The Korean War (47 page)

Varley was one of the lucky escapers. Many of the wounded and survivors of the Ulsters who crowded on to the tank hulls for that last desperate ride out of the valley were shot off as the Centurions drove back through the Chinese. On the radio set, the retiring tank crews heard their doctor, left behind them on the road with his charges, reporting bleakly: ‘I am about to be captured . . . I have been captured.’ It was now a race between the retreating British, struggling along the road and over the hills, and a mass of thousands of Chinese, moving with astonishing speed across country, unmoved by the losses inflicted upon them at every turn by tank gunfire.

Private Henry O’Kane of D Company had scarcely fired a shot during the preceding days, which he remembered chiefly for the confusion of moving from position to position every few hours, apparently without reason. As the withdrawal lapsed into a chaotic struggle for personal survival amid the milling rush of Chinese, he was hit in the leg by a mortar fragment. He collapsed into a ditch by the roadside for a moment. Then he unbuckled his equipment, threw it down, and limped along the road until somebody pushed him up on to a tank already crowded with men. He lost consciousness, then woke to find himself once more in a ditch beside the Centurion, which was slewed disabled across the paddy. Chinese soldiers scuttled up and thrust pole charges through its track guards. Those of the British who could still move, now ran. Those who could not, such as O’Kane, lay exhausted as the battle lapped past them. Another Ulsterman put a field dressing on his leg, and gave him a swig of rum. The sound of gunfire receded, while Chinese infantry ran heedless past, still intent on pursuit. At last a Chinese officer wearing a wooden Mauser holster stopped, gazed down on the motionless huddle of men, nursing their pain, and said in careful English: ‘I think it is a good fight.’ O’Kane and the other walking wounded were gathered and led away, hands on their heads. They never saw the stretcher cases again. They were given ‘safe-conduct passes’, declaring that they had been ‘liberated by peace-loving peoples’. Then they passed into the bleak cycle of
marches, makeshift political lectures, weary pauses in peasant huts, and the diet of sorgum, peanuts and beanflower that was their introduction to captivity.

The survivors of 29 Brigade reached safety behind the protection of a blocking position established by the US 25th Regimental Combat Team. Word was passed from the 8th Hussars to Brigade Headquarters: ‘Everybody’s come down who’s coming.’ The road back from the Imjin lay strewn with the wreckage of the British retreat: wrecked vehicles, abandoned equipment, bodies and shell cases. Fire still flickered from the remains of one of the abandoned Centurions, demolished to prevent its use by the enemy. Tom Brodie seemed vastly relieved, and frankly surprised, to see Gerald Rickord and the Ulsters B Company who had provided the rearguard. They were told that they must expect to fight another battle, that they must begin to dig in again at once. ‘It was odd to hear that old clink of picks and shovels going again,’ said Rickord. But late that night, fresh orders came. It was recognised that the brigade was exhausted. Sufficient American forces were now in the line to hold it against any new Chinese pressure. The men were coaxed and prodded a few miles further down the track, to a rendezvous with transport. Then they were driven away, overwhelmed with relief at their own survival, to recover from the ordeal.

For one group, of course, there was no escape from the ridge above the Imjin: the survivors of 1st Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment. Attempts to resupply them by air achieved little – most of the drops fell outside their perimeter. Since the first day, helicopters had been unable to reach them to evacuate wounded. Contact with the outside world was fading as their last wireless batteries died. They knew at 6 a.m. on the morning of the twenty-fifth that they were doomed to death or captivity. At that hour, Brigade informed Colonel Carne’s headquarters that the other battalions were
withdrawing, that no further attempts to break through to their rescue were possible. Brodie could only tell Carne to stand his ground. ‘I understand the position quite clearly,’ said the colonel. ‘But I must make it clear to you that my command is no longer an effective fighting force. If it is required that we shall stay here, in spite of this, we shall continue to hold.’ Carne left the radio set to tell his adjutant: ‘You know that armour/infantry column that’s coming from 3 Div to relieve us?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Well, it isn’t coming.’

‘Right, sir.’
⁶

The natural comradeship of war is surpassed by the bond between men who find themselves doomed to share disaster. Colonel Fred Carne was a taciturn, in the eyes of some, almost inarticulate officer who had never in his army career been regarded as a ‘high flier’, despite experience of commanding an infantry battalion in Burma in World War II. Yet Carne, with his pipe and unshakeable calm in the face of tragedy, assumed heroic stature on Gloucester Hill. Early that morning his adjutant, Captain Anthony Farrar-Hockley, met Carne coming down the hill with two regimental police, a driver, his pipe and a rifle, after a brutal little firefight.

‘What was all that about, sir?’

‘Oh, just shooing away some Chinese.’
⁷

Farrar-Hockley himself was an exceptionally tough, clever and ambitious officer who had enlisted under age in World War II and served as an airborne soldier. His ruthless single-mindedness and commitment to discipline did not make him universally beloved. Yet in the Imjin battle, he was able to show what the same uncompromising purpose and stubbornness could do to the Chinese. Farrar-Hockley it was, in the early dark hours of the 25th, who responded to the nerve-stretching bugles of the communists, gathering for yet another assault, by ordering Drum-Major Philip Buss to return their calls on his own bugle. The moment
when Buss stood at attention on the position, playing in succession ‘Reveille’, ‘Cookhouse’, ‘Defaulters’ and ‘Officers Dress For Dinner’ passed into the legend of the Imjin battle.

There were others: Sergeant-Major Jack Hobbs; Padre Sam Davies; Denis Harding; Guy Ward of 45 Field Regiment; Captain Bob Hickey, the doctor; and a rollcall of officers and other ranks whose names became familiar throughout the British Army. There are those who have claimed, since the war, that the ranks of the Gloucesters were filled with exceptionally keen and dutiful soldiers. This does the regiment no service. In reality, there were as many disgruntled reservists and brassed-off regulars on Gloucester Hill as in any other unit of 29 Brigade. It was this that made their fate and their performance the more moving: they were a typical, perhaps a little above average county battalion, who showed for the thousandth time in the history of the British Army what ordinary men, decently led, can achieve in a situation which demands, above all, a willingness for sacrifice.

Brodie left it to Carne’s discretion whether his battalion should attempt to break out; or whether, if this was impossible, they should surrender. Soon after 9.30 a.m. on 25 April, the colonel was informed by Brigade that within the hour he would lose all artillery support as 45 Field Regiment were compelled to pull out their guns. He gave the order to his company commanders to make for the British lines as best they could. Most of them had not eaten for forty-eight hours. When the men checked their ammunition, they found that each rifleman possessed just three rounds, the bren gunners a magazine and a half. They had begun the battle with more than fifty refills a magazine. ‘I’m afraid we shall have to leave the wounded behind,’ Carne told Bob Hickey. ‘Very well, sir,’ said the doctor. ‘I quite understand the position.’ Hickey and the chaplain, along with some of the medical staff, stayed with the eighty casualties on the position. ‘This looks like a holiday in Peking for some of us,’ remarked Padre Davies to the RAMC sergeant.
⁸
He and the others were taken prisoner soon after. Major Mike Harvey led the survivors of D Company by a circuitous route,
first north towards the river, then west and south again. They encountered only one group of Chinese, whom they killed. Thereafter, they survived intact until, two days later, they exposed themselves before a group of American tanks, which promptly opened fire, inflicting some casualties. When they at last identified themselves, Harvey and his thirty-nine men were carried in safety into the UN lines. They, alone of their battalion, came safe home.

Some men, too weary to face a desperate march in doubtful pursuit of freedom, lay down on the battalion position to await capture. The men of A, B and C Companies who set off directly southwards immediately encountered heavy Chinese machine-gun fire. It fell to Farrar-Hockley, of all men, to call on them to lay down their arms and surrender: ‘Feeling as if I was betraying everything that I loved and believed in, I raised my voice and called: “Stop!” ’
⁹
This did not prevent him from making three escape attempts in the days that followed.

Like many men that week, throughout the battle Major Guy Ward had sustained a curious conviction that in the end, ‘it would all be all right’. Even after the order was given to make for the British lines independently, he did not lose this faith. Then, as he walked, ‘I suddenly saw hundreds and hundreds of Gloucesters in a corner surrounded by Chinese. I thought: “Oh my God, here we go again.” ’ Guy Ward had been a prisoner of the Germans from 1941 to 1945. Colonel Carne, RSM Hobbs and a handful of others evaded capture for twenty-four hours. Then they, too, joined the rest of the battalion ‘in the bag’, where thirty more of them were yet to die. It was weeks before the survivors of 29 Brigade even knew that more than half the Gloucesters were alive and in enemy hands. A large part of Brigadier Brodie’s personal trauma stemmed from the conviction of himself and his staff that all but Major Harvey’s party had perished. ‘The Brigadier seemed shattered by the whole experience,’ said one of his officers.

The Imjin battle has been the subject of some controversy in the past thirty years. Men of the Ulsters and the Northumberland Fusiliers have been irked by the massive tide of publicity that
flowed over the Gloucesters in the days and years after the destruction of Carne’s battalion. They point out that the overwhelming majority of the Gloucesters’ casualties were taken prisoner – the battalion also suffered sixty-three killed and perhaps thrice as many wounded. It is invariably the case that decorations and eulogies are heaped upon the survivors of military disasters, to make both themselves and their nations better able to endure sadness and dismay, less likely to ask The Reason Why. There is a quality about ‘Last Stands’ which draws painters and poets. Intelligent soldiers are more inclined to demand, sceptically, whether it should have been necessary for any last stand to take place. In the cold accountancy of war and history there may be headlines to be extracted from defeat, but there is no virtue.

29 Brigade’s battle is unlikely to find a place in any manual of military instruction, except as an example of how not to hold a difficult position. If the brigade had been prepared for a big defensive action, its men had ample time to surround themselves with obstacles covered by fire, the first resorts of the infantryman in defence. They could have concentrated their forces either to cover the eastern or western passes through their sector. They had insufficient forces to do both. The communist attackers did not hold all the cards. They possessed ample mortars, which they used to great effect, but no air or artillery firepower. It is a remarkable tribute to the limitations of air support that, with the vast air forces at the disposal of the UN, tactical air strikes could not be used to more effect to break up the Chinese attacks. It was a tragedy – worse than that, it was a blunder somewhere in the UN chain of command – that the brigade was not pulled back from the Imjin positions as soon as the scale of the Chinese assault became clear. In the Korean campaign from the beginning of 1951 to the end, there was no other instance of the UN Command permitting a substantial force to be isolated and destroyed piecemeal over a period of days. Campaign histories attribute losses of 10,000 killed and wounded to the Chinese, against 1,000 29 Brigade casualties in the battle, around a quarter of the British front-line
strength. 169 of 850 Gloucesters mustered for rollcall with the brigade after the battle. The estimated communist loss figure is an arbitrary one, based upon the minimum that seemed credible to the British, given the weight of their own fire they saw take effect upon their enemies.

Major Rickord, the Ulsters’ acting CO, came away from the Imjin ‘feeling devastated’.

I believed that we had lost the battle, had suffered a disaster. But I was afterwards reassured that it was by no means a disaster. The morning after we came out, the soldiers were singing Irish songs, playing a banjo. I told the quartermaster to get them a bath and their green tropical uniforms. He said: ‘It’s much too cold for that.’ But I said – ‘No, go on, do it. It’ll make all the difference in the world to them to get a change of clothes.’ And forty-eight hours later, they were fit to fight again, which was a wonderful feeling. I think they felt very proud of the fight they had put up. We felt no particular animosity towards the Chinese. Indeed, I think we felt great respect, even liking for them. But the regiment’s old motto –
Quis Separabit
– was something we felt very strongly about.

The Northumberlands, the Belgians, the Gloucesters, the gunners and mortar crews would have said the same. If Rickord’s words might sound to a cynic like the bromides of a professional soldier, the sentiments are none the less powerful and valid for that. When all the sceptical comment has been made, when all the exaggerations of time and regimental pride have been discounted, the British can still reflect with pride that they broke one arm of the communist spring offensive in those three days on the Imjin. If it was always unlikely that the Chinese could have got through to Seoul, they might have expected at least to drive south further and faster, and at much lower cost. There were repeated instances in Korea of UN units crumbling remarkably easily in the face of pressure, giving ground which had to be regained later in bloody and painful counter-attack. On the Imjin, the Chinese discovered the price of meeting efficient, determined footsoldiers who cared little for the Cold War, for the glory of the United Nations or the survival of Syngman Rhee; but to whom the regiment, the unit, a man’s ‘oppo’ in the next trench, were everything. The most political army in the world encountered the least political – and was savagely mauled to gain its few sterile miles of rock and paddy. Across the breadth of the Korean front, Peking’s spring offensive had failed. Never again in the war did the communists mount an all-out assault which appeared to have the slightest prospect of strategic success.