Synopsis:
An account based on the experiences of a naval lieutenant who witnessed a covert Korean War mission firsthand discusses his two-week assignment to obtain vital intelligence in the wake of firefights, night raids, hand-to-hand combat, and a small naval battle. 50,000 first printing.
Review:
If Korea is America's forgotten war, Eugene Franklin Clark is certainly one of that war's least-known heroes. The Secrets of Inchon is his first-person account--written in 1953 and long forgotten in a safety deposit box--of his terrifying fortnight on a small island in North Korean-occupied Inchon harbor. Douglas MacArthur's planned invasion was as fraught with peril as it was daring. The port, with 29-foot tides, was, at their ebb, protected by a mud-flat moat 6,000 yards wide in places. Without elaborate, accurate, first-hand information--which Clark was ordered to supply--about mines, fortifications, sea floor gradients, troop distribution, and other matters large and small, the operation (Clark likens it to a "fly deliberately planning to invade a spider's web") could easily have become "an American Dunkerque." Clark's reconnaissance included hand-to-hand gunfights, rugged interrogations, night forays in small junks, constant vigilance, exhaustingly long hours, and the cooperation of anti-Communist Koreans. The Secrets of Inchon is a commendable tale of an unfathomably obscure and daring military episode. --H. O'Billovich
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