Brian Catchpole. History Today. November 1998.
Major-General A.J.H. Cassels, commander of the First Commonwealth Division created on July 28th, 1951, received the directive:
The role of the force under your command is, as an integral part of the United Nations forces, to act in operations in Korea, designed to restore international peace and security in the area.
Composed of contingents from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India, the new infantry division incorporated the battalions of the 25th Canadian Brigade, the 28th British Commonwealth Brigade and the 29th British Independent Brigade, plus their supporting arms and services. It joined the ten Republic of Korea (ROK) divisions and seven US divisions that were holding the line in Korea under the overall command of Lieutenant General James A. Van Fleet of the 8th US Army.
United Nations troops had experienced several changes of role in the eleven months following the North Korean invasion of South Korea of June 25th, 1950. At that time South Korea was a ward of the United Nations, created after Soviet and American troops had divided the former Japanese colony into two occupation zones separated by the 38 [degrees] Parallel. UN efforts to hold elections in the Soviet zone had failed. Consequently, the Republic of Korea was formed in the South in 1948 under President Syngman Rhee, with its capital at Seoul. This was mirrored in the North by the creation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea led by Kim II Sung with its capital at Pyongyang. Soviet troops departed in 1948, their US counterparts withdrawing the following year. Border incidents, though, between the two Koreas had occurred throughout 1949-50, culminating in the invasion of the South by the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) in June.
The invasion left the UN Security Council in a unique situation. The Soviet delegate, Jakob Malik, was boycotting the Council because it refused to grant Communist China membership. When the UN ordered the NKPA to withdraw from South Korea, Malik was absent and unable to exercise his veto. The following day the Council agreed to:
…furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore international peace and security in the area.
Sixteen nations promised aid. A Security Council resolution of July 8th made General Douglas MacArthur supreme commander of UN forces in Korea.
Though hemmed in by NKPA troops around Pusan, the UN forces succeeded in passing them at Inchon in September in a clever amphibious operation. After liberating Seoul, the UN crossed the 38 [degrees] Parallel. As they advanced they heard rumours that Chinese troops had moved into North Korea, though no one had actually seen them. In tact, 250,000 Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV), as the fighting Chinese were known, were lying in wait, hidden from the eyes of UN reconnaissance aircraft. Mao Tse-tung had already warned he would resist any ‘imperialist’ army threatening China’s frontiers. By Christmas 1950 his CPV had thrown the UN out of North Korea; in the new year they recaptured Seoul and then suddenly, in the midst of a bitter Korean winter, their advance stalled. General Matthew B. Ridgway, who replaced MacArthur in April 1951, pushed back the CPV north of the 38 [degrees] Parallel and ordered his troops to halt and prepare for a static war.
Thus the war of movement that had swung back and forth across the 38 [degrees] Parallel during 1950-51 had now been replaced by fixed battle lines along the hills of central Korea. While ‘peace’ talks at Kaesong and then at Panmunjom continued acrimoniously over the next two years, fighting men on both sides became the victims of political procrastination. The killing went on amid complex defensive positions constructed by the UN forces, the CPV and the NKPA.
Both sides were soon forced to abandon plans for major attacks and spectacular advances. Instead, on the orders of their political masters they settled on the acquisition of ‘real estate’—strategic points that overlooked enemy positions. These were steep-sided hills, varying in height between 300 and 3,000 feet, with complex ridge and valley systems. For most of the year, vines and scrub covered the hillsides. The valleys below were permanently wet, boggy, paddy fields with little hillocks that afforded good cover. This was no-man’s-land and in winter a most unhealthy area for the numerous fighting and reconnaissance patrols that characterised the war of 1951-53.
In September 1951, Cassels was ordered to cross the Imjin River and, in company with the rest of the US 1st Corps, advance between 6-8,000 yards to capture key heights already held by the Chinese. This proved to be the first and last assault by an infantry division in the history of the British Commonwealth armies. Coded Operation Commando, it opened with rapid advances by the 25th Canadian Brigade, after which, with support from New Zealand artillery and South African F-51 Mustangs, the Commonwealth Division attained all its objectives in a battle spanning October 3rd to the 8th.
The infantry who captured the heights of Kowang San (also known as Point 355 or Little Gibraltar) and Maryang San (Points 217 and 317), the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (RAR), the 1st Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers and the 1st Battalion King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, had taken 420 casualties in the process and hoped the sacrifice was worth it. In fact, this action, in company with major assaults by two adjacent US divisions, had straightened the line called Jamestown, defeated the Chinese 191st Division, made an enemy counter-attack more difficult and eased the logistical support of front-line troops in the coming Korean winter. Nevertheless, the Chinese were determined to recover these heights and on November 4th sent in two infantry regiments against Point 317 under cover of shells and mortar bombs that fell on the Commonwealth positions at a rate of 6,000 an hour. Chinese burt) guns and British stens chattered muzzle to muzzle, while grenades exploded in narrow trenches. The hand-to-hand fighting reached a climax when Private William Speakman, later awarded the Victoria Cross for his efforts, defended the last outpost on Maryang San before falling back badly wounded. Despite the loss of this height, the Division held Kowang San and its approaches. The Chinese continued to shell the front for the rest of the month and tried to break through. Failure forced them to accept stalemate for the rest of the winter.
By then the Commonwealth Division was holding a front of 8.7 miles. It was a crucial position for it controlled the traditional invasion route from the North to Seoul. Cassels placed two brigades of six battalions on the front line. These were charged with performing patrols, mortar bombardment, tank and artillery gunfire—designed to harass the enemy and capture prisoners—and to strengthen their own positions with barbed wire, sandbags and minefields. Held back in reserve were the three battalions of the 3rd Brigade. For the winter of 1951-52 they were all equipped with weapons from the Second World War: No. 4 Lee-Enfield rifles, bren-guns, stens, Vickers machine-guns, 3″ mortars and the occasional .50 calibre Browning. Their artillery support was the 25-pounder. When fired from the reverse slope it encountered the problem of crest clearance, solved by the introduction of the 4.2″ mortar. Their tanks were the new Centurions, mostly used hull down at the top of a hill to blast Chinese positions with their 20-pounder shells.
As the damp cold and everchanging temperatures (often dropping to below zero at night) from November to March make the Korean winter one of the most unpleasant in the world, the troops received special winter sleeping bags and clothing. String vests, mittens, warm pullovers, socks and special boots with gauze inserts and thick rubber soles; a windproof jacket and trousers worn beneath a hooded parka. Jungle hats and balaclavas were popular; steel helmets were not worn until September 1952 when ‘flak jackets’ (nylon armoured vests) were issued for patrols. These garments contrasted with those of the Chinese who wore, over their summer outfits, quilted cotton uniforms, well padded against the cold. They had no steel helmets but favoured heavy fur or cotton hats with big ear flaps. Chinese footwear usually consisted of a pair of rubber-soled lightweight laceless cotton shoes, useful for silent patrol work at night.
Most Chinese attacks, usually at company strength, took place at night accompanied by heavy artillery fire and bugle calls. The Commonwealth response was to hold position, disperse the enemy by artillery or by air strikes and then retaliate with offensive patrols (‘active defence’). However, the Chinese were courageous, skilful soldiers, adept at honeycombing Korean hillsides with deep, underground shelters. These were several storeys deep and hid personnel, 76mm guns, ammunition and stores. Clever siting of foxholes and superbly camouflaged reverse slope gun positions made these hills and their bunkers virtually impregnable.
The Chinese, moreover, had an excellent intelligence service and always knew details of the Commonwealth battalions facing them. It was disconcerting for a relief battalion to be welcomed by name from Chinese loudspeakers and then to be asked if it had any record requests! Chinese leaflet bombs were dropped, bearing invitations to enjoy a cup of tea and urging Commonwealth troops to stop fighting for ‘American paymasters’. At Christmas, cards and peace dove brooches, banners and miscellaneous propaganda were pinned onto the Commonwealth wire defences. These assaults on divisional morale always misfired. Propaganda items were collected as souvenirs while the china peace doves were pinned to balaclavas to show that the wearer had been at the sharp end of the war.
However, the morale of the Commonwealth fighting men was never neglected. A brigade spent three months in the line and one-and-a-half months in reserve. Every effort was made to ensure that front line troops remained warm, were well-fed (usually with American C-7 rations I, and provided with modest supplies of Japanese Asahi beer and an evening rum ration. They were encouraged to keep their dugouts or ‘hoochies’ dry and were allowed to use potentially dangerous space heaters or ‘chuffers’ whose chimneys often projected out of the ground. Behind the main line of resistance, units busied themselves with weapon training, tactical exercises, parades, film screenings and ENSA shows that brought the troops welcome celebrities such as Carole Carr and Eve Boswell. National newspapers were flown in to the men, who also had their own divisional newspaper, Crown News. All ranks were entitled to three days rest and recuperation leave near Inchon and to three days at the Ebisu hotel in Tokyo once during their tour.
It was policy to rotate infantry battalions through Korea to prevent them from enduring two winters. Thus the composition of the Commonwealth Division was constantly changing. Sixteen British infantry battalions served in Korea, together with Canadian and Australian battalions. Most arrived by troopship, disembarking at Pusan, then one of the busiest harbours in the Far East.
New arrivals were immediately struck by the all-pervading smell, arising from the Korean habit of manuring crops with night soil. As the troopship berthed, lines of Korean girls waved the appropriate national flag and a chrome-helmeted all-black GI band played the ‘St Louis Blues’ with a swinging beat. Soldiers fell out on the nearby railway platforms, surrounded by webbing, kitbags and rifles. Live ammunition was issued, as Communist guerrillas often attacked troop trains en route to Seoul. US trucks took the troops on to Britannia Camp where they received their frontline equipment. Alter this, Canadian trucks transported them to the reverse slopes of the main line of resistance where they relieved the outgoing battalion. If they had inherited the aftermath of a Chinese bombardment they would have to repair wire, telephone lines, weapon pits. bunkers and hoochies, ensuring that their holes in the ground were roofed with concrete lintels and stout timber. well-sandbagged to protect against further Chinese shells and mortar bombs. Most of this repair work went on at night and under Chinese shellfire. It was some comfort to know that casualties would be swiftly evacuated by the Indian 60th Field Ambulance and its helicopters to NORMASH, the Norwegian Mobile Advanced Surgical Hospital, located just behind the front line.
The 1st Battalion The Black Watch arrived in the hot and dusty summer of 1952. General Cassels had gone, succeeded on September 7th, by General M.M.A.R. West. The Black Watch received orders in October to relieve the 7th US Marines defending the hill known as the Hook, the key to the defence of the Samichon valley and the approach to Seoul. The US Marines had defended it, suffering heavy casualties in the first battle of the Hook. The defences they handed over to the Black Watch on November 14th had been destroyed and the battalion, aided by Royal Engineers and Korean labourers, worked frantically for four days until dusk on November 18th, when the Chinese resumed the attack. Their relentless attacks in full moonlight, enhanced by searchlights mounted on the Royal Inniskilling Dragoons’ Centurions, tested the defences to the full. Totally exhausted, the Black Watch were relieved by the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry who began rebuilding the shattered defences facing no-man’s-land.
General West insisted that standing, reconnaissance and fighting patrols became the norm from November 1952 to January 1953 in order to secure information and capture prisoners. He also reduced the time brigades spent in the line to eight weeks, with four weeks in reserve. Daylight raids by both sides, as well as night patrols, meant that the Commonwealth forces were now experiencing a subaltern’s war, different from any other, including the First World War. Each patrol now had a specific objective—the Canadians had suffered unacceptable casualties in June the previous year, partly because of lack of adequate preparation. Patrol members, normally confined to bunkers and hoochies, now limbered up with cross-country runs in reserve areas. Precision plans were made in great secrecy. Each patrol carefully rehearsed its objectives.
Once in no-man’s-land patrols were controlled by radio, their position monitored by artillery and mortar units should such support be needed. Patrols were generally successful though prisoners were always at a premium as most of those captured during 1951-53 swiftly and mysteriously died, to the dismay and frustration of their captors.
Occasionally the unexpected happened, as when D Company of the 1st Battalion Royal Fusiliers (70 per cent National Servicemen) mounted Operation Pimlico on the night of November 24th, 1952. The objective was to capture a prisoner, kill some Chinese and destroy enemy bunkers. Perhaps news of their plans had been leaked to the enemy- Korean labourers sometimes crossed the lines. The twenty-one men of 12 Platoon, charged with making the assault, found themselves surrounded by Chinese firing burp guns and hurling concussion grenades. Fusilier Hodkinson manned the surviving wireless set, reporting back the situation and directing fire from New Zealand guns until his position was overrun. Seven wounded Fusiliers survived, but in this and the follow-up actions to recover bodies, twenty-two were killed.
Such was war for the Commonwealth sector until January 31st, 1953. On that day the Division, in action since its inception in 1951, went into Corps Reserve and did not return to the line until April 8th, 1953. That spring the Black Watch were reacquainted with the Hook; Chinese loudspeakers blared out the strains of ‘Loch Lomond’ and, on May 7th, enemy infantry resumed the attack. Once more the Black Watch, soon due to leave Korea, held the Hook. They were relieved on May 12th, 1953, by the 1st Battalion the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment—’the Dukes’—predominantly National Servicemen from Yorkshire. Four nights later the Chinese attacked again and it fell to the Dukes, backed by the 1st Battalion The King’s Regiment, to fight the British army’s most intensive infantry battle since 1945.
The battalion was responsible for the defence of three other positions as well as their two main defence areas on the Hook: Point 146 and two on nearby ‘Sausage’, in all stretching some 2,000 yards. According to intelligence reports supplied by a Chinese soldier who surrendered voluntarily, each one would be assaulted by a specially trained Chinese infantry company. These attacks would be heralded by unprecedented artillery barrages. In fact, on the night of May 19th the Chinese sent in one or two probing sections immediately before the first of 1,500 shells bombarded the Hook. Commonwealth artillery responded and General West brought in the Royal Fusiliers as back-up to the Dukes. Reconnaissance patrols furnished details of caves and reentrant bunkers in which the Chinese could hide prior to an attack. The answer was to dig deeper refuge tunnels and to wire in depth all possible approaches to the Hook, a task accomplished by the Assault Pioneers. Behind the Hook, West assembled the 25-pounders of his Royal Artillery Field Regiments, the famous American ‘Persuaders’ capable of firing 2,000lb shells and the guns of the Turkish Brigade. To the north, he stationed the 3rd Battalion RAR.
Then came the waiting, punctuated by the daily ‘stonk’ of at least 2,000 shells fired by the Chinese. Everyone knew that the enemy had assembled for an attack but no one expected the sheer speed of the Chinese advance, so swift that it actually bypassed a Duke’s standing patrol in no-man’s-land on the night of May 28th. For a moment the enemy shelling ceased as the Chinese closed with the Dukes. Desperate gun fights and hand-to-hand combat persisted until just after midnight on May 29th, when the Chinese had had enough. As the Official History put it:
Some time on or after 00.30 on the 29th the enemy ability to sustain offensive action fell away.
Chinese calls for help were intercepted on the radio monitors, but their reserves, lacerated by West’s artillery fire, were unable even to remove their dead. Perhaps a thousand had been killed—the Dukes found the bodies of thirty Chinese soldiers hanging on the wire. Twenty Dukes were dead and 106 wounded. On their flank, the Turks and US Infantry had lost 150 lives.
That morning, amid a resumption of Chinese shelling, the Royal Fusiliers moved up to relieve the Dukes who now left that battered hilltop where four Chinese assaults during 1952-53 had all failed. The 1st King’s made one more disastrous raid on Chinese positions, reminiscent of the Fusiliers’ Operation Pimlico, but the last Commonwealth forces to engage the enemy on the Hook were the 1st Battalion Durham Light Infantry and the 2nd Battalion RAR. A Chinese bombardment preceded determined infantry attacks, mown down by Australian machine guns and New Zealand artillery on July 26th and 27th. The last New Zealand shells were fired at 05.30, enveloping a little rise recently occupied by Chinese troops. The smoke cleared and the Chinese were still there. Was it worth another infantry battle to regain it? It was felt not, as a truce was imminent. On July 27th, 1953 the chief Communist negotiator, General Nam II, arrived in Panmunjom and entered the hall specially built for the talks. He and General Harrison, chief UN negotiator, signed the truce at 10.00 hours, witnessed by Major-General West, GOC 1st Commonwealth Division, and by Brigadier Allard (Canada), Brigadier Wilton (Australia) and Brigadier Park (New Zealand). The truce became effective at 22.00 hours.
When the news reached the front line, the patrols in no-man’s-land were called in; 20 Field Regiment Royal Artillery projected red, white and blue high air-burst coloured smoke and then fired the last round into the Chinese lines. Mortars loosed off Very lights, buglers sounded the Cease Fire and Last Post. Here and there Chinese and Commonwealth troops fraternised, though most were already busy dismantling telephone wires and loading ammunition and heavy weapons on trucks.
The front line now became the official line of demarcation and each side withdrew two kilometres to create a Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). For the Commonwealth Division, this meant a return to its May 1951 positions along the River Imjin. The hills where so many had fought and died were abandoned to become part of the DMZ. The Division then fortified its new location against a possible renewal of the war. The Indian 60th Field Ambulance left to join the 190th Indian Infantry Brigade, newly arrived to form the Indian Custodian Force to supervise the DMZ and maintain the truce. The problem relating to the exchange of prisoners of war, which had bedevilled the peace talks of 1951-53, was settled and the ‘Big Switch’ began on August 5th, and went on during September. The Commonwealth Division was gradually decreased in numbers until in 1957 the last battalion, The Royal Sussex Regiment, sailed from Inchon.
By then much had changed in the world. Stalin was dead; and the People’s Republic of China had emerged as a world power. Panmunjom and, later, the Geneva talks failed to produce a peace treaty. So the peace in Korea hung on the Panmunjom truce for the next forty-five years, the longest armistice in history.
Had it all been worthwhile? Britain had originally intervened in 1950 because, in the words of Labour prime minister Clement Attlee, ‘the fire in Korea may burn our house down’. Twenty-three countries eventually contributed to the United Nations’ resistance to Communist aggression in Korea. The 1st Commonwealth Division had made an important contribution to preserving the teritorial integrity of South Korea even if be United Nations had failed in its original intention of uniting the two Koreas in peace and security. South Korea survived, if not as a democratic state, then at least as a state, in constant fear of further Communist aggression, that aspired to democracy. This it achieved by the 1990s, with the first free elections. For this the men who wear the two medals awarded for service in the Korean War may be justly proud.