Chapter Four
Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death.
Should I never return, all is in order.
Katherine Mansfield
Morning, 13 September, the Yellow Sea.
Having just returned from his first active service operation, Corporal Raymond Todd, Royal Marines, was disgusted. A fleet marine who had been serving aboard HMS Jamaica, the County Durham native, like a lot of servicemen who had not seen combat in the Second World War felt himself ‘almost a second-class citizen against those who had chestfuls of medals’. Given this, he had jumped at the chance when he heard a call for volunteers: A special raiding force was being raised from among fleet marines and Royal Navy personnel in the Far East. The force – fourteen strong – had been training in Japan under US Marine Corps auspices since mid-August. Commanded by Royal Marine Lieutenant Derek Pounds, its remit was coastal raids. ‘Pounds Force’s’ first mission had been a beach reconnaissance near the town of Kunsan, 90 miles south of Inchon, the port on the Han River serving Seoul, on the night of 12 September.
It had been a farce.
The unit had embarked on the frigate HMS Whitesand Bay together with a company of US Army Raiders. Pounds Force would recce the south of the target beach, the Raider Company would take the north. The targets were separated by a promontory. Todd was suspicious of the US units: The heavily armed Americans, in company strength, were ‘too many for a reconnaissance,’ he thought.
Things went wrong from the start. As the blacked-out Whitesand Bay glided through the offshore islets – black silhouettes in the Yellow Sea night – men on deck could see lights flashing from island to island. Signals? Regardless, the operation was launched. Pounds Forces’ inflatables hit a sandbar 150 metres offshore. After extricating themselves, they paddled silently ashore. Almost immediately, there came gunfire to their left: they could see flashes on the promontory. The Americans, it seemed, were already under fire. The British advanced inland when their radio hissed. With the operation compromised, Pounds Force was ordered to extract. They returned despondently to the frigate by 01:30.1 Aboard, they found that nine of the Raiders were missing. The frigate’s captain fretted: If his ship was caught inshore at daybreak, she would be a sitting duck, but he could not abandon the Americans. At 04:45, a light flashed from the prearranged emergency extraction point. Seven Raiders were picked up. Two were left, dead, on the beach. The Whitesand Bay headed for blue water.2
The mission was over. ‘We felt it had been an absolute failure,’ said Todd.* He and other members of the force settled down and slept on the thrumming upper deck of the frigate. They were woken by a great thunder. In amazement, they looked around at a suddenly crowded seascape. ‘As the dawn broke we could see this massive fleet carrying out the bombardment of what we later found to be Inchon,’ he said. It was 14 September; D-Day –1 for Operation Chromite, the biggest amphibious assault since the Second World War.
* * *
It was an audacious plan. The invasion force – X Corps, comprising the crack US 1st Marine Division, upgraded from brigade size, plus the US Army’s 7th Infantry Division; and some 2,600 ROK Marines – was a powerful one, but amphibious operations are a dodgy business, and Chromite would be amongst the dodgiest. The force has to make its way up a narrow channel, past coastal defences, while dealing with the world’s highest tidal range, which granted only a two-hour landing window. Virtually everyone in the US Navy and Marines Corps had urged against it: too risky. MacArthur himself had silenced the naysayers and pushed the plan through.
The thunder that had startled Todd boomed from some 230 ships – carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, rocket bombardment craft and landing ships, with, among them, a Royal Naval Taskforce – that were softening up the target beaches. On 15 September, under massive pillars of black smoke billowing from the port’s blazing oil refinery, Operation Chromite jumped off. US marines disembarked from landing craft and surged up scaling ladders set against the seawalls.
Lieutenant Lee Jong-yun – now ‘John Lee’ – the literature student who had fled Seoul, was among them. ‘They needed someone who spoke English,’ he said. He could feel vibrations in the air from the bombardment – ‘it was just continuous!’ – and could see the sea walls, and the mountains beyond, over the ramp of the landing craft as it closed on the target beach. Then they were ashore. The objective was ‘just ashes,’ Lee said. Marines surged forward. Shell-shocked NKPA survivors emerged from bunkers, hands raised.
On the open bridge of his command ship USS Mount McKinley, MacArthur was overseeing the spectacle. In an age when battle is conducted by small, dispersed groups of men, trying to blend into terrain, the Inchon landing was a theatrical panorama that might have fired the blood of Napoleon. Overhead, squadrons of fighter bombers swooped through columns of smoke. On the sea, waves of landing craft circled, then peeled off and headed for their beaches. All around, to the horizon, were rippling flashes as men-of-war unleashed salvoes. The general – in leather jacket and peaked cap, field glasses in hand – was photographed beaming. For good reason: The operation was proceeding like clockwork. Green Beach, Red Beach, Blue Beach; all objectives were falling like dominoes. Against all advice, MacArthur had rolled the dice. They had come up sixes.
Day one had been a success. Lee, moving into Inchon itself, came across stockpiled heavy Russian weapons in caves bored into cliffs overlooking the harbour.* ‘These caves were full of shells and big guns,’ he said. ‘But before the battle, their Russian advisers had been withdrawn, so nobody was able to operate them.’ There was also a lot of propaganda: the thoughts of Josef Stalin and Kim Il-sung. ‘I suppose they spent a lot of time reading this,’ Lee said. ROK marines mopped up in the town, while US marines advanced on Seoul. On 18 September the US 7th Infantry Division began disembarking.
Pounds had ‘negotiated’ a part for his little unit in the landing. His force, together with the American Raiders, was tasked to take Kimpo, the airfield between Inchon and Seoul. It proved a sideshow.
‘The marines were too fast, we were coming up behind them,’ said Todd. ‘They had taken Kimpo before we arrived.’ There had been quite a slaughter: The airfield with strewn with wrecked aircraft and enemy bodies. Pounds Force linked up with a ROK marine battalion clearing X Corps’ rear of guerillas. ‘We were looking for trouble,’ said 20-year-old Marine Geoff King, who had volunteered for Pounds Force after a night of drinking in Hong Kong, when he had missed the last ‘liberty boat’ out to their ship, and so ‘borrowed’ another boat – only to be caught by the duty officer.
Patrolling through the countryside, Pounds Force came upon a village. King and a mate were sent in to scout it. They advanced warily. ‘There were these Gooks, I was a bit confused who they were, then I saw their rifles,’ King said. He hurled a phosphorous grenade. Thatch flared up and a confused contact started as enemy broke away. Firing halted when Pounds ordered his men to assist the civilians. ‘He was a real generous bloke, Pounds,’ King said. That night, he dug into a convenient mound outside the village. The next morning, he gave off a sickly stench: ‘It was kind of sweet and sour,’ he said. ‘Nobody would go near me!’ The mound King had dug into had been a grave; his bed companion had been a corpse.
The patrol continued. Passing through a copse, the barbarity of this war became shockingly clear. Scattered among the trees lay some twenty young Korean males, all dead. All had been stripped and many mutilated, penises severed. One victim had been disemboweled but was still, somehow, alive; he was injected with morphine to ease his passing. ‘There was nothing we could do,’ said King. ‘We were just a recce force.’ One naked corpse had been placed in a crouching position, and something dangled from its rectum. King tried not to look, but his eyes were drawn. A hand grenade had been forced up, placed so that if the corpse were moved, it would detonate – a particularly foul booby trap. ‘We moved on, we never found out what’d happened,’ said King. He made his mind up never to be captured. Other men were also affected. ‘Life seemed cheap,’ Todd mused.
Seoul, 19 miles from Inchon, proved a tougher nut to crack than its port. Inchon had been defended by 2,500 men; there were some 20,000 holding the capital, including communist cadres.3 Seoul, home to over a million inhabitants, covered 56 square miles and the NKPA were dug in, notably in the hills of the university district in the west.4 Streets were barricaded with sandbag walls, buildings fortified. Under the gazes of Stalin and Kim, emblazoned across huge placards throughout the city, marine squads fought up the streets. Tanks and artillery blasted strong points at point-blank range; air strikes were called in on the dime. A great pall of dust rose over the embattled capital.
Kim Song-hwan, the young artist, had already realised the war was turning against the NKPA. He had seen young soldiers in blacked-out rail stations heading for the battlefront on night marches, some without weapons. On a road, he watched a panicky North Korean officer threatening a farmer with his pistol after the man’s bullock cart had knocked his motorcycle off the road. ‘The North Korean was out of his mind – everybody knows how long it takes a bullock cart to stop or turn,’ Kim said. ‘The war was going badly for them.’ Kim sketched US air strikes, silhouetted against lurid purple sunsets, diving and firing red rockets into the curved roofs of traditional houses. At his first sight of Americans, he thought the marines were in their 40s or 50s. He was astonished to learn that they were only in their late teens or early 20s. Combat stress and beards had added decades.
In the midst of it was Max Desfor, the AP photojournalist. On a Seoul street he snapped his first great Korean War shot, a battle photograph that remains one of the most remarkable ever taken. In war – unlike in movies – it is extraordinarily rare for a camera to capture, in one frame, both friendly and enemy troops in combat. Desfor was with a marine squad held up on a wrecked street. Men were being picked off, but the sniper could not be located. There came a burst of firing. Desfor spun. An NKPA sniper, concealed under a block of cement in the gutter, had been shooting into marines from ankle level from mere yards away. ‘By some luck or intuition, when he popped up, they fired and got him,’ Desfor said. His shutter clicked the moment a trio of marines – barely 5 yards away – shot the prone sniper dead. Desfor had embedded with marines on Okinawa, but Korea was different. ‘In the Second World War we were fighting more from a distance,’ he said. ‘It was not as close up as Korea.’
There could be only one end. Strong point by strong point, the NKPA were crushed. On 29 September, the day MacArthur arrived to hand the capital over to a tearful President Rhee Syngman, the city was, but for a few isolated holdouts, retaken. Some districts, bypassed by combat, were untouched; elsewhere, entire swathes lay ruined. Kim’s watercolours captured the aftermath. Piles of white-clad bodies stacked in building forecourts; a pair of ragged orphans living in a stationary, tyreless car; pieces of burnt enemy soldiers, blown apart and rolled flat by vehicles.
The hour of revenge was at hand. ROK authorities had slaughtered thousands of leftists during their retreat down the peninsula; the NKPA had carried out their own massacres during their occupation, and while fleeing the UNC advance. Many soldiers arriving in Seoul – particularly the 17th ROK Regiment, formed of Christians who had fled North Korea, and many of whose families were culled during the NKPA occupation – had scores to settle.* Desfor photographed the beating of one suspected collaborator, but most ‘justice’ was sterner.
Lee mourned one particular execution: His English literature professor, Lee In-soo had been forced, during the occupation, to broadcast propaganda in English. ‘When Seoul was retaken, he was handed over to the ROK 17th Regiment and was either tried and found guilty or – I am guessing here – just shot out of hand,’ Lee said. ‘That was a real loss.’
The tide of the war had turned. In the south, while 27th Brigade hunted guerillas, motorised units of Walker’s 8th Army had been driving north. 8th Army spearheads linked up with X Corps on 27 September. This closing of the pincers did not spell annihilation, for Korea’s mountains provided exfiltration routes for determined units. But Kim Il-sung’s sword – the army that had astonished the world with its shock invasion and won a fearsome reputation for both martial competence and ruthless brutality – was broken. At the outset of the war, the NKPA had numbered some 137,000 men.5 It is unlikely that more than 30,000 escaped to the North.6
* * *
On 28 September, the soldiers of the third nation to join the UNC trooped onto Pusan dock. Though hefting British-style weapons and clad in British-style battle dress they were distinguished by their headgear: broad-brimmed slouch hats. Big, bronzed, tough looking men, these arrivals from Japan were 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment.
Australia, like the UK, had minimal historical relations with Korea, but had sent two field observers to the 38th parallel in response to a UN request in May 1950. After the 25 June invasion, Canberra chose to follow Westminster’s lead. On 29 June, when the Royal Navy was tasked with Korea operations, Australia followed with its own naval commitment; on the same day, the RAAF’s Japan-based 77th Mustang Fighter Squadron, went into action.7 On 25 July, MacArthur officially requested the commitment of Australia’s only infantry unit deployed overseas: 3 RAR.
The Australian Army had forged a legendary reputation in the First World War, emerging as arguably the best infantry fielded by the then-British Empire, and had also fought with distinction in the Second World War, in both the Middle East and the Far East. The First World War nickname, ‘Digger’ – believed to date from Gallipoli, where Australians had proved exceptional trench diggers – was still in use in 1950, but the post-war Australian Army was a shadow of its former self.
Canberra had decided, in 1947, that its army should henceforth consist of a single brigade, augmented by a civilian defence force. By 1950, its only overseas unit was deployed in Japan. While Australian units under command of Lieutenant General Horace ‘Red Robbie’ Robertson made up the key component of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in the island nation, notably the Commonwealth base at Kure, this ground force was seriously under strength. In June, 3 RAR consisted of twenty officers and 530 men, not its establishment of thirty-three officers and 682 men. Moreover, it lacked a support company, a signals component and – like 27th Brigade’s battalions – a fourth rifle company.8
Like US occupation units, 3 RAR enjoyed Japanese life. Houseboys and maids maintained barracks, beer was cheap, good and plentiful; and there were droves of friendly local girls. ‘No Australian Digger ever had it so good,’ reckoned Signals Sergeant, Jack Gallaway.9 Being the only official Commonwealth army unit in Japan, the battalion was much in demand for ceremonials. Ian ‘Robbie’ Robertson, of 3 RAR’s sniper section, was surprised at how friendly the ex-enemy proved. ‘When we marched through Tokyo with the Union Jack and the Australian flag, Japanese were cheering and waving and I was thinking, “Only a few years ago, we were fighting to the death!”’ Robertson became particularly friendly with one local, Maiko ‘Miki’ Higashida – to the point where he married her. Her elder brother had served in the Imperial Japanese Army, and when she asked him – the senior male in the family – for advice, he asked what unit her beau was in. ‘Infantry,’ she told him. Hearing this, her brother, an ex-combat soldier himself, assented to the match.
Unlike many American units, however, 3 RAR cycled its convivial ceremonial chores with combat training at Haramura Battle Camp, and being all-volunteers, all-regulars, morale was high. On 25 July, the unit’s commander was informed that MacArthur had requested 3 RAR be deployed to Korea. Given that the battalion had been preparing to depart Japan for Australia – hardly welcome news – the announcements that Diggers would be committed to Korea was positively received.
‘I was overjoyed,’ said Captain Ben O’Dowd, HQ Company commander. ‘As soon as they made the announcement, we knew it had to be us.’ On 30 July, Robertson visited the battalion, and invited its members to volunteer for Korea service. All but twenty-six men did so. In early August, the battalion saw an equipment upgrade and began an intense pre-combat work-out, but remained under strength. To boost numbers, volunteers were invited from the RAR’s 1st and 2nd Battalions. This was still not enough, yet there was no time to train recruits. On 21 August, a call went out nationwide for experienced servicemen to rejoin the army for three years, to include a year in Korea: ‘K Force’. Recruiting stations across Australia were flooded.10
War is a terrible business, but there are those who enjoy the tight male bonding and comradeship that is part and parcel of close living and shared risk; the sense of self-worth that comes from being a member of a group engaged in a challenging task; and the adrenalin surge of combat. It seems fair to say that most of those who signed up for K Force fell into this unusual category of men. Most were outdoorsmen and nearly all were Second World War veterans: Tough characters who had fought in history’s greatest war and found civilian life disappointing.
‘The K Force guys were nearly all ex NCOs and they came in as privates,’ said Gallaway, an Australia-based regular sergeant who had volunteered for 3 RAR. He was responsible for orienting and moving a group of K Force, when, prior to their departure for Japan, they were ‘let loose in the town of Seymour,’ Gallaway recalled. ‘We got word from the publican so went in with a three-ton truck and loaded them up and as fast as we could get them out of one pub, they would be in another, so we unloaded them in the bush and marched them back to camp. I was a bit worried – I am fairly robust but was not going to tackle 40–50 blokes! But we got them in.’ Another volunteer, on hearing of the war in Korea, dug a slit trench in the lawn of the Russian Embassy in Canberra to ‘clean out the commos’.11
Soldiers such as these are potentially war-winning instruments, but they require a firm grip, a strong leader.
On a late August evening, 3 RAR officers crowded around the mess radio to listen to the Radio Australia news. They were stunned to hear the broadcaster announce that a new CO was heading out to Japan to take command. This was news, indeed: Their current CO, Lieutenant Colonel Floyd Walsh, one of those listening to the radio, was as surprised as his subordinates.12 It was a serious breach of etiquette by senior officers, and a huge embarrassment for Walsh. To lead Australia’s men in Korea, High Command had picked an officer, who, unlike Walsh, had an extensive battle record.
Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Hercules Green, 30, then a student at the Queenscliffe Army Staff College, was that man. Tall; slim; youthful but serious looking; Green had a quiet confidence backed by a remarkable Second World War CV. After joining as a private, he was almost immediately promoted to lieutenant and fought in the Western Desert. Trapped by the Germans during the Greek campaign, he led his group of men out of the trap through Greece, in to Turkey and on to Syria. Promoted to major, he then fought in one of the most horrific campaigns of the Second World War – New Guinea – where he became the youngest battalion commander in the Australian Army and won a DSO.13 With peace, he left the army, hoping to realise his dream of becoming a farmer. It was not to be. Lacking capital, he was forced to take, instead, a poorly paid salaried position. It was a comedown for the warrior leader. ‘Soon our dreams were shrinking and losing direction,’ wrote his wife, Olwyn. ‘Charlie’s confident desire for success could not be realised in his inconsequential job.’ In 1948, he joined the militia; in 1949, he rejoined the regular army.14
Green’s return to uniform seems pre-destined, for he was a natural leader. Any concerns raised by his appointment were swiftly allayed. Arriving on 10 September, he addressed all 3 RAR officers. ‘He was a quiet man, he talked in simple terms about what was expected of us and we had no doubts he meant it: He had us from that first day,’ said one of the subalterns, David Butler from Perth. ‘The next day he spoke to the battalion on the parade ground, and it was a tremendous tour de force.’ Such was Green’s natural comportment, that Gallaway thought his new CO came from an aristocratic background; he was surprised to learn that he had been raised on a farm, and wore dentures after having had his teeth kicked out by a stallion.
Yet, like Coad and Neilson, Green was a distant figure to his officers, who, when briefing, he never addressed by their Christian names. ‘He was hard to get close to,’ said O’Dowd who knew Green as well as anyone – Green had granted him a battlefield commission in New Guinea. ‘He kept to himself.’ By an odd coincidence, Green shared the same nickname as Argyll Major David Wilson – ‘Chuckles’ – though for the opposite reason: While Wilson was perennially cheerful, Green had been so dubbed, in New Guinea, for his apparent inability to smile.15 His men dubbed him simply, ‘The Boss’.
3 RAR’s second-in-command was a louder and fiercer figure, Major Bruce ‘Ferg’ Ferguson. He had known Green in the Second World War, and like Green, had not graduated from the Royal Military Academy at Duntroon. ‘He was very experienced, he had gone away in the first convoy and seen a lot of war,’ said Butler. ‘He had a very brusque manner and used to terrorise subalterns.’ Some – not all – soldiers liked him. ‘Ferguson was steely, but knew all Diggers by their nicknames,’ said Robertson. Ferguson also had a whimsical side that was, perhaps, typical of the 1950s Australian Army. The battalion had adopted a little black terrier – named, in laconic style, ‘Dog’ – which took its place on parade every Monday morning. ‘Ferg would go along the parade and this little dog was in rank, and he would always walk around this little dog and inspect it,’ said Robertson. ‘Nobody ever commented.’
Headquarters Company Commander O’Dowd, was another ex-ranker cut from similar cloth. A Fremantle native, he has under-educated, having ‘gone out to earn a living at fourteen’ and been gold mining when the Second World War broke out. He had fought in the Western desert – where he was wounded in the lung – then New Guinea, and been promoted to warrant officer before his commission. ‘He was a man’s man, a very capable soldier,’ said Gallaway. ‘No bullshit about him, he talked to you straight; if you stepped out of line he’d hit you; he’d have you for breakfast!’
While 3 RAR’s company-level officers such as O’Dowd were the Second World War veterans, the subalterns were inexperienced Duntroon graduates. For men like Butler and the Mortar Platoon’s Lieutenant Phillip Bennett, serving under such thrusting commanders – and commanding highly experienced K Force volunteers – was a challenging prospect.
Many, many 3 RAR men were country boys, outdoorsmen from the Australian bush who had led hard-scrabble childhoods. Sergeant Reg Bandy of C Company was one such: Born and bred on a farm north of Perth, he and a mate tried to enlist in the Navy at the age of seventeen for sartorial reasons: ‘I was attracted to the Navy, everyone wore bell bottoms!’ Told he would have to wait for two months, he joined the Army instead. He almost made it to the Navy during the war, serving in an amphibious group in New Guinea for three years.
Younger men without war experience wanted it. Sniper Robertson was a volunteer whose father had fought at Gallipoli and whose elder brother had fought in the Middle East in the Second World War; Robbie himself joined up in 1945, underage, but was found out, so rejoined officially in 1946. A crack shot – he used to shoot rabbits in the bush – he had come second in the Queen’s Medal Marksmanship competition, so joined the battalion sniper section, where much of his time was spent as the CO’s bodyguard.
Twenty-four-year-old Brisbane native Mick Servos was typical of the K Force men shipping out to Japan in that he had served in the Second World War, but was untypical in that he had seen no action; he had been too young to go overseas. Two brothers had been killed in the war and he ‘wanted to do some fighting on their behalf’ so volunteered, though he knew nothing of Korea. Raised in an orphanage – ‘it was good training for the army; I could survive half starved and I was independent’– Servos considered himself tough, but found his new section mates tougher: ‘They were mainly ex-NCOs and warrant officers, all ex-Middle East and New Guinea,’ he said. ‘I had to learn in a bit of a hurry!’
Servos was not the only man impressed by the fighting quality of the new intake. ‘They were gung ho sorts of people, they relished the thought of getting back into the army,’ said Stan Connelly, a young regular from Melbourne. ‘I can only say that we young guys who formed most of the battalion respected their experience and looked up to them.’
One such – who has been described as ‘a stone-cold killer’ though he had a gentler interest in model railways – was the Second World War veteran Private Len Opie. In Australia, a depot NCO had jeered, ‘When you go up there, you’ll be on the Imperial Palace Guard,’ referring to 3 RAR’s Japanese ceremonial role. ‘We’re not going up there,’ Opie replied. ‘We’re going to Korea to fight.’ Opie’s enthusiasm and talent for combat would soon astonish even fellow Diggers.
The flood of K Force men bought 3 RAR (unlike the Argylls and Middlesex) fully up to strength and the raw material was excellent. ‘There was no conscription or National Service, so it was a pretty reliable and well-trained battalion,’ said Bennett. ‘You don’t see too many of those.’ Still, there was little time to prepare for war, and the sudden reinforcement meant that many men did not know each other or their officers. Green had a major task to gel his unit into a cohesive force.
Ceremonial duties were ditched, tactical exercises conducted. On 21 September, the battalion got a taste of Green’s single-mindedness. At the end of the exercise, a vehicle convoy arrived to return the men to barracks. The CO ordered it to depart; cursing Diggers marched 20 miles to base, arriving at midnight.16 On 23 September – the day 27th Brigade was attacking over the Naktong – General Robertson ordered Green to prepare to deploy to Korea.17 What was not clear, however, was whether 3 RAR’s would-be warriors would have a war to fight. Their troopship, the Aiken Victory, departed Japan on 27 September. At 21:00, an announcement was piped over the tannoy: A broadcast from MacArthur, finishing with, ‘All organised resistance has ceased.’18
On 28 September, in Pusan, the Diggers landed to the now-customary welcome of marching band and schoolgirl choir. ‘The CO was given a wreath of flowers by a Korean girl; he passed it to the second-in-command on his left, who then passed it just as quickly to the adjutant, who passed it to the RSM,’ recalled the Intelligence Officer, Melbourne native and Duntroon graduate Lieutenant Alf Argent. ‘As there was nobody else in the line, he was left holding it – to the amusement of us watching from above on the ship.’
On 30 September, 3 RAR concentrated in Taegu, where Coad travelled to welcome them. Australian soldiers have not always operated happily under British command, but Coad impressed. ‘He said simply, “I have always admired Australian soldiers and to have a battalion in my brigade is a dream come true,”’ Robertson, recalled. ‘He was a bloke you would follow down the barrel of a cannon – he would not have to look over his shoulder!’
Brigade HQ was relieved to have a third component. ‘Apart from the pleasure of having Australians in the Brigade, they are all the more welcome as they form the third battalion,’ 27th Brigade’s War Diary noted on the day. On 1 October, the Diggers joined the brigade on clearing operations around Songju, and Coad formally renamed his force ‘27th Commonwealth Brigade’.19 ‘When you have Cockneys and Scots and Aussies together, it’s a combination that’s hard to beat,’ said Diehard Ken Mankelow.
The Australians suffered their first casualties on 3 October. ‘These Aussies drove a carrier into the minefield,’ said Don Barrett. ‘They were a bit careless.’ Two men were killed, but at least one Digger proved to have a robust attitude to the loss. ‘A big Aussie came up and said, “Platoon commander got his bloody head blown off!”’ Barrett recalled.
The new arrivals immediately impressed the British soldiers. ‘The Aussies were incredibly tough, they were outstanding,’ said Second Lieutenant Owen Light. ‘They had no time at all for anyone who was not really pushing it; luckily for us, I don’t think we came under that category.’ Corporal Harry Young encountered his new comrades when an Australian patrol strode over to his position to exchange cigarettes. ‘They shouted, “Is that bloody Pommies up there?” and we shouted, “We’re not bloody Pommies!” The Aussies said, “Jesus Christ! It’s bloody Scotsmen!”’ he recalled. ‘The Diggers were great guys, great sense of humour. Were they good soldiers? By God – aye!’
With 3 RAR deployed, the hard men of the Korean War had landed.
* * *
27th Brigade received orders to move up to Seoul on 4 October; 3 RAR were first, the Middlesex last. The bulk of the men would fly from Taegu to Kimpo; the brigade transport would travel the 260 miles by road.
The road trip proved painful. In rural South Korea, there were virtually no metalled roads, but tracks of compressed dirt raised on bunds above the paddies. With most local transport being ox carts, the roadsides crumbled under the unfamiliar pressure of UNC convoys, creating hours of work for US engineers, who reinforced the shoulders with truckloads of stones.
27th Brigade’s echelon and support vehicles had arrived from Hong Kong – and 3 RAR had brought theirs from Japan – though the brigade would still rely on US transport for battalion lift. The most notable vehicles were the Bren gun carriers, light armoured personnel carriers used by the mortar and machine gun platoons that resembled large tin cans on tracks. There were also three-ton Bedford trucks. ‘Our three tonners had only two tyres at the rear carrying all the load; the Americans two-and-a-half-ton GMC trucks had eight tyres,’ said REME Captain Jeffes. ‘Their weight spread over the road so the thing held, but when our three tonners went over the edge of the road the road collapsed and they rolled over.’
The convoys halted at nights, sending out patrols and posting sentries against partisan attack. Diehard Edgar Green was sleeping in the rear of the Middlesex ammunition truck when he was woken by multiple explosions. The ammunition truck roared off, with Green believing that they were under guerilla attack. In fact, partisans had cached ammunition under a timber pile the men had lit for a bonfire. The ammunition had been ignited by the heat.
There were lighter moments. Roy Vincent, with the Argyll mortars, was amused to see one of the Australian carriers: Diggers had filled their vehicle with looted fowl. Further up, they passed a US truck convoy loaded with C-rations. An Australian leaped onto its tailboard, and flung boxes of the rations out to passing carriers. The long crawl up the peninsula would take a full week.
Meanwhile, foot elements were flying from Taegu to Kimpo. Waiting Diggers were astonished when the tail boom of one aircraft – a C119 ‘Flying Boxcar’ – dropped off as it landed in front of them, trailing behind in a flurry of sparks and smoke. When the aircraft halted, the crew hurled open hatches and abandoned plane. Fortunately, it failed to ignite.20
Diehards entering the planes were handed parachutes and told to belt them on. Aircrew tightened straps. ‘They said, “If we get hit, we drop the tail off and you run off the end and pull the ripcord!”’ recalled Barrett. The Middlesex did not know what to think but had brought their own fortification: canned beer. ‘They had (glassless) windows in the plane, and we found you could fit the empty cans through the portholes, and down onto Korea,’ Barrett said. The flight proved uneventful.
One by one, the aircraft disgorged 27th Brigade at Kimpo, Seoul’s airfield. Officers were impressed with the USAF: The transit of three battalions had been carried out without a single sheet of paperwork.21
Kimpo was being used to build up supplies for the next phase of operations. Filing off their aircraft, Diehards walked past a two-acre field of rations, piled about forty boxes high. ‘The front of the column went over and each man picked up a box,’ said Barrett. ‘We thought we were supposed to do this; the guards did nothing as we were strung with ammunition and grenades. Later, we found we had been looting!’ The US supply system was functioning with its customary profligacy. ‘Kimpo was good because there were plenty of Yanks and they would do anything for you, compared to the British Army when you get bloody nothing!’ said Spicer. Barrett acquired a sleeping bag and outer cover; he signed the chit, ‘Lance Corporal Montgomery.’ Officers drew .45s.
The brigade had already seen the human cost of war. At Kimpo, they would grasp its material cost, for the airfield was a vast scrap heap, littered with the carcasses of Russian and American aircraft. Among the acres of debris, corrugated iron huts and tents were sprouting. The brigade camped in this shantytown, building makeshift shelters and erecting two-man tents. The brigade could now have its first real rest.
A field sanitation unit was in operation, where Barrett had his first shower since arriving in Korea. The nights were turning chilly: Owen Light’s platoon dug up peat and lit Highland fires. The Argylls received a visit from the 8th Army commander General Walton Walker. ‘He talked about all the things we had done as a good general should – he was well briefed,’ Light said. ‘He seemed kind – a very sound chap.’
US marines, veterans of Inchon and Seoul, were in residence. ‘They were jolly nice chaps and, I reckon, very, very good soldiers,’ Major Dennis Rendell, the former paratrooper, said. ‘We had a tremendous party with them and all got sick on their rye whiskey and peanut butter sandwiches.’ One over-indulgent officer subsequently required resuscitation with an oxygen bottle filched from a wrecked plane.22
That was not the only cannibalised equipment. For his Company HQ, Rendell chose a wrecked cargo aircraft which, it was found, had its toilet intact. With field ablution facilities usually consisting of a cat-hole or, at best, a piece of crate straddling a slit trench, Rendell had the throne removed and secured to the back of his company jeep. Word of the innovation spread, bringing Rendell an unexpected daily guest: ‘The CO always used to come and have a crap with us in the morning!’ Rendell recalled. Whether Diehards saluted Man while he carried out his morning duty is unrecorded.
Green, meanwhile, was confronted with a disciplinary problem: Seven Diggers had deserted. It is a telling comment on 3 RAR that these men did not depart to escape combat; they had upped sticks to join the action. Bored at the brigade, they had travelled north to join the US First Cavalry Division, on clearing operations on the Imjin River, 30 miles north of Seoul. The men were welcomed by the Americans. Dubbing themselves ‘Warrior Section’, their presence was considered newsworthy and was widely reported.23Word got back to battalion. Desertion in war is a crime: A trio of Australian MPs arrived from Japan to deal with the miscreants. Green was at his CP shaving when the MPs, all spit and polish, appeared. Green took one look and ordered them out of his area. The guilty Diggers were fined, and reintegrated.24 There was a precedent: In the Middle East in the Second World War, a similar situation had occurred. ‘Green would have been familiar with that situation,’ said O’Dowd.
Some men hitched rides from Kimpo into the part-ruined capital. The dead had not been cleared. ‘The North Koreans had shot all the public servants, and then the South Koreans had shot another bunch, there were people lined up and shot everywhere,’ said Sergeant Reg Bandy. ‘It was pretty stenchy.’
Major John Willoughby, with a group of Middlesex officers, was impressed by the great, grey capitol building, but could not help noticing its ‘backdrop of exceedingly hostile mountains’. They found the city’s best hotel, the colonial-era Chosin. ‘Matronly Victorian in its furnishings, it has already been taken over by US Army senior management,’ wrote Willoughby. ‘With the insignia of majors on our shoulders, we entered without challenge. The heavily padded armchairs took us by surprise … we bounced like children in pure delight.’ Starved of information, the officers dived into periodicals. ‘Time Magazine offered the most authoritative guide to future events,’ Willoughby mused. ‘There is much doubt as to whether the crossing of the 38th parallel as an invasion of North Korea might constitute a political transgression exceeding the UN warrant.’25
The future course of operations was unclear. The NKPA had been crushed, the South liberated, but Kim Il-sung remained at large, his state remained intact, his army was regrouping. Would – should? – the UNC strike north and finish the job? This was the question being debated in Seoul and Tokyo, Washington and New York, London and Canberra. The outcome of their debates would also be of tremendous interest to Kim’s jittery clique in Pyongyang, Stalin in the Kremlin and the guerilla strategist who presided over the great nation at the heart of Asia – Mao Tse-tung.
While statesmen mulled the future course of events, one UNC unit was already operating north – far north – of the 38th parallel.
* Nearly four decades later, Todd would read that the operation had, in fact, been a success. The raid was designed not as a reconnaissance, but to divert enemy attention from Inchon.
* Today, the high ground is Freedom Park – complete with a statue of MacArthur.
* Family ties remain punishable in North Korea today: Political criminals’ families are incarcerated in labour and re-education camps alongside the transgressors themselves.