Hell or High Water: MacArthur's Landing at Inchon

Outstanding account of one of the most brazen feats in recent military history. Sheldon captures the entire overarching picture of the planning and lead-up to the sensational amphibious invasion of Incheon and Seoul. However, in doing so, he does not neglect the up close and personal battles as the book is heavily laden with first person accounts and testimonies from Marine grunts to platoon leaders and tank commanders all the way up to the disputes between generals.

I loved the book, and my only complaints are primarily due to the age of the edition (1968).

1. The romanization used in 1968, McCune-Reischauer, is somewhat different from the modern Revised Romanization. This leads to issues in trying to understand overall pictures of the Korean War. For example, the beach near Pyeongtaek is referred to in the book as Posung-Myon and it took me forever to locate on a map because it is spelled drastically different (something like Poseong-Myeon). Busan is spelled Pusan, Daegu is spelled Taegu, and Deoksugung is referred to as Duksoo Palace. All the differences in locations and names make it somewhat harder to follow.

2. On Page 165, Sheldon states that the only UN allied forces individual killed in the two day bombardment of the island of Wolmido was Lt (jg) David H. Swenson. He furthermore states that Swenson was killed on the U.S.S. Swenson which was named after his uncle who was a Navy hero in World War II. However, this widely reported claim was later disproven as one Swenson was actually spelled Swensen, and the Lt (jg) who was killed in action was not at all related to the World War II Swenson.

3. A handful of typographical errors which were hopefully corrected later on.

Despite a few mistakes and some confusing details, I still greatly recommend this book.