With the taking of this range of hills, the route to Seoul was again open and the march north was, once again, underway.
There was surprisingly little resistance and what was known as the Peng’s fourth offensive came to nothing.
In March the Glosters were positioned overlooking the Imjin River. The brigade was, however, extremely overstretched. Between the Glosters and the ROK, to their left, was a gap of around two miles.
These were relaxing days for the Glosters. There was no activity from the Chinese and no advancing from the UN forces from the south.
The highlight of each day was the arrival of the NAAFI truck, from where the soldiers collected their rations of chocolate and biscuits.
The snow had melted and long gone and though March was rainy, in April Spring had arrived and this was the time that Jackie fell in love with Korea.
Lim and Jackie spent hours during these leisurely days talking about the history of Korea – a country that it seemed was continuously being fought over and occupied: by the Chinese, the Mongols and, of course, the Japanese, who saw Korea as a gateway to China.
Lim explained that Genghis Khan actually crossed the Imjin at the very point they were observing. It was the Japanese, of course, who had occupied the country during the Second World War.
Lim very much loved his country and said he would never leave and Jackie believed him.
Looking out across the Imjin River shimmering in the spring sunshine, Jackie couldn’t imagine a more beautiful place – the small village with the paddy fields where the villagers worked in their drab white clothes and where the birds sang and the hills and valleys became a mass of colour as a myriad of different flowers came into bloom.
Lim explained about the different flora in Korea, including the many different species of orchids; he showed Jackie the Hibiscus Syriacus, or Rose of Sharon, with its beautiful purple petals, which was to become the National flower of South Korea, and Siebold’s Magnolia, or the Korean mountain magnolia, with its white petals, which would later become the North Korean national flower. There were also the Azaleas; the whole hillside seemed to be covered with the rose-purple flower, with a special fragrance that often wafted across the valley.
These were languid days, the time when Lim and Jackie got to know each other. Mina, as she was now known, was also here at this time and assisted the medic, Jimmy Conroy, though there was little for them to do during this time of inactivity.
Every day, Mina cleaned and dressed Lim’s wound, but despite her dedication, the wound would never heal properly.
The most exciting part of these weeks were the patrols that were sent across the Imjin River to capture Chinese soldiers although most of these patrols were fruitless – rarely did they see any. On one occasion when Jackie and Lim were patrolling with the Hussars and their Centurion tanks, they did manage to capture an enemy soldier. He was a young Korean soldier who, he told Lim, was forced to ‘volunteer’ for the NKPA. When he was asked where the rest of the army was, he told them, “Further back.”
As the weeks went by and the middle of April was upon them, intelligence heard that the Chinese were now massing and had been reinforced with several divisions that had previously been fighting Chiang Kai-shek, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (known as the Kuomintang, or KMT) in the Chinese War of Independence. These were veteran soldiers with a lot of experience.
The company spent many hours setting trip wires connected to grenades all along the north facing slopes. Not only were they to prove extremely effective in regard to injuries inflicted on the enemy, but also as an early warning system.
It was late afternoon on the 22nd April. More and more movement had been reported across the river. All units were now on high alert. Extra bandoliers of ammunition were issued and there were more magazines of cartridges for the Bren guns, but what wasn’t known by Jackie or anybody else in the Glosters was that more than a third of a million Chinese and North Korean soldiers were assembling on the north banks of the Imjin River.