Forgotten heroes
Max Hastings on the courage and stoicism of the British soldiers who fought — with little thanks — in Korea Alot of public emotion has focused recently upon the predicament of British troops fighting in Iraq, and their casualties. Half a century ago, another British army fought far from home in another controversial cause. It suffered far more grievously, and received vastly less recognition, than its modern counterpart.
An officer of the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers who fought in Korea in 1951 has recently edited and published a collection of his fellow officers’ letters from the battlefield, together with the unit’s war diary*. For anyone tempted to suppose that the modern British soldier gets a raw deal, A Pretty Rough Do Altogether makes a sobering, indeed moving, corrective.
Consider a few facts before we address the human experience. When communist North Korea invaded the South in June 1950, Britain was flat broke, its army desperately overextended in the struggle to cling to a worldwide empire. When the decision was reluctantly made to deploy two British brigades in support of the overwhelmingly American United Nations force charged with stemming the communists, the chiefs of staff had to scrape the barrel.
Much of the British public could not see why ‘our boys’ had to fight in a faraway Asian country. The government decided that it would be politically unacceptable to send 18-year-old National Servicemen. In place of the conscripts, there was a wholesale call-up of reservists from civilian life, many of them men who had fought in the second world war, more than a few former prisoners-ofwar in Germany and even Japan.
When the Northumberlands sailed from Southampton in October 1950 with the Glosters, Ulsters and 8th Hussars of 29 Brigade, the battalion numbered 38 officers and 845 other ranks. Of these, 13 officers and 450 ORs — 51 per cent — were reservists, wrenched unhappily from a peaceful existence. Before they came home again, 42 per cent of them would be killed, wounded or taken prisoner by the Chinese.
Their chief emotion on the long passage east was exasperation, that they were being dispatched to a campaign almost ended with MacArthur’s triumphant drive to the Chinese border. A company commander, Major John Winn, wrote to his wife from Port Said on 21 October, ‘The further we go, the more one doubts why we are going to Korea. The war seems nearly over. The Chinese appear not to be going to take a hand and the Russians seem to have gone suddenly tired. However I have got 500 cartridges and a [shot]gun on the boat, so perhaps there will be good shooting.’ Within days of deploying amid the paralysing cold of a North Korean winter, for which the War Office had done nothing to equip them, the picture changed dramatically. Mao Tse-tung’s people intervened, driving the United Nations southwards in headlong retreat. On 3 December John Winn wrote, ‘There is an appalling muddle here; the presence of about 500,000 Chinese has upset the apple cart badly. The war, which was almost over, has suddenly proved only to have just begun.... The whole air is alive with rumours and alarms, and we spend much time speculating about the future.’ The battalion lost five men killed in its first action at Kaesong, and thereafter was plunged into a succession of bitter battles. British soldiers were appalled by the savagery of Koreans to each other, of which the Americans seemed heedless. A Northumberland warrant officer named Brown filed a report of an incident near the battalion’s B Echelon on 15 December, when he heard firing nearby. Walking over the hill to investigate, he found South Korean soldiers shooting deserters and their families in batches, then piling them into shallow graves, some 34 in all: ‘During the whole proceedings a magistrate was present. The onlookers, mostly American soldiers, numbered about 80.’ The Northumberlands’ CO, Lt Col. Kingsley Foster, forwarded Brown’s report to the UN, and had the bodies dug up as evidence. He wrote wearily home to his wife Audrey, ‘There are apparently another 100 or so to be disposed of and this may stop it. But I much doubt it, they will be only more careful not to let us see it. So you can see that this country is in a proper mess, nor are they the types to help themselves out of it. What the future is, no one knows. I shouldn’t be surprised if we did not clear out altogether. The Americans have lost all stomach for this fight.’ Lieutenant Michael Kearney wrote in the same vein to his wife Joan on 19 December. ‘Pray God this does not last much longer. If only those bloody politicians would stop ranting and raving at home and get us some useful things, it would be better. We even have to pay purchase tax on clothing we have to buy out here.’ The privations of British troops that winter, amid the stupefying cold, defied belief. Soldiers were obliged to pay airmail postage rates for every letter they wrote. They had to buy Naafi tea at 3/1d. per pound, double the British high-street price. One man’s mother wrote to the Daily Telegraph on 27 January 1951, describing how her son was pleading for gloves: ‘Two pairs of woollen gloves were immediately dispatched by Air Mail, postage 8 shillings. Surely it is time that the British troops fighting in Korea were properly clad and supplied. We spend money like water on groundnuts, the Festival of Britain and other grandiose schemes, yet the Army is still short of essentials for a campaign. Is it right that the families of men on active service should be expected to supply clothing for the troops, and pay very heavy charges to ensure the goods reaching them in reasonable time? J.H. Reeves, London EC4.’ When the Northumberlands fought another tough battle at Kan-dong on 3 January, which cost two officers and 14 other ranks killed, four and 41 wounded, they were wearing snowboots made for the British expedition to Russia in 1918. They depended heavily on comfort parcels sent by well-wishers at home. One arrived which was addressed simply: ‘For a lonely soldier in Korea — from E.M. Qaimins, Western Desert, 1943.’ Most officers’ letters reflect the lives of the British upper-middle class of 50 years ago, with much talk of pheasant-shooting, fox-hunting — they were a Northumbrian unit, remember — and servants both devoted and problematical. The stand of 29 Brigade on the Imjin River against an overwhelming Chinese assault between 22 and 25 April 1951 is chiefly remembered for the destruction of the ‘Glorious Glosters’, but the Northumberlands also paid heavily, losing three officers and ten men killed, seven and 73 wounded, three and 43 missing, mostly PoWs. They fought magnificently, wearing their traditional red and white St George’s Day roses, but the battle was a ghastly experience.
John Winn, later awarded a DSO for his own part, wrote from hospital on 27 April 1951 with superb insouciance, ‘My dear mummy, ... St George’s Day didn’t turn out to be that riot of fun which is customary in the regiment.... I was wounded on the night 24/25 April. I was first hit by an exploding hand grenade at about 3 a.m. and was hit twice more before morning by grenades, fortunately none of them did much damage. Two fragments in my right thigh have been removed. One small fragment in my elbow remains and makes it rather stiff but will probably wear off and a few more pieces in my face and head appear to cause no great inconvenience. With best love from John.’ Surviving officers shared a strong belief that it had been quite wrong to allow a British force as small as a brigade to operate under US command, opening the way for misunderstandings that cost many lives.
Major Charles Mitchell wrote on 10 May 1951 from a hospital in Taegu, ‘T[hank] G[od] they are now forming a Commonwealth Division so we should be better off. We always suffer from our allies the Koreans who run away and let the Chinese in behind us — the same thing happened in Jan. last when Colin Milward was killed.’ Mitchell added three weeks later, ‘The Commonwealth Div has now been formed TG and things should go better. The Div Comd is a first-class chap who can handle Americans!! Tom Brodie [29 Brigade’s commander] I often felt didn’t stand up to them enough — not really surprising as he was usually junior in rank American generals sometimes have a funny idea of what can and cannot be done.’ After its terrible experience on the Imjin, most men shared the expectation of Malcolm Cubiss that 29 Brigade would be relieved. It was not. The units fought on, with some soldiers wounded in April returned to action a few weeks later. In June, Cubiss, ‘one of our best platoon commanders’, who had already won a Military Cross, blew off his hand arming a mine.
Many soldiers fumed at their leaders’ failure to find a way to end an apparently futile war. Some reservist rankers became aggressively disgruntled. When a Northumberland major booted the backside of a soldier risking his life by standing on a skyline gazing at the Chinese positions, men’s anger erupted into insubordination, which ended in the court-martial of 11 of them.
One officer, Miles Spear, wrote to a former comrade in England to explain the circumstances: ‘The company lost three platoon commanders in April, and the platoon concerned, which had been Sam Phillips’s and firmly under Sam’s thumb, fell to a nice boy in the East Yorks who was so inexperienced it simply wasn’t true. He knew less about man management than I knew when I was in my house library at Eton.... A state of affairs therefore came about when a good type of old soldier could have asserted his influence for the good, but a bad type had fertile ground for sowing disaffection. One of the bad five is the son of a member of the Communist party — I need say no more on that score.’ Nobody thought much of the media reporting of the campaign. Lieutenant Michael Kearney wrote home in July 1951, ‘The correspondents, as normal, are rather a blasé set of individuals who all need their backsides kicked jolly hard.... Confound the war and everything to do with it.’ The last weeks of the battalion’s service in Korea dragged interminably. John Winn, recovered from his wounds, wrote with intense relief on 29 September, ‘I am due for home service.... Will you see my car is OK and that any long repairs are done before I arrive? My hunting topper needs ironing, please.’ To the very last days, there was no let-up in the bloodshed. The Northumberlands fought their final battle between 5 and 8 October, in an assault on a hilltop known as Point 217 — codenamed ‘Newcastle’. Of 60 men who went into one assault, almost 30 were wounded, including both platoon commanders and sergeants. In that entire final action, two officers and 18 ORs were killed, seven and 86 wounded.
By the time the weary battalion reached Hong Kong on 31 October, it had served overseas for 386 days, most of these in conditions of acute discomfort and peril. In all, eight officers and 85 ORs had been killed, 20 and 259 wounded, 42 made prisoners of the Chinese. The editor of this collection of letters, Tony Perrins, is too modest to make more than a glancing reference to the fact that he himself spent two years amid the horrors of a PoW camp in North Korea, after being captured on the Imjin.
In 2003 pitifully little public attention was paid in Britain to the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean war. The veterans of that experience are little heeded, compared with those who shared the famous glories of D-day and the liberation of north-west Europe. Maybe such obscurity will also be the fate of those now serving in Iraq, at vastly smaller cost, if they are commemorated half a century from now. Yet this book conveys a powerful message to some of us. We should be less selective about whom we honour. The service, suffering and sacrifice of the Northumberlands and other British units which fought for so little thanks to make South Korea the prosperous democracy of today deserve our admiration and our humility. They did things which it is uncommonly lucky somebody did, and which Thank God our generation has not been called upon to emulate.
*A Pretty Rough Do Altogether, edited by Anthony Perrins, is published by The Fusiliers Museum of Northumberland at Alnwick.
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