loganinkosovo
04-24-2009, 05:17 PM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1173084/Rorkes-drift-II-How-bloodiest-St-Georges-Day-totally-forgotten.html
It's an awesome tale of courage against overwhelming odds - 4,000 British soldiers holding at bay 300,000 fanatical Chinese with bayonets and bare fists. Little wonder that those who saw it have never regarded St George's Day in the same way since.
As they perched on barren hills on the wrong side of the world, hopelessly outnumbered by an almost suicidal enemy, April 23 soon became a scene of relentless horror for the 4,000 British troops caught up in this country's bloodiest battle since World War II.
Little wonder that those who saw it have never regarded St George's Day - and the two days which followed - in the same way since. Indeed, were it not for some exceptional courage and fine leadership, it might have gone down in history as the St George's Day Massacre.
As it was, more than 1,000 British soldiers would be killed, wounded or captured by the end of a battle, which has often been likened to the British stand against the Zulus at Rorke's Drift.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/04/24/article-1173084-04A088F4000005DC-43_468x286.jpg Determined: The heroic efforts of British troops thwarted a planned shock invasion by the Chinese
And yet, today, the Battle of the Imjin River is fast fading from the national memory.
World War II has already been downgraded in favour of 'life skills' by the dismal tenth-raters in charge of our school curriculum.
Given that many young people think that Churchill is a nodding dog from a television commercial, what hope is there for the poor, forgotten Korean War? What chance is there that future generations will grasp the importance of a three-year conflict which claimed more British lives than Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands combined?
For the veterans of the Imjin, however, this week in April always brings back memories of savage hand-to-hand fighting and bayonet charges against an invasion force of more than 300,000 manic Chinese attackers.
'I always put up the flag on St George's Day and think of my mates,' says David Binding, 78. 'My best friend - Reg Gilding - he's still back there. They never found his body.'
In 1951, Mr Binding was a young private in the regiment which has gone down in military history for its prowess at the Imjin - 'The Glorious Glosters', as the Gloucestershire Regiment is known. By the end of the battle, though, his regiment had almost ceased to exist.
So now, as an enthralling, action-packed new book relives every moment of that astonishing battle, it is worth recalling the fiercest St George's Day of modern times.
Because, even if much of England - and Britain - has forgotten the events of April 1951, the South Koreans have certainly not.
To this day, any Commonwealth or American veteran of the Korean War can expect an emotional welcome when they return to the 'Land of the Morning Calm'. And the South Koreans certainly know the story of what happened in the valleys and mountains around 'Gloster Hill'.
Before the outbreak of war in 1950, many Westerners would have been hard-pushed to find Korea on a map. A once-proud country, it had latterly become a brutalised colony of the Japanese.
At the end of World War II, it was carved up by the superpowers with the Russians assuming control of the north, while the United States supervised the south. Each power duly installed its own puppet regime, but, in 1950, the communist regime in the North invaded the South.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/04/24/article-1173084-042430FB0000044D-752_233x348.jpg General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley
pictured talking to two of his men before The Battle of Imjin
Would this herald World War III? America was not prepared to see communism triumph on its own patch and sent in troops.
Eventually, the U.S.-backed South Koreans pushed the communists back as far as the Chinese border. This caused paranoia in Peking and China deployed hundreds of thousands of troops who drove the Western forces back south again.
By now, Britain had got involved and was soon part of the international coalition driving the communists back north. By April 1951, the allies were holding the line 40 miles north of Seoul. It was, though, only a matter of time before the communists had another go.
In the early hours of April 23, they did. And the spearhead of their attack was across the Imjin River where the British were guarding its banks.
Known as 29th Brigade, they came from three regiments - the Glosters, the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers and the Royal Ulster Rifles. Attached to them was a crack battalion of Belgian infantry, a tank regiment (the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars), a Royal Artillery regiment and a contingent of Royal Engineers.
All in all, there were some 4,000 men under British command along the Imjin that day. Unbeknown to them, 27,000 Chinese troops at the head of a 305,000-strong force were lying in wait.
April 22 was a rather jolly Sunday. For the men of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, it was a day of preparation for April 23 - St George's Day - which was their traditional regimental feast.
The troops gathered stockpiles of beer and rations while the cooks prepared a big turkey for the following day. Every man was issued with red and white imitation roses to stick in his cap. In as far as it was possible in a slit trench on a Korean mountain, there was a party atmosphere.
Rumours of an attack were building, though. And, at nightfall, a small patrol from the Glosters discovered what was on its way. Second Lieutenant Guy Temple took his men down to the water's edge to glean local intelligence, and saw waves of Chinese troops starting to wade across.
He opened fire, called down a massive artillery bombardment and wiped out countless enemy troops before getting his men back to their lines unscathed.
It had been an exemplary ambush - he would receive the Military Cross for the action - but the Battle of the Imjin had just begun.
'I have always found firework displays terribly boring after that,' Temple tells Andrew Salmon, author of To The Last Round (Aurum Press £25). All along the allied front, the troops were hearing the unnerving prelude to a Chinese attack - a shrill bugle.
This would be followed by hundreds of well-camouflaged men charging out of nowhere firing and hurling grenades. The British machine guns would kill most of the initial charges, but, eventually, superiority of numbers would win out.
Lieutenant George Truell of the Royal Artillery was busy firing 25lb shells in support of the Glosters away to his left when the Chinese came charging down the hill to his right. Truell had no option but to resort to Battle of Waterloo tactics.
He lowered one of his huge guns to the horizontal, aimed it at the Chinese on the hillside - no more than 150 yards away - and let rip.
'It caused a fair old bang,' he recalls, 'and the Chinese took themselves off.' The scene - complete with the St George's rose which Truell had stuck in his cap - is immortalised in a famous Royal Artillery painting, Over Open Sights.
By now, the Glosters were being pushed to the limits. A key bunker had been captured by the Chinese, who were using it to rain murderous fire down on British positions.
It had to be recaptured at all costs. Lieutenant Phil Curtis - a melancholic figure whose wife had recently died in childbirth - took his platoon to deal with the problem.
They were soon pinned down themselves, whereupon Curtis leaped up and dashed forwards, only to be cut down by the enemy machine gun.
As his awe- struck men tried to administer some basic first aid, he jumped up again, made another solo charge and threw a grenade into the bunker just as machine gun fire finished him off. The bunker was secured and Curtis won a posthumous Victoria Cross.
Similar heroism was taking place all along the British front that St George's Day. The Fusiliers were amazed to see a death- defying double act involving Major David Winn and Fusilier Ronald Crooks, a mouthy regimental troublemaker who had also earned the Military Medal in World War II.
For hours on end, the gangly Winn would rush at enemy positions hurling grenades, while the equally tall Crooks would run alongside him blasting away with a Bren gun (both would be decorated for their heroics).
'They were coming at us like ants,' recalls John Bayliss, himself a D-Day veteran. 'The boxing training was useful. If you hit 'em, they stayed down. You had no time to think or you were dead.'
Gradually, the brigade commander started to pull his units back, but there was no way out for the Glosters. They had had been cut off and were surrounded on a single hill.
On April 24, their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel James Carne (later awarded the VC himself), received the order to stay put for another night.
'If it is required that we shall stay here,' he replied over a dying radio set, 'we shall continue to hold.' And so they did.
They were out of crucial supplies. Any available water had gone to the wounded, but water was still needed to cool the overheating barrel of the Vickers machine gun. A bold sergeant went round ordering troops to urinate into a container.
He found that most men were too dehydrated to produce anything, and was then shot dead by a Chinese bullet.
The following morning, April 25, most of the Glosters had fought to their last round. There would be no cavalry coming to their rescue. But they had held the line. They had halted the Chinese for a crucial period of days when others would have crumbled in minutes. The planned shock invasion had been thwarted.
After all they had been through, the remnants of this proud regiment were not simply going to surrender. Lt-Col Carne issued a final order: 'Every man to make his own way back.'
Of the 650 men of the Glosters who had started the battle, the final tally was 56 killed and 180 wounded. The rest did their best to make a break through the surrounding Chinese lines, but were soon trapped. Just 41 made it out. The rest would endure more than two unspeakable years in North Korean prison camps. David Binding was one of them.
He still feels that his was a forgotten war, but he does not regret it. After the Imjin, the communists never made serious inroads into South Korea again and a thriving democracy took root.
'When I go back and see South Korea today, I feel that it was worth it,' he tells me from the Seoul hotel room where he has been staying for the anniversary. 'The people could not be more grateful.'
Sadly, the same cannot be said for his own country. But at least, in this week in which we celebrated another St George's Day, we should remember the heroes of the Imjin who never made it home.
It's an awesome tale of courage against overwhelming odds - 4,000 British soldiers holding at bay 300,000 fanatical Chinese with bayonets and bare fists. Little wonder that those who saw it have never regarded St George's Day in the same way since.
As they perched on barren hills on the wrong side of the world, hopelessly outnumbered by an almost suicidal enemy, April 23 soon became a scene of relentless horror for the 4,000 British troops caught up in this country's bloodiest battle since World War II.
Little wonder that those who saw it have never regarded St George's Day - and the two days which followed - in the same way since. Indeed, were it not for some exceptional courage and fine leadership, it might have gone down in history as the St George's Day Massacre.
As it was, more than 1,000 British soldiers would be killed, wounded or captured by the end of a battle, which has often been likened to the British stand against the Zulus at Rorke's Drift.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/04/24/article-1173084-04A088F4000005DC-43_468x286.jpg Determined: The heroic efforts of British troops thwarted a planned shock invasion by the Chinese
And yet, today, the Battle of the Imjin River is fast fading from the national memory.
World War II has already been downgraded in favour of 'life skills' by the dismal tenth-raters in charge of our school curriculum.
Given that many young people think that Churchill is a nodding dog from a television commercial, what hope is there for the poor, forgotten Korean War? What chance is there that future generations will grasp the importance of a three-year conflict which claimed more British lives than Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands combined?
For the veterans of the Imjin, however, this week in April always brings back memories of savage hand-to-hand fighting and bayonet charges against an invasion force of more than 300,000 manic Chinese attackers.
'I always put up the flag on St George's Day and think of my mates,' says David Binding, 78. 'My best friend - Reg Gilding - he's still back there. They never found his body.'
In 1951, Mr Binding was a young private in the regiment which has gone down in military history for its prowess at the Imjin - 'The Glorious Glosters', as the Gloucestershire Regiment is known. By the end of the battle, though, his regiment had almost ceased to exist.
So now, as an enthralling, action-packed new book relives every moment of that astonishing battle, it is worth recalling the fiercest St George's Day of modern times.
Because, even if much of England - and Britain - has forgotten the events of April 1951, the South Koreans have certainly not.
To this day, any Commonwealth or American veteran of the Korean War can expect an emotional welcome when they return to the 'Land of the Morning Calm'. And the South Koreans certainly know the story of what happened in the valleys and mountains around 'Gloster Hill'.
Before the outbreak of war in 1950, many Westerners would have been hard-pushed to find Korea on a map. A once-proud country, it had latterly become a brutalised colony of the Japanese.
At the end of World War II, it was carved up by the superpowers with the Russians assuming control of the north, while the United States supervised the south. Each power duly installed its own puppet regime, but, in 1950, the communist regime in the North invaded the South.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/04/24/article-1173084-042430FB0000044D-752_233x348.jpg General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley
pictured talking to two of his men before The Battle of Imjin
Would this herald World War III? America was not prepared to see communism triumph on its own patch and sent in troops.
Eventually, the U.S.-backed South Koreans pushed the communists back as far as the Chinese border. This caused paranoia in Peking and China deployed hundreds of thousands of troops who drove the Western forces back south again.
By now, Britain had got involved and was soon part of the international coalition driving the communists back north. By April 1951, the allies were holding the line 40 miles north of Seoul. It was, though, only a matter of time before the communists had another go.
In the early hours of April 23, they did. And the spearhead of their attack was across the Imjin River where the British were guarding its banks.
Known as 29th Brigade, they came from three regiments - the Glosters, the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers and the Royal Ulster Rifles. Attached to them was a crack battalion of Belgian infantry, a tank regiment (the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars), a Royal Artillery regiment and a contingent of Royal Engineers.
All in all, there were some 4,000 men under British command along the Imjin that day. Unbeknown to them, 27,000 Chinese troops at the head of a 305,000-strong force were lying in wait.
April 22 was a rather jolly Sunday. For the men of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, it was a day of preparation for April 23 - St George's Day - which was their traditional regimental feast.
The troops gathered stockpiles of beer and rations while the cooks prepared a big turkey for the following day. Every man was issued with red and white imitation roses to stick in his cap. In as far as it was possible in a slit trench on a Korean mountain, there was a party atmosphere.
Rumours of an attack were building, though. And, at nightfall, a small patrol from the Glosters discovered what was on its way. Second Lieutenant Guy Temple took his men down to the water's edge to glean local intelligence, and saw waves of Chinese troops starting to wade across.
He opened fire, called down a massive artillery bombardment and wiped out countless enemy troops before getting his men back to their lines unscathed.
It had been an exemplary ambush - he would receive the Military Cross for the action - but the Battle of the Imjin had just begun.
'I have always found firework displays terribly boring after that,' Temple tells Andrew Salmon, author of To The Last Round (Aurum Press £25). All along the allied front, the troops were hearing the unnerving prelude to a Chinese attack - a shrill bugle.
This would be followed by hundreds of well-camouflaged men charging out of nowhere firing and hurling grenades. The British machine guns would kill most of the initial charges, but, eventually, superiority of numbers would win out.
Lieutenant George Truell of the Royal Artillery was busy firing 25lb shells in support of the Glosters away to his left when the Chinese came charging down the hill to his right. Truell had no option but to resort to Battle of Waterloo tactics.
He lowered one of his huge guns to the horizontal, aimed it at the Chinese on the hillside - no more than 150 yards away - and let rip.
'It caused a fair old bang,' he recalls, 'and the Chinese took themselves off.' The scene - complete with the St George's rose which Truell had stuck in his cap - is immortalised in a famous Royal Artillery painting, Over Open Sights.
By now, the Glosters were being pushed to the limits. A key bunker had been captured by the Chinese, who were using it to rain murderous fire down on British positions.
It had to be recaptured at all costs. Lieutenant Phil Curtis - a melancholic figure whose wife had recently died in childbirth - took his platoon to deal with the problem.
They were soon pinned down themselves, whereupon Curtis leaped up and dashed forwards, only to be cut down by the enemy machine gun.
As his awe- struck men tried to administer some basic first aid, he jumped up again, made another solo charge and threw a grenade into the bunker just as machine gun fire finished him off. The bunker was secured and Curtis won a posthumous Victoria Cross.
Similar heroism was taking place all along the British front that St George's Day. The Fusiliers were amazed to see a death- defying double act involving Major David Winn and Fusilier Ronald Crooks, a mouthy regimental troublemaker who had also earned the Military Medal in World War II.
For hours on end, the gangly Winn would rush at enemy positions hurling grenades, while the equally tall Crooks would run alongside him blasting away with a Bren gun (both would be decorated for their heroics).
'They were coming at us like ants,' recalls John Bayliss, himself a D-Day veteran. 'The boxing training was useful. If you hit 'em, they stayed down. You had no time to think or you were dead.'
Gradually, the brigade commander started to pull his units back, but there was no way out for the Glosters. They had had been cut off and were surrounded on a single hill.
On April 24, their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel James Carne (later awarded the VC himself), received the order to stay put for another night.
'If it is required that we shall stay here,' he replied over a dying radio set, 'we shall continue to hold.' And so they did.
They were out of crucial supplies. Any available water had gone to the wounded, but water was still needed to cool the overheating barrel of the Vickers machine gun. A bold sergeant went round ordering troops to urinate into a container.
He found that most men were too dehydrated to produce anything, and was then shot dead by a Chinese bullet.
The following morning, April 25, most of the Glosters had fought to their last round. There would be no cavalry coming to their rescue. But they had held the line. They had halted the Chinese for a crucial period of days when others would have crumbled in minutes. The planned shock invasion had been thwarted.
After all they had been through, the remnants of this proud regiment were not simply going to surrender. Lt-Col Carne issued a final order: 'Every man to make his own way back.'
Of the 650 men of the Glosters who had started the battle, the final tally was 56 killed and 180 wounded. The rest did their best to make a break through the surrounding Chinese lines, but were soon trapped. Just 41 made it out. The rest would endure more than two unspeakable years in North Korean prison camps. David Binding was one of them.
He still feels that his was a forgotten war, but he does not regret it. After the Imjin, the communists never made serious inroads into South Korea again and a thriving democracy took root.
'When I go back and see South Korea today, I feel that it was worth it,' he tells me from the Seoul hotel room where he has been staying for the anniversary. 'The people could not be more grateful.'
Sadly, the same cannot be said for his own country. But at least, in this week in which we celebrated another St George's Day, we should remember the heroes of the Imjin who never made it home.