The Imjin and Kapyong Battles, Korea, 1951 [Hardcover]

The sacrifice of the Glorious Glosters in defense of the Imjin River line and the hilltop fights of Australian and Canadian battalions in the Kapyong Valley have achieved greater renown in those nations than any other military action since World War II. This book is the first to compare in depth what happened and why. Using official and unofficial source material ranging from personal interviews to war diaries, this study seeks to disentangle the mythology surrounding both battles and explain why events unfolded as they did. Based on thorough familiarity with all available sources, many not previously utilized, it sheds new light on fighting the forgotten war.

In Korea, on the night of 22nd April 1951, communist forces unleashed what remains, to this day, their greatest offensive since Zhukovs storm on Berlin. In the desperate fighting that followed, the key flanks of free world forces were held by one British and one Commonwealth brigade. The former took on a Chinese army; the latter, a Chinese division. Six decades later, an American historian has dismantled the barriers between Australian, British, Canadian, and New Zealand accounts of those whirlwind days to compose the only comparative analysis of the tragedy on the Imjin and the stand at Kapyong. While not neglecting grand strategy, S. P. MacKenzie is at his best at ground zero: his pages capture, for veterans and their descendants, vivid glimpses of the close-range, midnight combat against China's 'human wave' in full flood. I write with admiration for MacKenzies research and in agreement with his conclusions.MacKenzie has crafted an excellent history of Imjin and Kapyong that future scholars working in memory studies, Korean War-era military history, and coalition warfare can draw on for important insights.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Abbreviations
Prologue
1. Imjin: The First Day
2. Imjin: The Second Day
3. Imjin: The Third Day
4. Imjin: The Final Daló¬