike the Vietnam book though, there were other accounts by other authors that were superior. Perhaps this was because the Korea book was written several years earlier when the author hadn’t found his groove?  Or it could be that the Korean War simply didn’t have as much ‘detail’ in it as other wars; especially Vietnam.  ‘Detail’ might be the wrong word, but I think readers of this review know my allusions.

This was overall a good account, but I honestly didn’t really learn anything new.  The discussion that scholars puzzle over is the fact that this conflict wasn’t nearly looked at in retrospect as nearly as horrible as Vietnam, yet there were a lot of similarities between the two. (Hastings suggest TV could have been a factor. In the early 1950s, most didn’t have television sets that gave them carnage-filled updates every evening.)  At least, unlike Vietnam, this war sort of ended in a ‘tie’.

Since the progression (for lack of a better word) of this war ended about one year after the beginning of the war (Summer of 1951), there really isn’t a lot noteworthy to comment on in the book. The author wisely goes on relevant diversions to talk about all things going on behind the scenes during the war, so even though the action stops, the narration doesn’t. Fortunately the interest doesn’t wane.  One notable mention is that since the author is British, we read a lot of anecdotes about the British military involved in the ‘police action’ which I’ve never really digested before.  True, this was the first United Nations conflict, yet most of the headlines were dominated by the U.S. forces who unofficially ‘led the charge’.

There are better accounts out there, yet if one comes across this one, it’s still a very good narrative. Maybe I’m biased because his Vietnam offering was so strong.