IMPRESSIONS OF KOREA

The journey out on the troop-ship with elements of the 29th Independent Brigade (and Martin Hall as Ship’s Adjutant) bore little reference to reality. It is not easy to start breaking-in your Finnish-type boots in strong Mediterranean sunshine; and lectures given in the Indian Ocean on how to escape from North Koreans in snow-covered mountains seemed to lack conviction. It was difficult to credit (at that time) that anyone on the ship could suffer so unlikely an adventure. With a great friend of Amplefordi, Fr Ryan, I remember discussing the question of whether Manchurian or Chinese forces would intervene in the Korean incident: and found myself very much in the minority aboard when I insisted that they probably would. ‘It’s too late for them to come in now’, was the general opinion—a sentiment which all too clearly echoed the rumble of the bus that Hitler missed. The Padre and I had another beer and drank to Fr Paul.

There were still no serious clouds on the horizon when we disembarked at Pusan, thirty-three days out or Liverpool, to boogie-woogie played by a negro band while ‘indigenous females’ presented bouquets of flowers to O.C. Troops and the ship’s Master. After a couple of nights in this repulsive port, where we made the acquaintance of die largest rats I have ever seen and the Transit Camp was flooded out, we embraced the now famous roads of Korea, heading northward via Taegu and Taejon at a scheduled average of 10 m.p.h. for the assembly area at Suwon, south of Seoul. The fastest elements of the convoy managed the journey in three days but many of the vehicles (all of them old, reconditioned Jeeps and trucks) took the best part of a week. The Brigade as a whole had taken an instant and very lively dislike both to die country and its people.

My own job then took me to the extraordinarily gallant 27th (Commonwealth) Brigade, composed of the Argylls, the Middlesex and the Australian Battalions, at that time part of the U.S. 24th Infantry Division and deployed north of Anju. This Brigade, rushed to Korea from Hong Kong, was a genuinely Cinderella unit without any guns, tanks or transport of its own, and living largely on faith, hope and ammunition. I shall never forget the afternoon, south of Kunuri, with the Turkish wounded coming through by the lorry load, when it received orders to withdraw some twenty-three miles. Without transport available it was obvious that the rifle companies would have to make this withdrawal on foot: and it was three o’clock in the afternoon. Already there were road blocks reported in their rear. It was the usual cold and cheerless day with that weird mixture of frost and dust which must surely be peculiar to Korea. A shuttle-service of helicopters was doing its best for the Turks. The taste of the abortive ‘Home by Christmas’ offensive was already bitter in our mouths. The vehicles of Brigade HQ began to form up. Then suddenly, echoing madly in those old, unfriendly hills, came die defiant, the tremendous skirl of the pipes : and the Argylls swung along the road, perky as the devil himself. From now onwards, unhappy as all comparisons must be, it became plain that the spirit and morale of British troops in Korea was different not so much in degree as in kind from that of nearly all other units.

I met the 29th Brigade again north of Pyongyang and it is now history — though history shockingly reported — how the two Brigades covered the ‘withdrawal’ from the Communist capital. I hope that none of us again see such fireworks, with 4,500 tons of ammunition going up in the air to join the millions of dollars worth of clothing, cigarettes, food, transport and other supplies. After the blowing of the bridges, we retreated dirough the night of fires, through the dense choking dust: and breakfasting at first light in a ditch I heard a voice ask me whedier I was indeed David Walker. I looked up and enquired : ‘Could that be ... is it possibly ... Fr Ryan ?’ In camouflaged hoods, faces rank with dust and ice, in ‘five above and three below’, it was often hard to recognize your friends. But the boys were brewing up and everyone was cheerful.

By the time our withdrawal had taken us 230 miles back to Seoul, quickly emptying itself of civilian life, the pattern had become a little clearer: and still the mood of the Brigades remained unique. For the British reporter this was actually an embarrassment, but it remained the truth. Owing to the threat of a Chinese assault (expected with the full moon on Christmas Eve) the Christmas ‘festivities’ had to be staggered over three days and everyone hoped that the Argylls could wait till Hogmanay. On Christmas morning I was with the Middlesex Regiment and I attended their Church of England service, which I trust was no great crime. Except for the outposts and die cooks, everyone seemed to be there, rifles and Stens, black against the white hill-side, and Col Andrew Man, D.s.o., reading the Gospel according to St Luke. Later, officers and men knelt together in the snow while the Padre gave them communion. (‘Good for the soul but hard on the knees’, remarked one of the officers.) In this campaign, as in previous ones, there were the usual dispensations for Catholics: Holy Communion after breakfast and Mass whenever possible. On Christmas Day Mass was offered up at 8th Army HQ late the same afternoon, and I served a priest who was also a War Correspondent—a curious double role which appeared to shock only the Correspondents themselves. ‘I thought there was something, somewhere about serving God and Mammon’, one of them remarked. But as Mammon in this case was die N.C.W.C., I dare say that the priest-correspondent’s conscience was clear.

The Chinese attack came on New Year’s Eve and long before these notes can appear the situation will have been even furdier ‘clarified’. The attitude of Koreans, to whom democracy brought nothing but destruction, the cold and lonely road, and death in a big way—with 1,800,000 pairs of long wollen underpants from Japan as consolation —cannot even be touched upon in a short article, certain though it is that we were able to offer no political solution understandable to the people. Wherever we went, forward or backward, we left a political vacuum. But diat is another story.

The point perhaps worth making at the moment is that though many people may despair of Britain and her general attitude to life to-day, these two Brigades—varying from the Middlesex Regt with 54 per cent. National Service boys to the married reservists of die 29di Brigade—showed a spirit unique in Korea: not just in their unashamed love of children, their hatred of injustice, tiieir blasphemous but balanced good humour, but also in their completely calm approach to the hazards of battle. And illiterate and peculiar though the Koreans are, the shopkeepers of Seoul made a curious distinction (particularly the jewellers) : the only members of the United Nations Ar whom they trusted not to steal were those who wore british battledress.

David Walker
Ampleforth Journal 56:1 (1951) 48-50