Charles Whiting - Battleground Korea

Battleground Korea

The British in Korea

Charles Whiting

Copyright Charles Whiting 1999

The right of Charles Whiting to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

First published in the United Kingdom in 1999 by Sutton Publishing.

This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

Table of Contents

Introduction

South Koreans call their country the Land of the Morning Calm. But in the autumn of 1950, when the first 2,000 British soldiers arrived in that country there was little of the morning calm about it. Instead they encountered sorrow, snow and sudden, violent death. The fleeing GIs they met after they landed at the South Korean port of Pusan told them, You can have it, buddy... give it back to the Gooks . But they didnt. They stayed and fought, just like the vast majority of American soldiers who bore the brunt of the fighting in the three years of bitter conflict that followed.

The British squaddies who fought in those battles on the other side of the world realized from the start that it would become a forgotten war. Most of their compatriots knew little, and cared less, about this remote country. Despite the enormous casualties incurred by soldiers and civilians on both sides some 1,200,000 in all this UN Police Action was destined to become a mere footnote in the history of the cold war.

Britain sent 40,000 men to that war, of whom 687 were killed, 2,498 wounded and 1,102 taken prisoner. Yet when the Korean War ended in July 1953 there was no nationwide rejoicing, no mass hysteria in Trafalgar Square with people getting drunk and falling into the fountain. The youthful veterans came home unheralded and unsung, seemingly forgotten by the nation and the British government. They even had to pay for their own war memorial. Nevertheless, although they were unaware of it at the time, those young men helped considerably to shape and perhaps even save the world for the rest of the twentieth century.

Korea saw the only armed conflict in the whole of the decades-long Cold War, and the soldiers efforts on the bloody battlefields of Korea helped their political masters in Whitehall to prevent a nuclear holocaust. Britain led the reaction against Washingtons proposed use of the atom bomb in 1950, which would surely have resulted in Soviet Russias retaliation. Poor, broken-down and hopelessly in debt owing to the new Welfare State, London had no real political clout, not even on moral grounds. After all, capitalist, imperialist America had financed that very from the cradle-to-the-grave safety net!

However, Britain was still able to take her place on the world stage, thanks in many ways to those same squaddies loyally supporting the Americans in Korea. The British had been the first to rally to the American cause and send troops, an example soon followed by the rest of the free world. Indeed, the Royal Navy fired the very first salvoes of the UN Police Action at fast torpedo boats of the North Korean Navy. And it was British troops who helped to halt the Chinese advance in April 1951, a crucial turning-point in the war, and which led to the long-protracted peace talks a month or so later.

Although it would take years to finalize a lasting truce between the two opposing forces, the stand of Brigadier Brodies decimated 29th Brigade, with their American allies, on the Imjin River convinced the Chinese and their North Korean puppets that they would never succeed in pushing the round-eyes back into the sea from whence they had come. As the men said, Its only half a victory, but its better than none at all.

For South Korea it was a very real victory. Its citizens never did get the kind of democracy America promised them back in the 1940s, but their lifestyle and freedoms are vastly different from those of their cousins on the other side of the 38th Parallel. In North Korea, with its Stalinist cult of leader-worship, it is regarded with suspicion when a citizen owns even his own bicycle! In 1998 the first of the British veterans went back to South Korea at the invitation of the South Korean Legation in London. They were welcomed and feted as heroes who had helped to make that formerly backward country one of the fast-growing economies in the world.

Even that terrible pong had vanished. It was roses and sweet violets all the way, as one soldier quipped after his return. He was referring to that all-pervading stench of Kimche , which had appalled the young squaddies back in the 1950s. For the most part the veterans, mere youngsters when they had first sailed to war on the other side of the world, hardly recognized the Land of the Morning Calm. Their Forgotten War had not been in vain after all...

Book One

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Wordsworth

Chapter One The Long Hot Weekend

Saturday evenings in the Tokyo Big House were inevitably the same. It was five years since the 71-year-old General (known behind his back as Old Mac) had come to rule a defeated Japan, and by now the routine had been well established. After supper, which was always the same soup, salad, bread and coffee the evening entertainment would commence. The general would rise from the dining table promptly after twenty minutes a good meal is a quick meal, he always said and enter the pantry next to the dining-room. Here, years before, a large hole had been cut in the wall for a movie projector and a movie screen had been installed. Now the old man with the patrician face would plant himself in his red rocking chair, circumcise his large cigar with ritualistic ceremony, and wait for the movie to be set up. This was the man who had conquered Japan for the Allies in the Second World War and had ruled the land of the rising sun ever since. Now he was preparing to enjoy his simple Saturday evening treat. It was all very homey and American. The only thing that was lacking was the popcorn bags.

Already fifty stacking chairs had been set up for his staff and servants, and even for the evenings honour guard. For although his GIs made fun of Old Macs pretensions they hadnt forgotten that their predecessors of the shooting war in the Pacific had called him Dug-out Doug they were still honoured to be the Supreme Commanders guests. They settled down. The General did, too. To one side of him was Jean, his pretty second wife, half his age; on the other his smooth aide and adviser, Sidney Huff. First came the newsreels from the States, flown in specially. Best of all, the General liked those depicting natural catastrophes. In loud asides to Jean or Sidney, he would explain how he would have dealt with them. If there were shots of the stateside Army-Navy football games, he would root loudly for the US Army naturally. The only newsreels he really disliked were those about his bte noire , the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. They had the old man sitting on the edge of his seat with nervous tension.

Finally the newsreels would end and the titles for the main feature would begin. The General wasnt a simple man by any means, but he did like comedies or action films. His favourites were Westerns, especially when he could have his adored and pampered young son Arthur at his side. How he loved that boy! This Saturday night, the movie was considered too adult for little Arthur, but it didnt matter. On the morrow, Sunday, he would have all day to devote to the boy.

However, appearances were deceptive. The relaxed old general sitting in his red rocking chair, enjoying a Hollywood B movie, was not quite the homely old bird he appeared to be. His personal world was far removed from that of the average American. His vanity and paranoia were almost certifiable: he was convinced that the rest of the human race, with a few exceptions, was out to do him down.