They’re coming on all sides.
WARNING FROM RSM JACK HOBBS, Gloster Hill, c. 6:00 AM, 25 April 19511
Come on then, you bastards, and get your breakfast.
ANONYMOUS SOLDIER, Gloster Hill, c. 6:00 am, 25 April 19512
At first light on wednesday there was no appreciable letup in Chinese pressure on either side of Kamak-san, with fighting going on around as well as to the rear of all three British infantry battalions as the night gave way to dawn. On what would turn out to be the concluding day of battle for the brigade, there would be alternating scenes of heroism, cowardice, tragedy, and farce.
Just after six in the morning, Brigadier Brodie contacted Colonel Carne by radio and made it clear that the relief column promised the day before effectively had been canceled. What remained of the relief force after other parts had been shifted elsewhere by General Soule, namely the tank platoon from the 65th Infantry, would go through the motions of trying to get through a couple of hours later, but as the regiment’s commander, Colonel William H. Harris, admitted, “we all knew that that was sending too little too late.” The fact that they were not going to be extracted after all was certainly very bad news for the Glosters. According to Carne, the brigadier “left it to me to decide whether to surrender on the spot, fight it out to the end or slip away.” Not surprisingly the colonel favored the third option, but that would be impossible unless the enemy could first be driven back.3
The fact of the matter was that as dawn broke on 25 April, Gloster Hill was under heavy attack. “Very hard pressed,” was how the battalion’s situation was reported to brigade at 6:10 AM, followed ten minutes later by the terse message: “Surrounded. Impossible to withdraw.” The fighting was in fact so fierce that the parachute drop of supplies and ammunition by twin-engine USAF C-119 Flying Boxcar aircraft arranged the previous day had to be canceled at a quarter to seven as no cleared area could be established on top of the ridge and because a drop would interfere with the attack runs of the even more desperately needed fighter-bombers.4
The CO, meanwhile, did his best to encourage his men through a personal display of sustained sang-froid under fire. “I shall never forget how on that last morning Colonel Carne strolled round our positions,” a corporal with battalion HQ remembered, “cool, calm and collected, dropping words of encouragement here and there.” Morale, according to a private in C Company, never faltered even as it became more and more obvious that there would be no happy ending.5
There was fighting everywhere atop Hill 235, with what remained of A Company being hit particularly hard. With all the officers dead or wounded, and a complement of only thirty fighting men, the company had been forced to retreat from its original position atop a high point. This loss might have had catastrophic consequences if it had not been for the actions of the battalion adjutant after he arrived on the scene to take command of the situation. Viewed in quieter times as something of a martinet by many of the other ranks, Captain Tony Farrar-Hockley inspired confidence in those around him as he moved from one slit trench to another, chatted with the occupants, gave orders, and displayed exemplary coolness under fire. “He was outstanding,” a corporal later reflected. Farrar-Hockley was a veteran of the hill fighting in Italy in the latter stages of World War II and he knew that the permanent loss of any high ground on the top of Gloster Hill would spell disaster. After rapidly sizing up the situation and chatting jokily with the surviving soldiers, Farrar-Hockley announced his intentions. “Now then,” he stated briskly, “who’s going to win the VC? We’re going back there, and that means all of you.” With the adjutant in the lead, a company that was down to the strength of a platoon charged thirty yards uphill and, after some hand-to-hand fighting, was once more in command of the high ground. Another officer who was present at the time described Farrar-Hockley as the bravest man he had ever met.6
The Chinese, however, came again and again, and if they had been forced to rely on their own dwindling supply of arms and ammunition it is likely that the Glosters would have been completely overrun by around eight in the morning. Fortunately the 25-pounders of 45 Field Regiment and the F-80 Shooting Star fighter-bombers of the USAF were, as requested, able to offer vital support in breaking up massed assaults before they could start.
To ensure maximum effect, artillery fire was called in almost on top of company positions by a Forward Observation Officer, Captain Ronnie Washbrook of the Royal Artillery. The danger of friendly-fire casualties from shells falling short was great, but as Lance-Corporal R. F. Matthews of C Company noted, the gunners knew their business: “A solid mass of Chinese was surging toward the hill when the first salvo landed. It was superb gunnery. With pin-point precision, shells crashed down as near as thirty yards in front of us.” The attack, as he put it, “dissolved abruptly.” The results were similarly devastating near A Company. Farrar-Hockley was worried that the barrage might come too late. “They will have to get a move on with the shoot,” he remembered thinking; “the Chinese are coming . . . At any minute they will rush forward from their cover.” But just in the nick of time the shells arrived. “Ah! there is a whistling in the air. We all duck down into our trenches. The sky darkens; the whole ground is shaken with the noise of explosions. The Gunners are doing us proud. I lie on the bottom of my slit trench, covered with earth blown in from the bursting shells.” After a minute or two contemplating an unconcerned beetle at the bottom of his hole, the adjutant heard the firing stop. “I kneel up to shake off the loose earth. What a wonderful view; not a Chinese in sight . . .”7
Around two hours after it had been requested, air support arrived – “at last,” as Carne commented at the time – in the form of multiple strafing and bombing runs by flights of F-80 Shooting Stars beginning at about 8:30 AM and lasting for sixty minutes. Rockets, heavy machine-gun fire, and above all napalm created spectacular explosions around the hill and in the valley. The latter was a liquid fire weapon that revolted some soldiers, but the adjutant was certain that everybody that day on Gloster Hill was far more concerned with survival than ethics. Second-Lieutenant Holdsworth with D Company, as well as the Padre, thought that the air strikes “didn’t seem to stop them very much,” but in their aftermath the Chinese did draw off, needing time to reorganize and reinforce for another assault.8
“Things were really looking up!” the adjutant remembered himself thinking at this point. It was a bad omen, though, to see the promised Flying Boxcars turning away before they reached the river, and the ammunition situation was now critical. The men of A Company, for instance, had only three rounds for each rifle, seven hand grenades, half a magazine per Sten, and less than two full magazines for the remaining Brens. As the commander of D Company, Captain Mike Harvey, put it, “there was insufficient ammunition left [in the battalion] to meet another [assault] of the current intensity.”9
Carne, meanwhile, had been getting more bad news over the single remaining, fast-fading, 62 Set radio link with brigade shortly before eight in the morning. In compliance with orders from I Corps and in order to avoid encirclement themselves, the other units of 29th Brigade were pulling back, including 45 Field Regiment. That meant that there would soon be no more artillery support for the Glosters and that the gap between the brigade and Gloster Hill would only expand with each passing hour. The best that Brodie could suggest was that Carne split his men into groups and have them make their way toward the forward elements of the 1st ROK Division to the southwest. Distraught at what he suspected was a death sentence, Brodie scrawled down his famous last message for transmission to the men on Hill 235: “NO ONE BUT GLOSTERS COULD HAVE DONE IT.”10
At nine Carne called his company and other commanders together to inform them of what had happened and how he intended to proceed. “The news of the cessation of artillery support made me abandon plans for fighting our way out,” the CO later explained; instead, individual parties would “attempt to slip away.”11 The adjutant, who had no clue as to what was to come due to the colonel’s business-as-usual demeanor, was the first to hear and respond to the bad news. Each officer behaved with classic British Army stiff-upper-lip imperturbability:
CARNE “You know that armoured/infantry column that’s coming from 3 Div to relieve us[?]”
FARRAR-HOCKLEY “Yes, sir.”
CARNE “Well, it isn’t coming.”
FARRAR-HOCKLEY “Right, sir.”
As the adjutant reflected several years later, there “did not seem to be much else to say.” Once the group was assembled, Carne explained that no help could be expected and ordered that starting at 10 AM each company or group in turn should make its own way down Hill 235 and head southwest toward the 1st ROK Division. After a pause, Carne turned to the Medical Officer, Dr. Bob Hickey. “He said he was very sorry,” Hickey recollected, “that he didn’t think he could take the [non-walking] wounded.” The MO paused a moment to let the implications sink in, then responded: “I said yes, I understood that perfectly well.” Along with the Padre, Hickey felt duty-bound to stay with the stretcher cases and deliberately allow himself to fall into enemy hands. This was a brave thing to do, given the uncertainty as to how the enemy would behave toward prisoners. Hickey also insisted that while married medical orderlies could try and break away, the unmarried ones should stay behind too to assist the wounded. “British soldiers are very good, you know,” he reflected admiringly several decades later; “they do what you tell them to.” The MO and Padre both remembered later telling those unfortunates around them that it looked like they were soon all going to have a holiday in China. “Any questions?” Carne asked in conclusion. There were none, and the group dispersed at 9:30 AM.12
Just before 10 AMthe first groups from A Company, to be followed by parties from other companies, began to scramble down Gloster Hill, unmolested by the enemy. Walking among those who stayed behind – the seriously wounded and “four or five able-bodied but very dazed Gloster men” who according to the Padre suddenly “stumbled into the aid post” – the medical sergeant, S. J. Brisland, thought that it would be a good idea to indicate to the Chinese where the aid post was and started to wave a Red Cross flag. Drum-Major Buss, who happened to see this and was among those who had not received word of the plan to abandon the hill, raised his rifle and shouted, “Put that bloody white flag down!” before the Padre interjected “The battalion’s gone, drum-major. For heaven’s sake run for it, man – it’s your only hope.” Buss stared for a moment, and then disappeared down the slope.13
The chances of a successful trek to U.N. lines were extremely slim. With I Corps in retreat, the distance to friendly forces by the most direct route had lengthened to over a dozen miles. If firefights developed, the Gloster parties would run out of ammunition almost at once. “We probably didn’t have more than a dozen or so rounds between us,” Frank Cottam remembered of his group from A Company. The Chinese, while no longer assaulting Hill 235, could observe its slopes from adjoining hills and had troops on every feature and in the valley. What was more, once off the hill men tended to bunch together, making them easier to spot. Under orders to capture rather than kill the enemy for propaganda purposes, Chinese troops simply corralled most parties by firing warning bursts of machine-gun fire from the hills. The experience of David Kaye of C Company was fairly typical. “I just followed everybody else, off the hill, and up this valley [moving southward], going towards our own lines, we hoped,” he recalled. During this period “we were fired at overhead by machine-guns [located on higher ground], and various people, each time there was a burst of firing, threw up their hands and stopped where they were.” Kaye and others kept going, but eventually gave up too once the Chinese came into the valley.14
Though very unwilling to throw in the towel, even Farrar-Hockley came to the conclusion that there was no choice. He found that once in the valley the group of soldiers who had attached themselves to him was attracting Chinese fire from the hills. “They fired behind us and in front, warning shots across our bows in effect from light machine-guns,” the adjutant recalled. “They were plainly inviting us to stop. The rounds got nearer and nearer. . . .” Eventually, with the Chinese closing in, Farrar-Hockley was forced to conclude that there was no chance of avoiding a slaughter if the hint was not taken. “OK chaps,” Bill Westwood remembered him saying, “that’s as far as we can go.” Rifle bolts and breech blocks were flung away and hands were raised over heads. “A very shameful moment, really,” the adjutant later reflected.15
The sentiment was shared by the other captured Gloster officers. According to a summary of post-release debriefing reports there were some sharp exchanges among the officers after they had surrendered as to who had and had not pulled his weight during the battle. As for Colonel Carne, he was so angry at what had happened that he was not on speaking terms with some of his subordinates for some time after they all fell into Chinese hands.16
The only group that escaped this fate consisted of the remnants of D Company, soon joined by eleven Vickers machine-gunners, collectively led by Captain Mike Harvey. The commander of 11 Platoon, Lieutenant Denys Whatmore, described in his memoirs the plan that Harvey had outlined to his subordinates after studying his map.
He proposed to avoid the obvious shortest way out, that is, due South, where he thought it was probable that the enemy lay in strength. He would take the Company due north to start with, into ground from which the enemy were likely to have moved on. He would then go West along the lower, North facing slopes of the hills and then turn South towards friendly lines. It would be a long way round but, with luck, we should meet fewer Chinese that way.
Ammunition was scarce, but as Harvey noted, “I made sure that that the leading elements had at least a few rounds in their magazines to deal with any unexpected contact.”17
At first all went well for the several officers and eighty-one men involved, the occasional surprised Chinese soldier encountered being dealt with without much difficulty. As they turned southward, Harvey and his men were identified as friendly troops by an American L5 light spotter plane. “We took out our [dark] blue berets from concealment in our pullovers and waved them,” Harvey later wrote, “and I hand-signaled our intention to continue south down the valley.” The L5 “waggled its wings, an acknowledgement and to us, an encouragement, and thereafter repeatedly over-flew us.”18
Then, however, things started to go wrong. The valley narrowed into a canyon only a hundred yards wide, and suddenly the group started to come under machine-gun fire from multiple positions on the western heights. Men took what cover they could in stream beds and behind whatever earth or rock features they could find, sprinting on southward when the opportunity offered. Casualties mounted, and several men were captured when, contrary to orders, they tried to help wounded comrades. As a number of officers involved later put it, they had all become targets in a shooting gallery. Forty men were killed or captured. Shortly before noon the survivors turned a bend in the valley and saw a troop of American tanks about five hundred yards in front of them. Help seemed to be at hand, but unfortunately the tank crews, from the 73rd Heavy Tank Battalion, did not know that there was anyone but the enemy in front of them and opened fire with their machine-guns.19
Harvey tried to make it clear that they were not Chinese by putting his beret on a stick and waving it, only to see the beret shot away. As everyone took what cover they could, Second-Lieutenant David Holdsworth of 12 Platoon passed along his white handkerchief for Harvey to wave instead, while the L5 spotter plane made low passes over the tanks to try and indicate that something was wrong. The firing did eventually stop, either as the result of a hastily written note dropped with a streamer by the L5 pilot, because the commander of the 12th ROK Regiment accompanying the tanks recognizing rolled-up British shirtsleeves, or due to the brave actions of men such as Private Walter Cleveland and Lieutenant Denys Whatmore, who got close enough to wave and shout their identity. Four men, an NCO, and an officer had by then been wounded by friendly fire.20
Though a few individuals managed to evade capture or to immediately escape, the vast majority of the battalion, along with the attached Korean porter company, had either been killed or taken prisoner between 22 and 25 April. In all, 58 officers and men of the regiment had been killed in action and another 522 captured. Thanks to the Chinese desire to use U.N. prisoners for propaganda purposes, survivors outnumbered the dead (though 27 prisoners would die in Chinese or North Korean custody over the next two years). Nevertheless, the fact remained that in fighting terms the 1st Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment, had been destroyed between late Sunday night and early Wednesday afternoon.21
The Glosters were no longer part of the calculus of battle for either side. Brodie had guessed long before dawn broke that their fate was sealed. What he did not anticipate was how close to destruction some of his other fighting units would come on 25 April. This would turn out to be the last day of the Imjin battle, but it would rank among the toughest for many of those involved in what became a very bloody fighting retreat for the remainder of 29th Brigade.
Just how perilous the situation of the remaining forward battalions, the Northumberlands and the Ulsters, actually was in the hours around dawn on Wednesday morning was not entirely apparent at Brigade HQ, located about six miles south on Route 11 from their main positions. There had been signs that the Chinese were coming over and around Kamak-san from the northwest since Tuesday, and it was to prevent any cutting of the escape route by enemy forces skirting southeastward over the southern slopes of the massif that Brodie had ordered the Belgian battalion to take up a blocking position less than a mile to the west of Brigade HQ that same day. At 5:30 AM on Wednesday, moreover, ten Centurions from C Squadron, 8th Hussars, were sent up Route 11 under the command of Captain Peter Ormrod accompanied by a troop of Royal Engineers acting in the infantry role to clear away any enemy soldiers who had infiltrated over Kamak-san and posed a threat to the safe withdrawal of the Ulsters and the Northumberlands. These moves, however, were predicated on Chinese infiltration being quite limited in scope. By this point the battle-weary Belgian battalion numbered less than one hundred fighting men, while the force designated to clear and keep open Route 11 behind the two forward infantry battalions, the Fusiliers and the Ulsters, was not strong enough to both sweep and then hold about five square miles of valley floor if the enemy came down from Kamak-san in large numbers.22
Though one tank threw its tracks and another got stuck in a paddy field in the process of moving up the valley, the Centurions, initially supported by the Bofors guns of 11 Light Anti-Aircraft Battery firing over open sights, were able with the help of the sappers of 1 Troop, 55 Field Squadron, Royal Engineers, to drive off the limited number of Chinese soldiers they encountered as they moved north up Route 11 in heavy mist, and to allow a column of three Oxford carriers to deliver ammunition to the Northumberlands. This was enough for Brodie to conclude that the withdrawal route was now clear, and to order the Northumberlands, followed by the Ulsters, to begin their withdrawal southward down the valley floor under the overall direction of the Fusilier CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Kingsley Foster.23
Among the Ulsters in particular there were doubts about this plan. The thick dawn mist had prevented the clearing force from seeing any Chinese except those immediately around them. At the sun burned off the mist, however, it became apparent that instead of a few dozen infiltrators there were hundreds of Chinese establishing themselves on the eastern slopes of Kamak-san overlooking Route 11. To those who remembered the chaotic running battle fought on the night of 3/4 January the idea of withdrawing down the valley floor with the enemy established in force on the western heights seemed distinctly ominous. Indeed, the man in command of the Rifles, Major Gerald Rickord, was dubious enough about going down the valley to send a message to HQ asking if he could lead his men out over the high ground to the east of the valley instead. Rickord was told to stick to the plan.24
Orders were orders, then, and at about ten in the morning the Northumberland companies began to move off the hills they had occupied one by one, a single platoon covering the others in each case. By eleven the whole Fusilier battalion was on the move southward passing through the Ulsters, who would themselves be marching south within an hour and a half. Many of the battalion vehicles, including the carriers, were sent on ahead.25
All seemed quiet at first, the companies having broken contact with the enemy and withdrawn off their hill positions without too much difficulty. An exception was the Ulster rearguard force, C Company. Some shells from a 45 Field Regiment barrage designed to prevent the Chinese from following too closely fell into the company positions just as the men had left the protection of their trenches, and several riflemen were killed or wounded. Otherwise the withdrawal began well. Colonel Foster, though, who had hoped to make a dash southward before the Chinese could react in force, grew increasingly agitated over the time it took for Rickord and his men to get moving – “I’m going to court-martial that bastard,” he fumed – and not without reason.26
After about half an hour of marching down the valley sniper and machine-gun fire had begun to fall from the western slopes with growing intensity on both battalions. “We got about two miles down this road,” Major Charles Mitchell of W Company explained in a letter to his parents, “when masses of fire burst upon us from all sides, a real ambush if you like.” Men had to go to ground and move from one piece of cover to the next as best they could. Acting as rear guard, the soldiers of 8 Platoon, Y Company, found themselves irrevocably pinned down by Chinese machine-gun bullets. Casualties began to mount and command and control of the column started to break down as signalers were hit and radio sets were damaged or simply failed to operate effectively. “I saw for the first time men who I had a great regard for, good fighting men,” recalled Corporal Thomas Cunningham-Booth, who worked at the RNF command post, “running like the clappers to get out, slinging their weapons, and generally behaving like a demoralized mob.” The worst, though, was yet to come.27
The Chinese for several hours already had been attempting to establish a blocking force in the narrowest part of the valley, known as the saddle, a few miles to the south of the Ulster and Fusilier positions being abandoned. Fortunately this saddle position, by the village of Hwangbang-ni, had been occupied by B Company of the Rifles under the command of Major John Shaw for much of the battle, and with help from the tanks of C Squadron, 8th Hussars – several of which were ambushed and put out of action – and the sappers from 55 Field Squadron, the saddle was kept open. To the north and especially south, however, Chinese infantry were laying down heavy fire from the western heights and starting to pour into the valley. “When I looked back, through the gap in the bushes towards the paddy fields where I’d just run out of,” Rifleman William Gibson – who had become separated from his comrades in A Company – recalled, “I could see it was just a mass of figures moving forward, just a mass, in waves, running forward, running forward. Chinese – there must have been tens of thousands of them [sic].”28
Unable to find out what was going on through the radio net, Tom Brodie drove northward from Brigade HQ up Route 11 to investigate. Near the saddle position he came across Kingsley Foster. Their encounter was recorded by a black sheep of the battalion, Fusilier Derek Kinne of 6 Platoon, X Company:
I saw the Colonel standing by the side of the road watching the Brigadier’s scout car come up from the south. The Brigadier was sitting on the top, dressed in his white sheepskin coat with his red [banded] hat on, looking as cool as if he was looking at an exercise.
“My God, you’re a target in that hat, sir,” said the Colonel as he got down and walked over. The Brigadier smiled.
“Where are the Chinese?” he said.
“All around,” said the Colonel, pointing. “And they’re pushing along the hilltops as fast as they can.”
“I think I’ll go a bit further down,” said the Brigadier. “I want to see what’s happening to the Rifles.”
Kinne never expected to see Tom Brodie alive again, but it was in fact Kingsley Foster who, as the CO had unhappily predicted to Tony Younger, would die fighting in the Imjin battle, receiving a machine-gun burst in the head and chest at about one in the afternoon while driving a jeep southward along Route 11.29
GUNNER “Enemy infantry on the hill-tops to our left, sir!”
BATTERY COMMANDER “Can they hit us?”
GUNNER “No sir! They’re only carrying small arms, sir!”
A few minutes later:
GUNNER “Getting rather close, sir!”
BATTERY COMMANDER “Can they hit us yet?”
GUNNER “Just about, sir!”
BATTERY COMMANDER “Thank you! Five rounds rapid fire! . . . All right [as bullets sprayed the track], let’s move back.”30
Behind the gun lines, the vehicles of Brigade HQ, withdrawing several miles south of the infantry battalions and tanks, also came under small-arms fire, and their route had to be cleared by bursts from the single available troop of Bofors guns. Still, there was no doubt that the units in the rear – namely the Northumberland Fusiliers and the Ulster Rifles – were facing the largest numbers of infiltrating Chinese.31
By the afternoon the column of Fusiliers and Riflemen had fragmented into sometimes quite small groups led by officers, NCOs, and even other ranks around which parties of men had coalesced. With the overall column commander dead and radios out of action, it was these figures who had to decide how best to proceed in the face of Chinese fire from the west and, in places, from the north and south as well.
Some rose to the challenge while others did not. Major W. D. C. Holmes of the Royal Engineers vividly recalled the “incredible calm” of an RUR company commander who sacrificed his life while leading his men out. On the other hand, Corporal Thomas Cunningham-Booth was understandably upset after being ordered by the Fusiliers’ transport officer, Captain J. W. Wilson, to have the section he found himself commanding dig in on a hillside facing the enemy in order to help cover the retreat. In his view the section should have been on the crest or the reverse slope, but what really offended Cunningham-Booth was Wilson saying, “you will stay here until you get my personal command to be relieved” and then pulling out without informing him, the end result being needless casualties. To be fair to Wilson, the every-man-for-himself atmosphere that developed during the retreat tended to make it hard to be sure that men would actually obey orders. Captain F. W. Chester of the Northumberlands, trying to lead to safety the machine-gun section of support company, had to use persuasion rather than threats to get Fusilier Thomas McMahon, a reservist, to abandon a soldier whose leg had just been blown off (“leave him, Tom, he’s dead already anyway”); and when the captain dressed down another reservist, Corporal George Dunkley, after he threw away the Vickers tripod he had been assigned to carry, he received the disconcerting reply: “If you want the bloody thing, you go get it yourself!”32
Yet it remained true that some officers apparently gave poor orders and did not always put the interests of those serving under them before their own. The Ulsters’ signals officer, Second-Lieutenant Mervyn McCord, remembered very clearly the moment when he and the adjutant, Captain Hugh Hamill, took shelter behind the same rock and how Hamill then ejected him. “There’s only room for one here, you’d better go,” the adjutant announced in an authoritative tone of voice, adding “I’m the senior officer.” Whether the adjutant was thinking primarily of his own safety or – as one knowledgeable commentator has suggested – was in fact making sure the signals officer kept moving while selflessly remaining behind to cover him and others, Hamill was subsequently pinned down behind his one-man piece of cover by enemy fire.33
Other officers continued to lead effectively – “they were very good,” Rifleman John Dyer conceded – even when their men started to lose their fighting spirit. In some places in the valley the dangers involved in moving from cover behind paddy bunds and rocks were such that a few “shaky” soldiers refused to budge while others simply cracked up. According to Lieutenant Gordon Potts of the Ulsters, still more or less in command of 1 Platoon, A Company, a little physical therapy worked wonders: “you give ’em a good kick” and they recovered. “I had one chap who started screaming,” Potts added, “and I just got hold of him, gave him two or three good slaps on the face and told him to pull himself together and be British.” This hands-on approach to restoring discipline was not unique to Potts. “I can remember one chap getting very frightened,” McCord later explained, “and starting to run away.” Aware that in a blind panic the man was likely to break cover and get himself killed, McCord warned him that “if you come past me again I’ll biff you.” The rifleman could not restrain himself, “so I did biff him over the head with the butt of my pistol.” Recognizing what would have happened if he had not been shocked back into awareness of the perils of blindly running into the open, the man later thanked McCord for saving his life. A refusal to move, on the other hand, could in some cases be the result of rational calculation. Where there was no one to tell them to do otherwise, some men could and did play dead, hoping the Chinese would not bayonet or shoot inert bodies and that they themselves would be able to steal away once night had fallen.34
For those willing and able to go on moving southward, there seemed to be three alternatives. The first was to continue on foot down the valley; the second was to hitch a ride on one of the tanks; and the third was to try to climb the slopes on the east side of Route 11 and move southward along the ridgeline. All three options posed dangers, but as the day unfolded it became clear that some could be more hazardous than others.
Sticking on foot to the region of the track was in accordance with the original plan of withdrawal and, at least in theory, held out the possibility of reasserting command and control at the unit level. It also minimized the danger of men without maps or compasses becoming disoriented and losing their sense of direction. This was why, where possible, men from the Northumberlands were ordered to continue marching down Route 11. The low ground, though, especially the track path, had become something of a shooting gallery, with the Chinese laying down automatic fire from the heights and infiltrating in large numbers into the valley itself, setting ambushes and making it more and more difficult to reestablish order along the column of route. “There was carnage on the valley floor,” Rifleman Albert Tyas remembered. As Captain Peter Ormrod (who commanded the tanks farthest forward in the valley) later observed, bodies of men from “the Northumberland Fusiliers insisted on going back down the main, principal road [Route 11], and I think a lot of them became casualties.”35
An alternative to running from one point of cover to the next that could seem attractive to men desperate to get out of what had turned into a valley of death was to try to shelter behind or hitch a ride on one of the Centurions. Some experienced soldiers, though, knew this was a mistake. One of the RUR platoon sergeants warned Lieutenant Potts to avoid leading his riflemen near the tanks because the enemy tended to focus his attention on them. “Never be near a tank in battle,” a more senior member of the Ulster Rifles, Major John Shaw – who, like Kingsley Foster, seems to have had an accurate premonition that he would die that day – cautioned Mervyn McCord; “keep away from them, because they draw fire.” The second-lieutenant took these words to heart, but for others, with very little other transport available and an every-man-for-himself mentality prevailing, the allure of the fast-moving Centurions proved irresistible.36
Unfortunately, the tanks did indeed tend to attract Chinese attention. Where they could get close enough, enemy parties armed with pole charges and various other explosive devices swarmed the Centurions. Fire from the tanks killed a large number of the attackers; “we just mowed them down,” as Ormrod bluntly put it. Yet the Chinese were persistent, the main gun and coaxial machine-gun could fire only in the direction in which the turret happened to be traversed at a particular moment, and there was no swivel-mount machine-gun on the turret top. The squadron commander himself, controlling a Centurion that had got stuck in a paddy ditch, suddenly found Chinese clambering onto his vehicle undeterred by fire from his pistol. He was saved by the commander of a nearby Centurion who radioed “get your head down; I’ll blow these people off.” Hosing down each other with coaxial machine-gun bursts (or even, on at least one occasion, cannon fire) caused enormous slaughter, as did simply driving over those in front. “But the Chinese were still running along beside the tanks,” recalled Rifleman John Dyer, “throwing grenades onto the tanks, trying to disable them.”37
It was understandable that the wounded should be placed aboard the Centurions, as there was apparently only one soon-to-be-disabled half-track ambulance in the valley. So many other men sought to grab on to the hull exteriors, however, that it became almost impossible for the crews inside to see through vision slits or traverse the turret without injuring someone; in some cases as many as thirty men were on a single tank. The crews, though, still had armor protection, whereas the dozens of men clinging to the hulls or turrets simply became a bunched-up target for Chinese troops already intent on knocking out the Centurions. “It was rather like hail hitting the tank,” Lieutenant Peter Whitamore of the Ulsters remembered, “and people were being shot and people were falling off.” One tank after another was ambushed or otherwise disabled – six were lost in all – and almost everyone who tried riding out with the 8th Hussars, whether ultimately successful or otherwise, was struck by enemy or friendly fire. “It was a wild, swaying, bouncing ride on the Centurion,” wrote Rifleman Henry O’Kane. “It didn’t last long – but I shall never forget it. The dust, the rattle of the tracks, the Besa machine gun, the screams of wounded men as we were repeatedly hit.”38
The last option for withdrawal, pursued by parties from both battalions and likely by the Korean porters, was in fact the best. Going out by way of the high and in places wooded ground to the east of the valley involved a lot of physical exertion and was a slow means of movement, but made those involved much more elusive targets for the Chinese positioned on the western heights. Hence the decision by the second-in-command of W Company, Captain Andrew Scott, to lead two platoons up and along the eastern heights, and the answer given by a large group of riflemen when Captain Ormrod leaned out of his turret hatch and queried their intentions: “They said that they were not going down the valley behind us, but they would march off over the hills; which they did in single file.” Taking this route was not without its hazards, however. When they were spotted from the opposite ridgeline, parties were fired at, and as elsewhere it was sometimes difficult to pass back through U.N. lines without incident. A group from the Ulsters’ command post, coming down into the valley at a point where they thought it safe to do so, suddenly came under “friendly” machine-gun fire from tanks a thousand yards off. “I can distinctly remember [RSM] Alec [Patterson], who had a walking stick, waving his stick [and calling], ‘For God’s sake, we’re English,’” said Sergeant Roy Utting. Eventually Patterson’s shouts and gesticulations caused the tanks to stop firing.39
By the time the remnants of the two forward infantry battalions reached the blocking position established by American forces at the crossroads where Route 57 joined up with Route 11 southeast of Kamak-san in the latter part of the afternoon, the retreat had become, in the words of Lieutenant Gordon Potts of the Ulsters, “a rout, not a withdrawal.” In the course of 25 April the Fusiliers alone had lost twenty-two killed and fifty-six wounded, more than in any other period of the battle, while by the end the Ulsters had discarded much of their equipment and mustered only fourteen officers and 260 men. Though they were exhausted, the survivors regrouped sufficiently to establish along with the Belgians – who had made their own fighting withdrawal accompanied by tanks, during which their colonel was wounded40 – a blocking position at Tokchong four miles back. Despite protests from Brigadier Brodie, the divisional commander, General Soule, still intended to employ 29th Brigade in the front line as a rear guard. It was only after the British liaison officer at I Corps, Captain William Ellery, who happened to be from the 5th Fusiliers, appealed in person to the corps commander, General Milburn, that the men of the brigade, “depleted in strength and with their tactical situation somewhat tangled,” as a later American post-mortem report put it, were relieved by the 15th RCT and pulled out of the line toward midnight on 25 April. This was just as well. Ammunition was in very short supply, with 45 Field Regiment having fired off over 11,500 shells, and 170 Mortar Battery around 12,000 bombs, in the course of the battle. Just as importantly, both officers and men were by now utterly spent. As Captain Jim Pearson, second-in-command of Z Company, put it inelegantly but accurately in a letter to his hospitalized company commander, Major John Winn, a couple of days later, “everybody was in no fit state to do anything.” The Battle of the Imjin was over, the final parting shot probably fired by the coaxial machine-gun of the last Centurion to depart the battlefield, commanded by Major Henry Huth.41
Tom Brodie, commander of 29th Brigade at the Imjin, ten years on.
Courtesy National Portrait Gallery
Brigadier Brian Burke (in beret), commanding 27th Brigade at Kapyong, with
Brigadier George Taylor of the new 28th Brigade, April 26, 1951.
Courtesy Australian War Memorial
Lieutenant-Colonel J. P. “Fred” Carne of the Glosters in a relaxed mood in the days prior to the Imjin battle.
Courtesy Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum
Lieutenant-Colonel J. R. “Big Jim” Stone directs action from his 2PPCLI tactical HQ while eating cold beans, March 1951.
Courtesy Library and Archives Canada
Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce Ferguson strikes a pose, November 1950.
Courtesy Australian War Memorial
A Bren carrier belonging to 3RAR photographed October 1950.
Courtesy Australian War Memorial
Oxford carriers belonging to 29th Brigade, Uijongbu, 1951.
Courtesy Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum
A Canadian M3 half-track in Korea a few months after the Kapyong battle.
Note the. 50 caliber machine-gun.
Courtesy Library and Archives Canada
Gunners of 45 Field Regiment manhandling a 25-pounder gun into position.
Courtesy Imperial War Museum
A 2PPCLI Korean porter expresses his dismay at the noise created by
16 Field Regiment in action, April 16, 1951.
Courtesy Library and Archives Canada
A Centurion of 8RIH carries men of 1RNR back across the Imjin from a patrol
into no-man’s-land, April 17, 1951.
Courtesy Imperial War Museum
Padre Davies conducts Sunday Service for the Glosters, April 22, 1951.
Courtesy of Gloucestershire Museum
The knocked-out Chaffee that halted the column aiming to save the Glosters on
April 24, 1951, here bulldozed away weeks later.
Courtesy Soldiers of Gloucestershire Museum
An M4A3E8 Sherman crew getting into position to support 3RAR above the Kapyong
Valley, April 23, 1951.
Courtesy Australian War Memorial
The gravestone of Major General Robert H. “Shorty” Soule, dead from a heart attack precisely eight months after leading 3rd Infantry Division, to which 29th Brigade was attached during the Imjin battle.
Arlington National Cemetery
James A. Van Fleet (left) inspects soldiers of 3RAR after awarding the Kapyong Presidential Unit Citation. To his left is John W. O’Daniel, who succeeded Frank Milburn as I Corps commander.
Courtesy Australian War Memorial
