The nature of modern warfare is continually in flux, with advances in military technology and strategy evolving alongside shifting political motives and concerns. At times throughout the military history of the world, watershed conflicts between opposing forces have commemorated what would become the first of a kind of war that would captivate the planet for generations. In the post World War II world, a watershed conflict of this magnitude took place in Korea. The Korean War, as described in detail by T.R. Fehrenbach in his seminal account ôThis Kind of War: The Classic Korean War Historyö, was unique for many reasons. Ultimately, the Korean War would function as the macabre escort of the Cold War Era; it was the first true test of the Truman AdministrationÆs (and the United StatesÆ) ôreal, if uneulogized foreign policy ofà the containment of communismö (Fehrenbach, 1963, p. 51).
A conflict that the pages of history alone has rendered a war (for war was never officially declared in the region), the Korean War was fought by the United States of America not as a means to defend its homeland, nor as a means of uprooting by noble crusade an ôunholyö dictator bent on world domination. On the contrary, the Korean War was a battle of wills in which the two dominant and opposing ideologies of the day, the Western Capitalists and the Eastern Communists, would fight in the first ôcheckerboardö war; a war by proxy in which the goal was to protect a kind of world order, and fight with ôhard headsö if not ôexalted motivationsö (Fehrenbach, 1963, p. x).
In this, the American forces would need to muster more cold military discipline, tactical fortitude, and munitions readiness than ever before. Unfortunately for the American cause, as Fehrenbach makes abundantly clear throughout his account of the conflict, these critical endowments were in exceptionally short supply. The American forces were not ready for war in K...