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The battle of the Yalu River was one of the biggest defeats in US Military History. After M’s daring landings at Inchon had led to the defeat of the North Korean invasion of the South, he had ordered his armies north in an attempt to end the war with the destruction of the North Korean War. However he had ignored warnings that the Chinese might intervene, and badly underestimated how dangerous that invention might be. As the largely American UN forces moved north, towards the Chinese border, the increasingly worried Chinese Communists did indeed send an army into North Korea, beginning a counterattack that forced the UN troops to retreat all the way into South Korea, and that saw Seoul fall to the Communists for the second time during the war.
A simple look at the map shows just how inept the UN advance north was. Just to the north of Pyongyang the Korean peninsula narrows, creating an area where the UN forces could have stopped having achieved their initial aim of liberating the South and also occupied the main urban areas in the North. Instead they chose to push on north, into the area where the Korean peninsula widened out to join the Chinese mainland. As a result the advancing UN troops were spread out, with mountains between the western and eastern parts of their army. Unsurprisingly the experienced Chinese troops were able to force the UN troops into a rapid retreat, which
This book gives us more on the Chinese side of things than is often the case, although we still only get one North Korean and one Chinese biography, far few than for the UN side. This means we get a better idea of what the Chinese were trying to achieve and how than in many older books on this war. The story also continues on to the end of the period of Chinese success and the second American liberation of Seoul, so we see the full impact of the fighting further to the north.
Chapters
Chronology
Opposing Commanders
Opposing Forces
Opposing Plans
The Campaign
Aftermath
The Battlefield Today
Author: Clayton K.S. Chun
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 96
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2020