The Korean War E-Book

Stephen F Kelly

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 449

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

A dramatic and tragic episode in British military history that will soon not be part of living memory. More than 100,000 British troops fought in Korea between 1950 and 1953, of which just over 1,000 died, with a further 1,000 captured and held in atrocious conditions by the Chinese and North Koreans. At least half of those captured died in prison camps. More than 70 per cent of those who fought were teenagers doing National Service – poorly trained and ill-equipped. The Korean War: Memories of Forgotten British Heroes tells the story of these men in their own words. Most of the veterans are now advanced in age and there is a pressing need for them to tell their tale. So soon after the Second World War, this was a conflict Britain did not need, but she remained steadfast by the side of the Americans, fighting more than 6,000 miles away in a country barely anyone could point to on a map. Yet while we remember those conflicts in the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Korean War remains largely forgotten.

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to all the brave men (and women) who served in Korea and especially to those in this book.

First published 2013

This paperback edition published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Stephen F. Kelly, 2013, 2023

The right of Stephen F. Kelly to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 75249 402 9

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Call-Up

2. Welcome to War!

3. Life in the Trenches

4. News From Home

5. The Casualties of War

6. Prisoners of War

7. Welcome Home!

Conclusion

About the Author

Acknowledgements

There are numerous people I would like to thank for their help during the course of writing this book. First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to the British Korean Veterans Association. It performed a magnificent job over the years in keeping the memory of the war alive. But inevitably the number of Korean veterans is now seriously dwindling as the old soldiers die off and since this book’s initial publication in 2010 only a handful remain alive. The purpose of my book has been to ensure that their memories and stories are not lost forever but remain for successive generations to read and understand the horrors they went through. Sue Hurst, the former secretary of the Veterans Association, and her husband Bill, were both helpful and enthusiastic in helping to find interviewees. I should also like to thank the various branches of the association who allowed me into their monthly meetings in order to try and find potential interviewees. Everyone was always courteous and helpful. There were, of course, some who chose not to be interviewed. Although it was disappointing that I could not record their memories I totally understood and respected their reasons for remaining silent.

Above all, however, I would like to thank again all those I have interviewed. They all allowed me, a total stranger, into their homes, and happily plied me with tea and biscuits before settling down to recount their days in Korea. Their memories and their stories are quite remarkable. It could not have been easy for any of them. Many also lent me photographs and memorabilia, some of which appear in this book.

A small number of interviews and photographs have been taken from the Britain’s Small Wars website and I would sincerely like to thank them for giving me permission to use them. I would also like to thank my publishers, The History Press, and in particular Shaun Barrington, who believed in this project from the start and who battled for its publication. My editor of the original edition Chrissy McMorris and project editor for this new edition Lillian van Bergen.

My gratitude and love, as ever, to my wife Judith, who lived with this project for more than a year but always remained interested in the tales I have recounted to her on returning from each interview. And to my children, Nick and Emma, thank you for just being around.

Stephen F. Kelly

Manchester

September 2023

Introduction

It has been called the ‘forgotten war’. And with much justification. Today, few people remember the terrible conflict of the Korean War and even fewer men and women are still alive who served there between the years 1950 and 1953. Indeed people are still astonished to learn that British troops were even involved in the three-year conflict. Instead people associate the war with America; perhaps mainly because of the American produced television series MASH.

In 2012 we rightly remembered the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands War with parades, commemorative services and acres of newsprint in our daily papers. In all, around 28,000 troops were sent to the Falklands with 255 British serviceman giving their lives, along with three Falkland Isles civilians and 649 Argentinians. And yet, when in 2010 Britain commemorated the start of the Korean War, there was little in the way of publicity or commemoration. Nor was there sufficient acknowledgement of the seventieth anniversary of its ending.

And yet the awful truth is that British troops, including the RAF and navy, were involved in an appalling conflict fought in atrocious weather conditions with many British troops taken prisoner by the Chinese and with the possibility of a nuclear attack being seriously planned by the Americans.

The statistics alone are startling. More than 100,000 British soldiers served in the war with 1,078 being killed. For the Americans it was even graver with over 300,000 soldiers involved and 40,000 killed. A further 2,000 soldiers also died from other countries serving with the United Nations. In all, fifteen nations sent troops as part of the UN command with America providing 90 per cent of the soldiers.

And that was only part of it. On the other side at least 350,000 North Korean troops were killed along with 150,000 Chinese troops and almost 300 Soviet soldiers. Civilian casualties are impossible to estimate but a figure of 2.5 million is probably a conservative guess. Much of Korea was destroyed. What cities there were lay in ruins with almost every building devastated by the incessant bombing, while the countryside lay peppered with craters from mortar attacks. Villages had been burnt down and the luscious vegetation destroyed by napalm bombs. That South Korea should resurrect itself into a mighty industrial nation within forty years, and act as host for the Olympic games, was indeed an economic miracle.

Perhaps most surprising of all to the layman is that the vast majority of British troops were conscripts; national servicemen, carrying out some of their two-year stint in Korea. Mostly they were teenagers, just 18, 19, 20 years old, straight off the streets of Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, London and elsewhere. As their eighteenth birthdays loomed they awaited the arrival of the letter telling them exactly where to go and enlist with some trepidation. Few imagined, however, that within a short period of time they would be heading for Hong Kong before being shipped to Korea. Even fewer seemed to have much idea of what the war was about, let alone where Korea was. None of them seemed to have even thought much about the politics. Why were we there, what was the point of fighting a war so many miles from home?

In fact, national servicemen were not supposed to be on the front line until they were 19 years old but there is plenty of evidence, not least from the testimonies in this book, to reveal some were clearly underage and should never have been there.

John Smith from Liverpool managed to beat the authorities twice. He had decided that he was going to sign on full-time as a soldier rather than wait for his national service call-up. But there was a problem. First, he was underage, only 17, but the army seemed to overlook that although it’s hard to believe that they didn’t realise. And secondly, he signed up for the Argylls even though he had not been born in Scotland, nor had a Scottish parent. But he had set his heart on the Argylls and when he told the recruiting sergeant that it had to be the Argylls or nothing, the sergeant told him to put down that he had a Scottish father. And so, they signed him up.

The Korean War was very much the beginnings of a cold war that would last a further thirty years as relations between the West and the East became strained to breaking point. The Korean conflict ended in a stalemate that precipitated an even wider stalemate until the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989. On the one side were the communist nations, headed by the Soviet Union and China with all their satellite allies, including North Korea, whilst on the other side were the United States, Britain and Western Europe.

The war fell into two distinct phases. The first phase, lasting roughly a year, was one of advance and retreat, north and south, with heavy casualties suffered by both sides. In the second phase after the summer of 1951, troops retreated to their trenches and bombarded each other. It became a stalemate with troops holed up defending their positions around the 38th Parallel. Not unlike the First World War, there was plenty of action but few territorial gains. Eventually both sides realised the futility of each other’s positions and a ceasefire was agreed, but not a permanent peace treaty.

The conflict in Korea had its roots in the Second World War. Korea had been occupied by Japan since 1910: a brutal occupation that continued throughout the Second World War until 1945 when the USSR and the USA agreed on a two-pronged attack on Korea in order to oust the Japanese. The Soviets would attack from the north whilst American troops would invade from the south, with the two superpowers meeting halfway at the 38th Parallel. The invasion was a success and the Japanese were routed. The Allies further agreed to allow each of their sectors to be governed as they wished. It was to prove to be a major diplomatic error. When the two superpowers pulled out in 1947 they left behind two starkly different regimes; in the north the Soviets had shaped a communist government under Kim Il Sung, whilst in the south the Americans had installed a brutally nationalist regime under the authority of Harvard graduate Syngman Rhee. Both Rhee and Kim Il Sung were fiercely nationalistic and both were determined to one day unite their divided nation under one ruler. Incursions across the border dogged the next few years, until, at 4 a.m. on 5 June 1950, 135,000 communist troops invaded the south and overran the unsuspecting South Korean and American forces. The American Government in Washington regarded the attack as a threat to the region’s peace and, along with British support, tabled a motion at the United Nations which was duly passed and led to the creation of a United Nations force which immediately headed for Korea.

Within days, North Korean troops had captured Seoul, just 30 miles south of the 38th Parallel. Terrified Korean refugees from the north began to sweep southwards but were stopped in their tracks when South Korean forces began the destruction of bridges. But they could not hold the communist forces back as they continued to sweep through the peninsula towards the port of Pusan in the south-east. The American army was forced back so that they held only a corner of Korea around Pusan on the east coast.

General MacArthur, at the time leader of American troops in the Pacific, then came up with a plan to invade Korea at Inchon on the west coast, not far from Seoul. Although it was a daring plan, it was to take the communist forces around Seoul by surprise, and gave the Americans a vital foothold that allowed them to push north, take Seoul and cut off the communist forces around Pusan. Before they became surrounded, however, the communist forces fled back north. MacArthur scurried after them, pushing them right back into North Korea and towards the border with China. What MacArthur did not know, however, was that more than 300,000 Chinese troops had massed on the border, and in November 1950 the Chinese leader Chairman Mao Tse Tung ordered Chinese troops to attack, claiming that the UN forces were a threat to China. The UN forces, mainly Americans, were then pushed back well south of Seoul.

MacArthur was by now planning an extreme solution – using atomic weapons. He saw the war as a moral crusade against communism and if needs be he was prepared to drop an atomic bomb. ‘I would have dropped thirty or so atomic bombs … strung across the neck of Manchuria,’ he confessed in an interview some years later. And there is no doubt that the United States not only seriously considered an atomic strike but actually had its planes loaded and on standby in Japan in case the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave the go-ahead. Even President Truman, although painted as an opponent to the use of atomic weapons in Korea, announced that he was fully prepared to use them if necessary. In the event he did not give the go-ahead, partly because British Prime Minister Clement Attlee flew to Washington to warn him that Britain would not sanction such at attack. Truman agreed that he would consult with Attlee in the event of a likely nuclear strike, although interestingly he still did not rule out such a strike. Fearful that MacArthur might take unilateral action and that he was not deploying the right military tactics in Korea, Truman sacked his leading general in May 1951 and replaced him with General Ridgway. Again, although Ridgway has been painted as more of an appeaser than MacArthur, it was not altogether true. Ridgway was just a prepared as his predecessor to use nuclear weapons. In the event no nuclear attack was sanctioned.

It is usually assumed that the closest we have ever come to a nuclear war was with the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, but the evidence would suggest that, on the contrary, during the spring of 1951, the United States came within a whisker of ordering a nuclear attack on Korea and China.

Under its new commander, General Ridgway, UN forces finally advanced north once more and by mid April they were back, close to the 38th Parallel, as the Chinese launched a spring offensive close to the Imjin River. At what was to become known as the Battle of the Imjin River, the Gloucestershire Regiment narrowly escaped annihilation as the 27th Commonwealth Brigade beat off Chinese attacks. For three days, 750 men of the battalion repelled successive assaults by a force seven times larger. Surrounded, with no hope of rescue, running short on water and ammunition, they fought literally to the last bullet and grenade. Some 620 failed to make it back to friendly lines. A third of the battalion were killed or wounded, the survivors spending the next two years in Chinese or North Korean prison camps. They would forever be known as the ‘glorious Glosters’. The UN line held, then moved north again. This time, there was no reckless advance into the north. Instead the line stabilised in the general area of the 38th Parallel and for the remaining two years the fighting consisted of a stand-off until July 1953 when an armistice was reached to end the fighting.

The final two years of the war made for repetitive reporting with Fleet Street’s editors as well as the public, soon growing bored. Korea seemed a long way off and with little or no press coverage, Korea was even more remote.

Press coverage of the war was generally sparse. After all it was over 5,500 miles away and few newspapers had correspondents over there, relying instead on either American sources or news agencies. As a consequence there was little reporting. And photographs were, of course, few and far between. Technology limited opportunities so that photographs were always well behind events, with television and cinema pictures even scarcer. There were no evening news television bulletins detailing the death and destruction as there would be with the Vietnam war ten years later. American TV was still in its infancy, whilst in Britain hardly anyone owned a TV set. If pictures of Korea were to be seen then it was on the black and white newsreel at the local cinema and these were always a week or more out of date, sandwiched between the B-movie, ice cream and the main feature.

And where there was news, the war was portrayed in hard, cold war political language. North Korea and China were seen as the communist aggressors with the United States, Britain and the United Nations as the free world peacemakers. The communists of North Korea were vilified although, in truth, the puppet regime of Sygman Rhee was just as repressive as Kim Il Sung’s dictatorship in the North.

Over the sixty years since the war ended, much has been written detailing the politics and strategy of the war, although even this is sparse when compared to other more recent wars. But, most surprisingly, even less has been written of the everyday activities of the ordinary soldier. Much work has been done in the United States where servicemen have been extensively interviewed with their memories and stories published in a number of textual and electronic formats. But the same is not so true of the United Kingdom. The Imperial War Museum has conducted some interviews and whilst these are freely available from their archives, few of them have been published. As a consequence, the story of the ordinary soldier remains largely untold. And that is the point of this book.

The purpose is not to retell the history, strategy or politics of the war. That has been done by various eminent military historians and in far greater detail than this book can ever provide. Instead, the intent here is to tell the soldier’s story, to detail what life was like on a daily basis for those who served. Where did they come from? How did they get there? And once they were there what did they do? It’s the simple things which can often be of most interest: What food did they eat? What were toilet facilities like? Did they get to wash every day? Were they frightened? How did they cope with the intense cold? Did they come into contact with the Chinese, Americans, Koreans? Did they fight alongside other Europeans serving with the United Nations forces? Did they receive letters from home or newspapers? How did they get on with their colleagues? Did they ever get any leave? And how did they feel about the politics of the war and about their colleagues who were injured or killed in the conflict? These are the ordinary soldiers – kingsmen, privates, artillerymen, engineers; few of them were officers, and most of them were national servicemen rather than fully signed up regular soldiers. And what about when they returned home: was there a hero’s welcome with showers of gratitude, parades and medals?

It is a portrait of human hardship, the likes of which – thankfully – few of us have ever experienced. An armistice remains in place but no peace treaty has ever been signed. Korea remains a divided nation. The North with its grey, authoritarian regime mirrors the worst days of Stalinism, while the south thrives in consumer goods and burgeoning wealth. More than 28,000 American troops remain stationed in South Korea, an astonishing number considering the fighting ended sixty years ago, whilst who knows how many are gathered on the other side of the border. Mostly the troops just eye each other through powerful binoculars across of the 38th Parallel. Quite what they do with the rest of their time is anyone’s guess.

1

Call-Up

‘I hadn’t heard of Korea but I thought it would be an adventure.’

Introduction

Perhaps the most astonishing fact about the Korean War is that the vast majority of soldiers who fought there were conscripts. As many as 70 per cent of those arriving in Korea during the three years of the war were national servicemen, and mostly under the age of 20. They were young lads straight off the streets of the big cities, towns and rural villages of the nation. Some came straight from school, others were in menial jobs.

When national service was introduced in January 1949, it was initially for just eighteen months, but with war looming in Korea it was suddenly increased to two years. National service was obligatory for all young men over the age of 18. The only exemption, and then it was only a temporary exemption, was for those at university or in an apprenticeship. As soon as they had completed their apprenticeship or education, they were called up. In theory no man under the age of 19 was supposed to serve in battle, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there were many, as the evidence in this book shows, who fought on the front line when they were underage.

So, shortly after your eighteenth birthday (in one case actually on the day!) a brown envelope would drop behind the door informing you of your ‘call-up’, and telling you when and where to report. Steve Hale remembers the stunned silence when his uncle’s call-up papers arrived, and the tears when the moment came for him to actually leave home. Within days you would be off, taking a train or bus to one of the call-up depots. From there you would be dispatched to a training camp for a period of intensive training. Everyone knew it was going to happen and dreaded the inevitable letter arriving, but there was nothing you could do about it. It was simply a matter of accepting your fate and, as one interviewee says, getting on with it and getting it over and done with as soon as you could so that you could get back to normal life.

But there were some who saw it as a temporary escape from the drudgery of life or poorly paid, tedious work. For them it was an adventure. And for most the prospect of going abroad seems to have been exciting, going to places they had only read of in books. You have to remember that barely any of these young men would have travelled beyond their hometown let alone abroad in the early 1950s. And certainly none would ever have travelled to the Far East.

But whilst most of the conscripts accepted their fate with some trepidation, there were those who dreaded it. Rather than wait for the letter to arrive, thousands mysteriously disappeared when it came to their call-up. Others, having had a taste of square bashing and the brutal sergeant major went AWOL and were officially listed as deserters. Emanuel Shinwell, the Labour Government’s Minister of Defence, announced in the House of Commons in 1950 that there were almost 20,000 absentees; a staggering number, although some of these may have been listed for a number of years. There were also suicides, although the statistics were heavily camouflaged to also include accidents and so forth so that the true numbers of suicides were known to only a few. After all they didn’t want to demoralise the conscripts any further.

Almost all those interviewed for this book testify that when they were called up they had little or no inkling that they would be sent to Korea. There was some talk of Malaysia as a possible venue, where a conflict had recently erupted, but most assumed they would not be sent to any front line. After all they were really just amateurs, off the streets and with only a basic training. As far as they were concerned they imagined they would remain at a training camp in the UK, or perhaps be posted to Germany or Austria which appear to have been popular destinations with the average soldier. None of them knew where Korea was and would never have been able to point to it on a map. Even fewer had any idea of the conflict or the reasons that lay behind it.

Although more newspapers may have been read in 1950 than today, news from Korea was sporadic. There was virtually no television; only the occasional newsreel at the cinema and that always tended to be upbeat rather than having anything to do with war. Once into the war there was little reporting. Conditions were difficult, and getting the news from Korea back home was complicated and expensive. And anyhow people in Britain didn’t really want to know. After six years of world war everyone simply wanted to forget about conflict and get on with making the peace and returning to normality.

Mostly the conscripts were assigned to the army while some, though not many, joined the RAF or navy. Training was not fun. It was square bashing, cleaning and taking orders from brutal sergeant majors who seemed to delight in making life as hard as possible for the young men, most of whom came from ordinary working-class backgrounds. It was while they were on training that the order came to go to Korea. There followed a short period of embarkation leave before making for either Southampton or Liverpool and a troopship bound for Hong Kong. But of course there were already those who were serving in the armed forces who were ordered to travel to Korea. George Stirland, for example, had been in the Royal Navy for a few years when he found himself sent east. And Eric Peters had been serving with the army in India and on the Khyber Pass before going to Korea.

The British army was already well positioned in various parts of the world, supposedly keeping the peace. The vast majority of its soldiers were stationed in Germany and Austria, maintaining a watchful eye after the war; others were in Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong which would soon become the staging post for the battle in Korea.

The journey to Hong Kong was always by ship, usually a designated troopship, but at times a requisitioned German liner. Conditions varied: some were dilapidated relics from the Second World War full of cockroaches and long overdue the scrapyard, others were more up to date and luxurious. On the troopships especially, beds were few and far between, with most soldiers sleeping in hammocks slung from the underside of the deck or in bunks crammed into small cabins, often with six or eight occupants. And once they were into hotter territory many of the soldiers dispensed of the hammocks and crammed conditions in favour of sleeping on deck. Toilet facilities were nearly always appalling. They were simply inadequate for the numbers. There were no en suite facilities, with the result that everyone had to use the small number of communal toilets and bathroom, with long queues in the morning to shave and wash. And as Geoff Holland remembers, when you did get to the sink it was often full of sick and the toilets were even worse.

The ships sailed mainly from Southampton or Liverpool and made their way via Port Said, Aden, Singapore and Colombo on a four or five-week voyage that would take them to Hong Kong. There were stopover points en route as troops were allowed some shore leave but few disembarked at Aden – the stench seems to have put them off. Singapore and Colombo, however, were a different matter, and after a couple of weeks on board, putting your feet on solid earth, even if it was for just a few hours, was more than welcome. Of course there were jobs to be done whilst on the ship, although with hundreds of servicemen the work could be spread thinly. It was hardly arduous. Eventually, after four weeks or so, they arrived in Hong Kong and were usually sent promptly to a further training post, often up in the New Territories.

Hong Kong was popular. The weather was good and dress was informal, just shorts and shirts throughout the warm summer. Plus there was plenty of entertainment and sport. It was also cheap with decent food, beer and, of course, girls. Nevertheless, for many, the news that they were about to be sent to Korea came as a shock. But most seemed to have accepted their fate stoically, perhaps not fully understanding what might await them. Maybe because war had been just a few years gone and all their families would have fought, they imagined it was simply their turn. Whatever the reason, they got on with it and boarded yet another ship, in many instances an American ship, and made the short journey from Hong Kong to war in Korea. Little did they know what they were about to encounter.

Bill Fox

I was born in Collyhurst in Manchester on the 17 January 1928, so I am now 85. I volunteered to join the army but they took me on as a national serviceman. When the Korean War started they asked for volunteers who had just come out of the army. They wanted them because they were already trained and fit. Anyhow, I volunteered for eighteen months. Now for me going to a place I’d never heard of before seemed marvellous. It was on the other side of the world and to fight under the uncrowned King of the Pacific, General MacArthur,1 was a big adventure. He was the big hero of the war but we all believed that the British army was the best in the world and we could do no wrong. I’d seen all these American films fighting the Japs and Germans and I wanted to be a part of it. I was too late for the Second World War, but when the chance came for me to go somewhere to fight for just eighteen months I was really keen. Remember, this was before the Chinese had come into it so it was just a civil war between the North Koreans and the South. What a marvellous experience I thought, what a marvellous chance. I thought, great. I had gone into the army in 1945 and had been demobbed in 1948, so I had missed all the action. After I had been demobbed I had gone back to my old job, working in a timber firm, as a driver’s mate going all over the country. I enjoyed that but to get the chance to go abroad was exciting and romantic, a great adventure. So, I went down and volunteered as a reservist. They gave me a choice of one of three infantry regiments. I was undecided but picked the Glosters. They consisted of roughly a thousand men; of those only a third were from the original Glosters. The others were volunteers and reservists called up from the Second World War. The reservists thought it would all be over in next to no time, by the time they got there, but had they realised the Chinese were going to get involved, they wouldn’t have gone.

Before we left for Korea I was based in Colchester and met someone called Derek Ball who became a great friend. He had a real country yokel accent and I used to take the mickey out of him and he’d take the mickey out of me calling me Frank Randle.2 We left Southampton in early September 1950 on the Windrush,3 a German ship confiscated by the British at the end of the war. It was a lovely trip, seeing places I’d never been; it was marvellous to go all round the world. We saw Gibraltar, we bypassed Malta and saw all the British naval ships signalling to us through the night, saying good luck. Then it was on to Suez and we saw all the British soldiers on the banks of the canal, all waving to us. It was like Britain was everywhere. Then we went to the Red Sea; I’d heard so much about that and how romantic it was. There were the deserts and mountains and then we stopped at Aden, and then to the Indian Ocean, stopping at Colombo where everyone was so nice and friendly. Then we stopped at Singapore; that was great. We had shore leave and we couldn’t get ashore quickly enough to see all the sights. We went to the dancehalls and they were a bit different to Manchester. Back in Manchester you had to ask the girls very carefully and politely if they would dance with you, but here they all wanted to dance with you. They gave you tickets as well. If the girl danced with you, then you had to give the ticket to the girl and she would get paid commission. From Singapore we sailed straight to Korea, we didn’t go to Hong Kong, as they did later, I think they wanted to get us there as fast as possible.

Jim Lucock

I was born in Liverpool, in the Dingle, on the 21 May 1932. I left school in 1946 at the age of 14 and became an apprentice plumber. But because I was an apprentice my national service was deferred until 21. However, I also played football and was in two cup finals and because of that I was not going to night school. A man from the deferment board came to see me and told me that I had to go to night school otherwise my deferment would be cancelled. Anyway, a few weeks later he returned and said, ‘You still haven’t been going to night school, so your deferment in cancelled.’ Ten days later I got a letter telling me to go down town and have a medical and ten days after that I was in the army. I was 20 at the time. I had broken the deferment agreement so they put me in the army straightaway. This was June 1952.

I wanted to go in the Parachute Regiment but you needed to sign on as a regular for that and I said I wasn’t going to sign on until I had found what it was like, so I was put into the Lancashire Fusiliers and sent to the Wellington barracks in Bury. I was only there an hour and I was told I was going to the King’s Own Regiment in Lancaster, so they took us down and put us – there must have been about forty of us – on a train to Bowerham barracks. When we got there, the next morning, they said, ‘You’re not staying in the King’s Own Royal Regiment, you’re going to the King’s Regiment in Liverpool and you’re going to Korea.’ We all looked at each other and said, ‘Korea?’ And they said, ‘Yes, you’re going to Korea.’ That didn’t bother me because my father and grandfather and cousins and uncles had all been in the King’s Regiment in Liverpool going back to the First World War. I knew about the war in Korea because I had seen it on the news at the cinema, so I knew what it was about basically but I had no idea what the conditions were like. We did our six weeks basic training. It was a good camp, no bullying, lots of shouting of course, but the NCOs were good.

After that I went down to Aldershot to do a para course but going up on a catwalk I slipped and did my knee in. I went to see the MO and they examined it and said this is going to take a while to heal up so we’re going to return you to your unit, so I went back to Bowerham barracks and they said all your crowd have gone to Formby, so I ended up going down to Harington barracks in Formby on my own. Of course the lads were all a month in front of me by then so they put me with an entirely different set of fellas. So we did our basic training there and our continuation training and then they decided to give us some embarkation leave and we were on our way down to Southampton. The battalion had already gone to Korea.

Roy Cox

I joined the army in 1948 when I was 17 and three-quarters. I was living in Oxford at the time. What happened was that my sister gave me a book called Wing Dagger and it was about the SAS and I read it and, of course, fancied the idea of dropping behind lines. So I went to the recruiting office and said I want to join the SAS and they said, ‘No you can’t, not straight away, they come from other regiments.’ So I said, ‘OK which regiments?’ and they said, ‘Well a lot of them come from the Parachute Regiment.’ So I said,‘OK, I’ll join the Parachute Regiment.’

‘Oh no you can’t do that,’ they said, ‘to get in the Parachute Regiment you have to join the infantry first.’ So I said, ‘OK, I’ll sign on for the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.’ So I signed on for them and I was sent for basic training. There were only two of us who were regulars and under 18. Now if you were under 18 you had to go and get half a pint of milk every day to drink from the canteen. All the blokes used to take the mickey, babies having their milk, cissies. We used to skip it a lot.

Anyway, when we’d finished all our training, which was basic weaponry stuff, they said the national servicemen are going in the ox and buks which is in Germany at the moment cos they were only doing eighteen months at the time, and the regulars, they said, were going to Malaya and you will be drafted into the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. So we had a week’s leave and the two of us said, ‘Goodbye Mum we’re not coming back for three years.’ We got a fortnight’s embarkation leave but a week after we were brought back and they said, ‘You’re actually joining the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry.’ And I said, ‘Where’s that?’ and they said, ‘Buckingham Palace, they’re on guard duty.’ Well that was the last thing I wanted, all that bullshit. Anyhow, we went there, we were at Chelsea barracks, there was all this belt and buckle cleaning and I thought if there was a good way I could get to France I would desert and join the French Foreign Legion but I couldn’t think of a good way. I was a bit mad at that age.

Anyhow, I did my posting there and I did Windsor Castle duty as well. But the sheer bull of everything! Everything had to be so polished. I finished that and went to Borden camp and got ready for going abroad somewhere. They then put us on a train to Liverpool and shipped us out to Hong Kong, as they thought the Chinese nationalists might invade Hong Kong. We were just going to Hong Kong, this was before the Korean War had started and I did eighteen months there. We were given jungle training as they thought we might then go on to Malaya. Then suddenly we heard about the Middlesex going to Korea because there was a war starting there. We were all asking where’s Korea? We had never heard of it. We were told it was somewhere up near China. After the Middlesex had done twelve months in Korea we went in 1951.

So we got on an American attack transport ship, it had a fairly flat bottom so it could get on the beaches. But it was bad for seasickness and god did I get seasick. The toilets on the ship had no doors on them so you had to sit there with everyone walking past.

Eric Peters

I left school when I was 14 and became a coal porter – not as in the man who made the music! No, I used to carry the coal for a coalman. I’ve still got the letter off the coalman, dated September 1944, when the army asked him about my character. In fact I’ve still got all my army records. I worked on the coal wagons for £1.50 a week. My mate’s brother was in the Loyal Regiment. He had escaped from the Japanese and then later been killed, so we all decided to join up. We didn’t all get in but I was old enough and got in, signing up for seven and five, that’s seven years in the colours and five in reserves. I signed up on the 1 January 1945, at 17 and a half years of age. That was the minimum age but I didn’t have a proper regiment at first. Instead I was sent for training with the 27th Infantry Training Regiment at Derbyshire for three months and it was only after that that I ended up joining the Black Watch. I teamed up with a lad from Wigan and he was joining the Black Watch and he persuaded me to go with him. I had no Scottish relations and knew nothing about the Black Watch. I didn’t have to lie about being Scottish, it was about 60/40 English to Scots, that many Englishmen – cockneys, lads from Birmingham, all over.

I went to Germany on the 6 January 1946, the war was over by then but there was still so much devastation. I was in Düsseldorf, Osnabruck, then back down to Belgium where the lads who were being demobbed had to go. All the documentation to allow you to be demobbed had to be right and I helped with all that. The German prisoners of war came in every morning to clean the place out. No sheets or bedding, you just had blankets. They’d march down to our camp under their own NCOs. I was only a private at the time but I was in charge of this block. They brought me a revolver one day. A few weeks later I put a bullet in it to see if it would work and pointed it out of window and fired. It blew up in my hand, only the butt was left!

Then one day the major called me in and said, ‘I’ve got bad news, you’ve got a war office posting and you’re going to India.’ Bloody hell! It’s the other side of world, I thought. Anyhow, I went back to Scotland and after three months we were on our way to India and landed in Bombay. Then we went up to Peshawar and the Khyber Pass and to a hill station called Cherat. On the way up there you can see the Black Watch badge carved on a big rock, about 14ft tall, saying Black Watch 1907, so we carved into it 1947. We were up there for about eight or nine months. I was in the rear party ready to hand it over, about fourteen of us, when one night we heard a hell of a row. They said there was trouble, and told us to stay in our room. So we stayed there all night and then the next morning went down to the bazaar. Now normally all the Indians slept on the doorsteps of the shops, but this particular morning they were all there but they were dead, they had been killed, slashed to pieces, even the dogs and horses were dead. Killed by Muslims or Hindus. Terrible.

After that we went down to Karachi on the trains and you could see on the trains coming the other way all these bodies piled high. It was the start of Independence and the terrible fighting between the Hindus and Muslims. We marched down into Karachi to the docks and we came home, or so we thought. When we got to Egypt they cut the battalion in half, one lot going to the Highland Light Infantry and the other half went to the Argyll and Southern Highlanders. They did it alphabetically. Fortunately me and all my mates were at the back end of the alphabet, so we all went into the Argylls and were sent to Palestine.

We spent our time stopping the Jews doing harm. The Arabs were fine, no trouble whatsoever. But the Jews, they were firing from orange groves and we sent the tanks in smashing all the orange groves. It takes thirty years to grow orange trees and they were all smashed. We were guarding the tanks. After that I went to Egypt for a few months. Later we went to Hong Kong. I was stationed there for eighteen months before I went to Korea. I also went to Singapore, then I had words with my sergeant major and I threw in my two stripes. I’d had enough of him. I was up before the company commander. The sergeant major was ranting and raving at me and threatening to take my stripes away so I beat him to it and gave them to him. I told the major that the sergeant major hated my guts and I hated his, so they accepted my stripes. I then went before the company commander and I dropped from corporal to private. This was all in Hong Kong after I’d come back from Singapore, so I then had to go to another company. Two months after that I was sent to Korea on HMS Ceylon, a cruiser, and the Middlesex lads were on HMS Ocean, an aircraft carrier there as well. This is August/September 1950, the war in Korea had just begun.

Jim Houghton

I was 18 and 4 months when I got called up and was expecting it. I was living in Walton in Liverpool and was a trailer mate working for a trailer and haulage firm here in Widnes. It was long distance driving to London, Newcastle. I finished my training in York with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, we were all part of the Northern Brigade. The Dukes were going nowhere, the fusiliers had gone to Korea, another had gone to Malaysia and, I thought, well, I’m not going to be going to Germany next year, so I thought I’ll go to Korea. So I agreed to go and signed the forms. At that time they wouldn’t take any infantrymen out there who were on national service. They would take regular soldiers and some of them were signing up for a second term in Korea, mainly because you got a bonus of £150. What they did was they had to get them fit enough, and that would take them two months, and then it would take them a month to get there. By the time they got there it was time to come home. It was quite a popular thing. But quite a few of them started getting killed so it wasn’t quite as popular then as they thought it would work out. National servicemen had to ask to go so I agreed to go. I thought I’m not going to stay here messing around in York and then go to Germany. I thought this sounds more interesting, so I went there.

Steve Hale

I remember the Korean War well. Life was just plodding along nicely in Liverpool and I just remember getting up one morning and there was this strange hush in the house and my Uncle Peter had got his call-up papers to do national service. He was only 18. I, in fact, later learnt that it was expected. It was more or less given that he would just do some training, as the Korean War had just started, and would then be put on a ship and out to Korea. And that’s exactly what happened. The barracks of the old King’s Regiment are still there on Townsend Avenue and he walked up there to sign in and from there he was taken in an army lorry to the camp at Altcar near Formby. He did six weeks solid training there. He then came home for two nights and I remember that because we had a great big shindig. It was a big party and all the street came in because he was, at the time, the only lad who had been called up and was going to Korea. But everyone in the street at some point during the night came into our house to the party. So he had two nights at home and was put on a ship and it took six weeks to get to South Korea. That was the last we saw of him for two years. Peter had literally just had his eighteenth birthday and within a few days he’d had the call-up. I remember my nan crying and asking my mum why she was crying. Nan feared that he’d not come back because he’d be right amongst it all fighting.

George Stirland

I joined the navy in September 1945, the war had just ended. I was 16 in the December so I was about 15 and a half by the time I started the paperwork and was down at the Ganges by September. The Ganges was a boys’ training ship establishment for boy seamen and signalmen only. It was down south close to Ipswich, Felixstowe. I had never given joining the navy a thought. My father said I’ve got a good job for you at the waterworks in Preston. It has a good pension but at 14 years of age a good pension didn’t mean much to me. It does now! I wanted to go on farming. I’d worked on farms during the war and fancied that but my dad said, ‘No this is a better job.’ Anyway, I started it and after about twelve months said, ‘No, this is not for me.’ Why I then said I wanted to join the navy I haven’t a clue. There was someone who lived opposite me who was in the navy and he used to come home with his hat on and his badges and I thought, right, and he was an Oerlikon gunner and I thought that’s for me. He was one of these lads on one swivel gun, strapped in. I fancied that, so I joined up.

I had this kitbag filled with clothes, never had so many clothes, four meals a day, couldn’t beat it. I was never a star man down there but equally I was never the one who couldn’t manage it. I was in the middle and just did it. We were boy seamen, seamanship one week, gunnery the next, twelve months training. In the afternoon you had sport, sailing or whatever. In the evenings we had dogwatches, and classes. The whole thing from getting up to going to bed was seamanship or gunnery. It was very strict, kids now wouldn’t do it. This was all done at Ganges. We were allowed to be birched, flogged. You would get nine cuts, that was the punishment. But you could get up to 12. I didn’t get it, I kept out of trouble. Showers were cold and you had them early in the morning. It was really strict but you left being very fit. And we were all only 15. One of the things we had to do was climb a mast 140ft high. We had to climb it every day and the first time you were allowed to go through the lugers hole, but after that you had to go on the outside. One or two did fall. They said it was the only concentration camp in England. It was as strict as hell.

After that I joined the fleet. We packed our bags and hammock and took a train to Portsmouth and sailed out via the East Indies. There were three or four hundred boys who had completed the course together. And we went out on a carrier that had been in the Pacific but couldn’t have planes on it any more. So it was used for trooping. We went out and joined a cruiser. Ours was HMS Glasgow. I was on there for twelve months then came home. A lot on the men on it were HOs – hostilities only – and had done D-Day and were ready for demob. For every boy joining they let one man go home. In 1947 the whole ship came home.

I was in barracks at the time and nearly missed Korea. I was in the field guns crew who do all the Royal Tournaments. I was in that and normally being a member of that stopped all drafts as it was so prestigious but this time they said no, they didn’t have enough men for Korea. When we got on the troopship the HMS Devonshire to go out, there were three or four full crews plus all the army men, RAF, Marines.

Ivan Williams

I was at Cowley grammar school in St Helens until I was 18. As soon as I left I had an army medical and I was called up in mid July 1950. I knew I was going to get called up; everyone did unless you did two things – one was to get an apprenticeship and the other was to be going into further education, i.e. a college or university, but there was no attraction in that for me. At the end of that you were still called up, so it only delayed the inevitable. It did not excuse you from military service. I looked at it as inevitable, something that had to be done and got out of the way so that I could then come home and start the rest of my life. I preferred to do it then rather than after three years at university or after an apprenticeship. I knew nothing about the war in Korea which had just started although there were jokes about going to start your new career! I didn’t even know where Korea was, it was something that had never even entered my mind. It never even entered my mind that I might have to go to Korea.

I joined the army and after two weeks of sorting out at Oswestry, I was sent to the school of survey at Larkhill, Salisbury Plain, on an artillery surveyor’s course. The course lasted about three months and at the end of it we knew that we were going to the Far East and to Hong Kong. We liked the idea of that because at the time there were two good postings; one was Germany, the other was Hong Kong. The posting nobody wanted was Malaya because the Malayan conflict was going on at the time. But before we went we were delayed a month and sent on a sound ranging course. I was with the Royal Artillery but was still with the training regiment up to the time we left. Then I was posted to a regiment for when we arrived in Hong Kong. We were then sent on leave and then for embarkation leave and left from Woolwich before going to Southampton and setting sail on the Empire Fowey.