Appendix
Armies march by tower and spire
Of cities blazing, in the fire; –
Till as I gaze with staring eyes,
The armies fade, the lustre dies.
Robert Louis Stevenson
1st Argylls: One of its Korea officers, Colin Mitchell, led a successful campaign to resist amalgamation in the 1960s, but in the midst of British Army reorganisation, the regiment became the 5th Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland, in 2006.
1st Middlesex: The Diehards were merged into the Queens Regiment in 1966, and the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment in 1992. In 2004 in Al Amara, Iraq, PWRR soldiers launched a bayonet charge against insurgents to free soldiers pinned down by insurgents. The freed men were the Argylls – the PWRR’s former comrades in Korea.
3 RAR: Nicknamed ‘Old Faithful’ for its utter reliability in Korea – it was the key unit at the desperate battle of Kapyong in April 1951 – the battalion remains a regular unit of the Australian Army with a parachute role.
41 Commando: After further raiding operations in Korea in 1951, the commando was disbanded in 1952. For its heroism at Chosin, US 1st MARDIV was awarded a US Presidential Unit Citation. Following lobbying by US marines, 41 Commando was also awarded the PUC. However, due to issues over foreign awards, Whitehall only grudgingly accepted the award. In 1957, the PUC was attached to the colour of the disbanded commando, though individual men were not permitted to wear the flash However, some, in defiance of orders, did so.
Teddy Allen: The crack-shot commando was commissioned after Korea, and served in the Suez invasion and the Borneo confrontation with 40 Commando. He retired as a major, and lives in the same village as John Walter.
Alf Argent: 3 RAR’s intelligence officer later served in military aviation in Vietnam and retired from the Army as a colonel.
Peter Baldwin: The signals officer served in Borneo, retired as a major general, and was one of the pioneers of commercial radio in the UK. To this day, underfloor heating reminds him of the Korean cottages of 1950.
Reg Bandy: After Korea, the 3 RAR sergeant and three mates entered a Returned and Service League (RSL) bar in Perth for a drink. ‘Six old blokes were at the bar and they said, “Korea wasn’t a war: Piss off!”’ That bitter experience was shared by many Diggers. Bandy later served two tours in Vietnam, which he found more amenable than Korea: ‘Vietnam was alright, we had a firm base.’ As for PTSD, he offers a simple solution: ‘A few blokes went “milko” but we used to go on the piss and talk it out of them.’ Today, he lectures at schools on his war experiences.
Don Barrett: The Middlesex corporal became, after the war, the unofficial historian of the Diehards and 27th Brigade in Korea: His detailed writings are kept in the National Army Museum.
Sir Phillip Bennett: The Australian mortars officer commanded a battalion in Vietnam, and later the Australian Defence Force, from 1984–87. He was subsequently Governor of Tasmania. He still carries souvenirs of that grenade attack in the North. ‘There are bits of things floating around in my body!’ he said. ‘Doctors are bit surprised at annual medicals that I still carry it sixty years later.’
James Beverly: The Bermondsey lad who watched the hillside turn colour as Chinese surged down its slopes returned to Korea in 2009. ‘Back then it was a shit-hole, now it’s marvellous,’ he said. Handing out a scholarship to a Korean schoolgirl at Gloster Hill*, he was embraced. ‘When she thanked me, I choked up. The feeling I got, money could not have bought.’ He never unfolded his good luck charm – the sackcloth flag he was handed at Pusan in 1950 – until interviewed by the author at his London home in 2010.
Sir Alexander ‘Sandy’ Boswell: The Argyll Intelligence Officer served in Borneo and Belfast, commanded the Argylls, was commander-in-chief in Guernsey, and retired as a general. Of his Korea experience, Boswell is succinct: ‘I think I grew up a hell of a lot!’
Stanley Boydell: The Middlesex MO’s wife told him he went to Korea a boy and came back completely different; he found the experience bonded him with his father-in-law, a First World War veteran. ‘The worst was the cold,’ he said. ‘I think perhaps I have never been warm since.’
Lyle Bradley: The USMC pilot considered Chosin the worst flying conditions he had ever encountered. Twenty-five years after the war, he was at a meeting in Wyoming, when he noticed another participant wearing a marine tiepin. They began talking and Bradley realised he was ‘Dunkirk 14’ the ground callsign he had liaised with. ‘He jumped up and threw his arms around me,’ said Bradley. ‘It was quite a shock to everybody to see two marines hugging!’
Dave Brady: 41 Commando’s joker left the marines and joined the Metropolitan Police where the self-described ‘coward’ went on to win two awards for gallantry, for taking on armed robbers unarmed; on the second occasion he was shot through the arm. He retired in Norfolk near his old CO, who was running a sheep farm, and taught police driving tactics. One day he drove to Drysdale’s farm in a police car where he informed the colonel, ‘I am investigating allegations of bestiality on this farm.’ Drysdale, belatedly recognising the policeman,‘jumped in the air and roared, “Brady! You bastard!”’ Brady’s lively One of the Chosin Few, a source for this work, was published in 2003.
Andrew Brown: The Argyll quartermaster retired as a Lieutenant Colonel and retains a twinkle in his eye: In his nineties, he turned up at a ‘senior aerobics’ class in Aberdeen to find the next oldest person was in her fifties. He is active in Argyll veterans groups.
David Butler: The commander of the spearhead in the ‘Apple Orchard’ did another tour in Korea, finishing the conflict on ‘The Bloody Hook’, and commanded a battalion in Vietnam. As for Korea being ‘The Forgotten War’, he said: ‘It does not affect me. I have been a regular soldier and gone to wars that are all forgotten – nobody is interested in Vietnam, either. I am rather pleased wars are forgotten and glad the whole of society did not get exposed.’
Basil Coad: 27th Brigade’s commander retired as a major general. His secret report about Korea to the British government – a source for this work – was never made public, perhaps due to Coad’s heavy criticism of the US military. It is now viewable at the National Archive. Many of his men praise his prudent leadership, which they believe prevented 27th Brigade from suffering the disasters that befell 29th Brigade at Koyang and Imjin River in 1951. He died in 1980.
Andrew Condron: The captured Scottish commando took part in Chinese propaganda broadcasts in the POW camps, and was the only British prisoner to refuse repatriation at the war’s end. In China, he taught English and married, returning quietly to the UK in 1962. Though fellow commandos say everything Condron did in the camps assisted fellow prisoners, he remained controversial, and was assaulted at one 41 Commando reunion. He died in 1996.
Edward ‘Ted’ Cunningham: Despite losing a leg to mortar fire, he is not bitter. ‘I was damned lucky not to be more severely injured,’ he said. After Korea, he studied at Cambridge and Harvard Business School, and worked at the World Bank and the Scottish Development Agency. Today, he is active in venture capital in Edinburgh.
Max Desfor: After the winter retreat, the photojournalist was on leave in a Japanese inn when the phone rang. It was his bureau chief: His photograph of the Taedong bridge had won the Pulitzer Prize. It is now arguably the most famed photograph of the war. Desfor covered other wars, and retired as photo editor of US News and World Report. In Korea in 2002, he lectured to journalism students, and was delighted to be stuck in a traffic jam: ‘It was amazing, the vehicles – what a difference!’ Today his photography is limited to family snapshots: ‘Nice pictures!’ For his 95th birthday, his wife bought him a Nikon digital.
Douglas Drysdale: After leaving Korea in 1951, Drysdale spent two years teaching at the US marine officer schools at Quantico. He retired from the corps in 1962, but remained uncompromising. In the 1980s, he was dining with Ron Moyse at a 41 reunion when he heard about a fracas that had taken place the previous evening. Drysdale roared, ‘I will have no indiscipline in this unit!’ Moyse was taken aback: ‘This was thirty years later!’ Drysdale died in 1990.
Jack Edmonds: The SBS commando remained in the corps and took part in a range of clandestine operations, ‘but nothing on the scale of Korea’. He lives close to Ron Moyse.
Jack Gallaway: 3 RAR’s signals sergeant suffered occasional nightmares of a GI crushed by a tank – ‘his body seemed to end in a splash of strawberry jam’ – but settled into civilian life as a journalist. After hearing in RSLs that Korea was, after the Second World War, ‘just a bloody sideshow’, he decided to set the record straight. His lively The Last Call of the Bugle is the finest book on 3 RAR in Korea.
Harry Gordon: The Australian journalist subsequently covered the Algerian War, became chief editor of the Herald Weekly Times and official historian of the Australian Olympic Committee. He remains surprised at the Korean War’s lack of recognition. ‘For all its huge dimensions, its characters, its grand theatre, it seems easy to forget if you were not there,’ he said. ‘MASH, for all its fierce satire, hardly did justice to the harshness of the conflict.’
Edgar Green: When he arrived home in 1951, his father held up the letter Green had written during the voyage to Korea and warned him, ‘Don’t ever write a letter like that again – if your mother’d seen it, she wouldn’t be here now!’ Having returned on several veteran revisits to South Korea, Green is a huge fan of the nation. In 2010, he flew the Korean flag during the World Cup; when neighbours laughed he said, ‘Wait and see!’ Indeed, Korea proved far more entertaining than a dire England.
Eric Gurr: The Argyll overrun at Pakchon still carries a Chinese bullet in his chest. Though he has no regrets, the war returns to him: ‘I think of the guys I was close to who never came back. I had a good life, good marriage, a couple of great kids – they never had that chance.’ During a revisit in 2005 – where he posed with a Chinese burp gun – he was delighted by South Korea. ‘I thought it was amazing,’ he said. ‘It puts this country to shame a wee bit, ye know!’
Doug Haldane: ‘Jock the Doc’ left the Army in 1952, but plays golf with the Highland Brigade and curls with fellow Argylls Andrew Brown and Alan Lauder.
Kim Song-hwan: The student watercolourist served as a war artist with the ROK Army, and after the war, started a political cartoon Gobau – the pen name he adopted while hiding from the NKPA. By the 1970s, he was Korea’s most famous cartoonist. Now retired, he paints back alleys, country villages and thatched cottages – the Korea that has been submerged by modernity. His war paintings reside at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, and a full gallery is displayed on the author’s website.
Geoff King: The commando bayoneted in ‘Hellfire Valley’ served three more years in the marines, but suffered mental trauma: ‘I used to dream I’d murdered people and buried them,’ he said. ‘If you’re Christian and you kill, it preys on your mind.’ In 2010, he returned to Korea, where, with US marines, he led a street parade for Inchon veterans. ‘To see that the results have been so good, my book is closed,’ he said.
Alan Lauder: After Korea, the Argyll subaltern took over the family photo business – ‘As my wife says, I’ve given a lot of women a lot of pleasure!’ – and in 1986, revisited Korea, where his son was working. And the war? ‘Not a day goes by when I don’t think about it,’ he said.
Lee (John) Jong-yun: The student served with US marines throughout the war; post-war, marine officers sponsored him to study law in Virginia, and he became a successful lawyer. He later met refugees from Hagaru: He wept to recall their sufferings during the breakout, but they were keen to tell him how successful they were in the South. In 2010, he published a book on the Chosin campaign. Like many Koreans separated by the war, he never discovered the fate of his parents.
Owen Light: The deadliest Argyll platoon commander was the only one in the battalion to survive the full tour unscathed. He later served in the RAF and the Foreign Service, and became director of the PTSD charity, Combat Stress. In his late 70s, he still runs half marathons: ‘It’s an opportunity to see young women wearing almost nothing!’
Lim Geum-sook: ‘The Meredith Victory was the greatest Christmas gift I could have had,’ the teenager who escaped on the last civilian ship from Hungnam, said. But like many who fled North Korea, she feels survivors’ guilt, certain that many who did not get out were punished or killed by vengeful communists.
Adam MacKenzie: The mortar man did thirty-four years in the Argylls, retiring as a colour sergeant. ‘I never wore any other cap badge,’ he said. ‘It was family.’ But the combat he recalls best is not a Korea War action, but the Battle of Fanling – a legendary 1951 punch-up between the Argylls and the Ulster Rifles in Hong Kong. ‘We don’t let anyone walk over us!’ he said.
Andrew Man: The feisty little colonel retired in 1959, but his men’s affection was evident when they asked him to head their veterans’ association, ‘The Korea Club’. Many ex-Diehards continued to seek his advice until his death in 2000.
Ken ‘Ted’ Mankelow: After returning to London, Mankelow heard that the Australian Army was recruiting. He volunteered, and was made an instructor. After retirement, he settled in Melbourne. A respected member of ex-serviceman’s clubs in Victoria, the expatriate Briton died in 2010.
Colin Mitchell: The aggressive captain commanded his regiment in Aden, where, as ‘Mad Mitch’ he won a legendary reputation for unleashing ‘Argyll Justice’ in Crater, a campaign that some, today, consider a benchmark for counter-insurgency. After the Army, he served a brief stint as an MP, then headed a charity removing mines from former war zones. He died in 1996.
Ron Moyse: The big commando remained in the marines, and was RSM of 42 Commando in Borneo and Aden. In the 1980s, he was in a pub in Inverness when a visiting US marine colonel heard he had been in 41 Commando, stood up, and announced: ‘This man saved my goddamned life, he got through to us at Hagaru!’ In 1997, Moyse organised a reunion with US marines that included American wives taking part in an amphibious raid. His two sons were also commandos, but the line halted with his grandchildren – all female.
Tom Muggleton: The Digger sergeant spent thirty-five years in the Army, including a tour in Vietnam and postings to Sandhurst and Duntroon. Of his three wars – the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam – he considered Korea the most intense. When a general once opined that 3 RAR’s early battles in Korea were ‘skirmishes’, Muggleton, remembering the Broken Bridge and the prowling tanks, responded, ‘If you were staring down the barrel of a T34, you might have a different view!’
Jake Mutch: The mortar man wounded at Naktong Crossing served in Borneo and Aden, then became a recruiter at Stirling Castle. He later visited his son, a commodities executive, working under a Korean boss in New York. Upon hearing that Mutch Sr had served in the Korean War, the Korean ordered everyone to cease working, and stood the floor of traders a drink to toast Mutch. He retains a fondness for Korea: ‘It’s a nice little country, some things are the same as our own,’ he mused. ‘Mountains, little farms, people going about their business – though we don’t have topless apple pickers!’
Leslie Neilson: The Argylls’ CO handed over command after leaving Korea in April 1951 to command the Highland Brigade. He retired a full colonel and died in 1980.
Ben O’Dowd: The tough Australian company commander was the unsung hero of the epic battle of Kapyong in 1951, where he commanded the forward company, then led 3 RAR’s masterly retreat through hills infested with enemy. After Korea he fought in Malaya as liaison with the British Army. He retired as a colonel and wrote a book In Valiant Company – not bad going for an uneducated lad who had left the Outback to join the Army. Asked if he suffered PTSD, his reply was laconic: ‘No, it was all in a day’s work. I don’t brood.’
Len Opie: After Korea, the frighteningly effective Digger’s interest in military history led him to buy a bookshop, but he soon volunteered for Vietnam: ‘There’s nothing like combat.’ There, he worked with the CIA, leading local irregulars against Viet Cong infrastructure in the notorious Phoenix Program (criticised by some as an assassination strategy). Among the Second World War, Korea and Vietnam, Korea was his career highlight: ‘Korea was the best war, the first seven months,’ he said. ‘Every time we went into a fight, we won it.’ At his funeral in 2008, Opie was eulogised as ‘a warrior among warriors’.
Gordon Payne: The commando evacuated from Hagaru with frostbite considers the night in Hellfire Valley, ‘the most significant part of my life, something you’d never dream of’. But Korea is so unknown, on the rare occasions when people ask him about his experiences, he has a suspicion that they will not believe what he tells them, so remains quiet
Paddy Redmond: The Irish sergeant is today a full-time carer for his severely handicapped daughter, Bernadette. Once certified as dead, Bernadette opened her eyes when nuns visited, making her one of the most famous Catholics in the UK, and the first confirmed by Pope John Paul II: ‘Another first for the Middlesex!’ Redmond said.
Ian ‘Robbie’ Robertson: ‘The Hitman’ was wounded in 1951, but recovered to serve in Vietnam. ‘In Korea it was hand-to-hand, but in Vietnam, I didn’t come across a lot of fighting and the weather was better,’ he said. Though his sniping exploits led theSydney Morning Herald to dub him ‘The Deadliest Man in Australia’ in 2004, he is an animal lover, who, in recent years, has ridden a horse in Anzac Day parades.
Ray Rogers: After leaving the army, Rogers emigrated to Australia where he keeps in touch with other Down Under Diehards. ‘I can’t say it was not worth it,’ he said of Korea. ‘I don’t regret it, given the blokes I met, but I wouldn’t advise my sons to do it.’
Frank Screeche-Powell: The Irishman never forgot the old Korean murdered by the Middlesex mortar man, nor the tiny Korean brother and sister he cared for over Christmas. Having emigrated to Australia, he wrote to the Korean Embassy to see if there was any chance of tracking the children down. He never received a reply, but treasures the rough note the children’s father gave him.
Mick Servos: Having recovered from the machine gun burst through his thigh at Pakchon, Servos, returned to fight at Kapyong. He retired from the army as RSM of the Royal Queensland Regiment in 1976 and is active in veterans groups. Having enjoyed the combat, he finds the war remains with him: ‘I dream of it quite often,’ he said. ‘The attacks … forming up … going in …’
John Shipster: Back in Hong Kong, the major’s wife asked him about the golf and tennis gear he had abandoned at Taegu, so he filed an insurance claim. To his surprise, his insurers paid out double, ‘in view of the hardships’ he had suffered. Of Korea, he said: ‘We had all the elation of chasing a beaten army and all the misery of being part of a beaten army ourselves.’ A compiler of The Diehards in Korea, he penned his own memoirs, Mist over the Rice Fields. Having retired from the Army as a colonel, he died in 2001.
Viscount John Slim: After Korea, ‘Big John’ joined the fledgling SAS, fighting with it in Borneo, Yemen ‘and in other places I don’t talk about’. He advised the Australian Army on their establishment of an SAS regiment, and commanded the British unit. Today, as Viscount Slim of Burma, he is active in the Lords, in charity work in Burma and Pakistan, and as head of the SAS Regimental Association. During a veterans’ revisit to Korea in 2010, he lunched with President Lee Myung-bak and invited him to the House of Lords. He is one of the last living Englishmen to use the term ‘old boy’ without irony.
Harry Spicer: After Korea, Spicer served in the crack Parachute Regiment, then emigrated to Australia, where he is active in charities and veterans’ groups and holds a 5th dan black belt in taekwondo. In a 1989 letter to John Willoughby, Sergeant Paddy Bermingham wrote of Spicer: ‘Disgustingly respectable and successful for one who appeared to be a potential rogue at the time!’ But Spicer still has anger issues stemming from his wartime experiences, and remains haunted by the memory of the charred North Korean tank commander: ‘Not a day goes by without thinking about Korea,’ he said.
Sir James Stirling: The subaltern wounded alongside Kenny Muir recovered, served in the Territorial Argylls, and became Lord Lieutenant of Stirlingshire, where he lives amid stunning scenery. His son Archie also joined the Argylls, serving in Northern Ireland.
Peter Thomas: The commando heavy weapons officer remained in the corps, retiring as a colonel. He remains disturbed by the memory of the refugees from Hagaru who followed the marine column to Koto. His granddaughter, on a visit to Korea, laid a wreath for 41 Commando’s dead at the UN Cemetery in Pusan in 2009.
Reginald Thompson: The brilliant reporter died in 1977, but his vivid 1951 work, Cry Korea – a key source for this book – was republished in 2009. Unflinching in its portrayal of UNC ‘collateral damage’ it is arguably the most powerful journalistic work on the war.
Julian Tunstall: The sensitive Diehard’s I Fought in Korea was controversial among some. But in its afterword, Tunstall wrote: ‘There is a great future for Korea … before very long … the Korean people will push themselves to the front and claim their rightful place among the great nations of the earth.’ Given that the book was written in 1951, Tunstall’s prescience was extraordinary.
John Underwood: The commando captured in Hellfire Valley survived captivity, and worked his way back to health. He has three times visited the USA to meet Chosin marines. ‘Korea was not a brushfire war, not a police action, it was a war, when you think how many died – millions,’ he said. ‘Now, people don’t mention the Korean War, they mention the Falklands and others, but they were very small compared to Korea. It annoys me intensely.’
John Walter: The subaltern who had not earned his green beret before deploying retired as a major. Today a keen ecologist, tree surgeon and furniture maker, he lives close to Teddy Allen.
Frank Whitehouse: ‘After Korea, I was not frightened of anyone or anything,’ Whitehouse said; he found himself drinking and fighting, but settled down after marriage. He is sad that the war is forgotten: ‘Nobody knows anything about it,’ he said. ‘Nobody was interested, it was happening miles away.’
Sir John Willoughby: After Korea, Willoughby led 1st Middlesex in Austria and Cyprus during the EOKA Emergency. Promoted to major-general, he was knighted, retired in 1972 and died in 1991. His notebooks, in the Imperial War Museum, are the finest unpublished first-hand accounts of the Korean War the author has encountered.
David Wilson: The popular company commander never commanded the Argylls, but was military assistant to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and made brigadier. He also served as military attaché to Seoul in 1968, where he was moved to watch Korean school-children tending the ‘field of graves’, the UN Cemetery in Pusan, amid bitter October weather. His autobiography The Sum of Things was published in 2000. He died in 2001; John Slim spoke at his funeral.
Don Woods: The Digger machine gunner left the Army and married; today he has four children, nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Of the war he says: ‘I would not wish that experience on anyone, but I learned what mateship means and I learned what trust means. I am probably a better person for it.’
Bob Yerby: During a 2009 presentation on 29th Brigade’s stand on the Imjin River, the Diehard asked the author not to overlook the ‘forgotten’ 27th Brigade. That conversation planted the seeds of this book.
Harry Young: The tough Argyll served in Borneo and Aden before retiring as a warrant officer. ‘You never clear your mind of Korea, you dream of it, you are going into a gunfight, you see all your pals,’ he said. ‘It keeps me younger than I am!’ He married his NAAFI sweetheart; their two sons both served in the Argylls.
* Every April, visiting British Korean War veterans, after a memorial service at the site of the Gloster Battalion’s last stand in 1951, hand out scholarships provided by Korea-based UK companies to local schoolchildren.