The Korean War, 1950-53 (Men-at-Arms Series, No 174)

Rating:
Summary: Useful Briefing for the Curious
Review: There has been a lot of hoopla in recent years about the "Forgotten War" referring to the Korean War. This war was the first war fought by the forces of the West against the surrogate forces of the Red East. After a year of back and forth open mechanized warfare it settled down into a heavily fortified trench war similar to the Western Front of WW I.
It is also vilified and thought of as the first war the U.S. lost and there was a lot of political mud slinging at home about the causes and conduct of the war. But cool heads prevailed and it did not turn out to be act one of WW III. Everyone involved finally signed an armistice which continues to this day and though there have been border raids and incidents, general war has been avoided. While the south has prospered as part of the western world economic system the north still hunkers down menacingly behind its borders.
When I served it was just two plus years after the armistice and the Army was full of veterans of both WW II and Korea. The experience was remembered and contributed to some of the missteps later in Vietnam.

Rating:
Summary: Useful Briefing for the Curious
Review: There has been a lot of hoopla in recent years about the "Forgotten War" referring to the Korean War. This war was the first war fought by the forces of the West against the surrogate forces of the Red East. After a year of back and forth open mechanized warfare it settled down into a heavily fortified trench war similar to the Western Front of WW I.
It is also vilified and thought of as the first war the U.S. lost and there was a lot of political mud slinging at home about the causes and conduct of the war. But cool heads prevailed and it did not turn out to be act one of WW III. Everyone involved finally signed an armistice which continues to this day and though there have been border raids and incidents, general war has been avoided. While the south has prospered as part of the western world economic system the north still hunkers down menacingly behind its borders.
When I served it was just two plus years after the armistice and the Army was full of veterans of both WW II and Korea. The experience was remembered and contributed to some of the missteps later in Vietnam.

Rating:
Summary: Good coverage of the subject
Review: This book provides exactly what a frequent reader of the Osprey Men-at-Arms series would expect to see in a book about the Korean War. Within the tight constraints of the format, the various ground combatants and the ground war are described nicely. Air and naval aspects of the war are not covered in the book.

My only complaint with the book is that the illustrator does a nice job with uniforms and equipment but is less capable with the human form and faces. It's not a major issue, but that is the sort of thing that separates 4 star ratings from 5 star ratings.