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KOREA REVISITED - SERVING WITH THE UNITED NATIONS
A brief memory of fighting with the United Nations in 1953
by Major Gospatric Home.T.D.

I WAS A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD SCHOOLBOY IN Edinburgh when the Korean war broke out in 1949. Little did I imagine that four years later I would find myself serving there under the auspices of the United Nations.

In those days, two years compulsory national service was the norm for school leavers. Like the thousands of others I duly chose to join the Infantry and was commissioned as an officer into the Royal Fusiliers whose First Battalion was already serving in Korea.

A spell at its famous Headquarters in the Tower of London, a five-week voyage by troopship to Hong Kong was followed by a month of training young Fusiliers attached to the Dorset Regiment, before I was called forward in late May 1953 to fly to Japan and from there by boat and train to Seoul, Korea’s capital.

I happend to be sitting next to the Secretary to General West, the Commander of the Commonwealth Division, on the flight from Hong Kong to Japan and it was he who told me in a degree of confidence that a major Chinese assault on the key position of the hill with the somewhat sinister name of ‘the Hook’ was expected any day.

I arrived in Seoul after an overnight train journey from Pusan and was picked up by my Commanding Officer’s Driver in his jeep after lunch. Three hours later I was being greeted by Colonel Dick Stevens OBE and the Adjutant Captain John Parker in a reserve camp a few miles behind the front line and I was told that I would be commanding 2 Platoon in A Company under the command of Major Henry Hill.M.C.

All that first night the preliminary barrage on the Hook by the Chinese forces kept me awake and I would be dishonest if I did not admit to some fear and trepidation as I lay in my small tent. I met my Platoon the next morning and did my best to instil some confidence in them, but I knew that they were very well aware that as a reserve Battalion we could well be pitched into Battle of the Hook if the expected attack took place, and who did they have in command but a brand new officer who had only been in the country a few hours and who had never been near a front line.

That night the entire Battalion was taken forward in vast American trucks to man trenches on a ridge a mile or so behind the Hook which was held by the famous Yorkshire Regiment the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment best known as the ‘Dukes’.

We stood ready to be moved forward to counter attack the Chinese forces if the Dukes were unable to hold the position.

All we could do was to wait and watch while more shells landed on the Hook and its surrounding hills than apparently were fired in the entire Battle of the Somme. It was a terrifying introduction to all out war. Mercifully the Duke’s held the feature, and as dawn broke the firing died down and we returned to our reserve camp for breakfast. The last great battle of the Korean War was over.

Minutes later, we were told to be ready to go forward to relieve the Dukes in full daylight - an exceptional handover as we would at times be in full view of the enemy. A. Company was given the Hook itself to hold. I wondered whether my CO had forgotten that I was a complete novice but assumed that he knew that my Platoon Sergeant Harry Levy was an outstanding NCO who would back me up through thick and thin. As I led my platoon up the totally devasted hill, a real vision of a living hell, I met 2nd Lt Geoffrey Ingram and a small group of his platoon. They were seated on the rear slope in the open, looking so drained of colour and energy that they seemed like zombies. A quick introduction from Geoffrey to the layout of the platoon position and it was ours to hold what was left, for most of the trenches were filled in with rubble and the debris that follows such a massive bombardment.

We were fortunate as the Chinese were themselves too exhausted to attempt another attack. Their dead littered the hill and had to be removed under cover of darkness for the heat and humidity was already rotting their bodies and the stench was appalling.

With the help of our reserve company our Assault Pioneers and the Royal Engineers, the hill was made relatively defensible again while we stood-to through the night to ensure that no Chinese infiltrated through the enfeebled defenses. Unfortunately my Sergeant was badly wounded one night by phosphorous bombs and had to be flown to Japan, but by then I had grasped the essentials of my job. I served with him again years later in the Territorial Army.

As I look back some 55 years later, I wonder how I coped with that extraordinary change I had undergone so quickly from the civilisation of Hong Kong, a beautiful voyage through Japan’s inland sea in a small steamer, a first class railway carriage journey by night from Pusan to Seoul and then within 36 hours I was in the unreal surroundings of all-out war.

We were soon going out into no man’s land again patrolling to see what the enemy were up to and aiming to dominate the valley below and to keep the enemy from controlling the ground between our two positions. I met our Divisional Commander, General Alston Roberts West. as I showed him round my platoon position, and likewise both our brigade commanders. One Brigadier Wilton, later in his career a distinguished Australian General, the other being Brigadier Douglas Kendrew, also later a General and Governor General of Western Australia but at the time being the holder of no less than four DSO’s. Later I had tea with the neighbouring Turkish Company Commander and celebrated the end of Ramadan with him in great style. They had lost a huge number of their men in the battle of the Hook, I was struck how they were so much more phlegmatic about losing lives than we were.

New Zealand Gunners, Americans, S. Africans, Australians and Canadians from neighbouring defensive positions all came into our lives as the weeks went by. But perhaps most importantly was the boosting of each infantry platoon’s numbers with six young Korean soldiers. They were known as Katcoms for short which stood for Koreans attached to the Commonwealth Division. These 19-year-olds came from every strata of Korean society; simple sons of farmers, young fishermen and law graduates to name three of the occupations of my six. Their English was restricted and they were not allowed to go on patrol, a humane decision as they were terrified of being captured by their Northern foes.

For someone who had only once been overseas prior to this adventure, my exposure to people of so many nations at so young an age widened my knowledge remarkably. Thanks to the United Nations reacting so quickly to the crisis that the Korean War was they prevented its escalation into a world conflict.

I was in the front line for the third and last time when, on 27 July 1953, the cease fire was signed at Panmunjom. As it happened my Platoon position was on a hill well in front of the rest of my Company so I had the added support of a Centurion tank from the First Battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment under the command of Lt Micky Farmer. Unlike we infantrymen he could store Champagne in his tank and he kindly invited me to join him and his crew for a few glasses when the moment of peace came. I shall never forget listening to his much wider wireless communication system as friends from other units came on the line singing and celebrating.

That night we suffered the last of our 50 fatal casualties in the Royal Fusiliers from our year in this distant country of such great beauty. We held a memorial service about a week later at the beautifully kept United Nations Cemetery in Pusan. Led by our Chaplain the Revd Freddy Preston, MBE the whole battalion paraded and sang and prayed for their fallen comrades and their grieving families.

In 2004, I was privileged to play a small part in having a large memorial tablet erected on the exterior south wall of our Regimental Chapel at St Sepulchre’s Church in High Holborn, London. The names of our fallen were mainly Londoners from this famous London Regiment formed in 1685 to defend the Tower of London but there are also an Australian and two Koreans who were killed while serving with us.

It was truly a war fought by many nations to uphold the principles for which the United Nations was founded in London in 1946. I am proud to have been awarded the United Nations medal as I know are thousands of regular and national service men and women who served in all branches of the armed forces on land, sea and air in that distant country all those years ago.
Ends.