We have been here ten days now and the time has been spent preparing the transport and kit before we move North. I am still waiting for three of my carriers and a truck which have not arrived from Pusan. They shall be here quite soon though now and then off we go.
The main battalion is still patrolling north of Seoul and during the last two days there have been reports of a guerrilla attack on Seoul which is to take place tomorrow the 18th. However we will soon know whether the report is accurate.
We are still on American rations and tonight there was an issue of chewing gum. I haven’t felt the urge to chew yet though, Darling.
My sweet, this will only be a short letter. I haven’t anything new to talk about. However, whenever I do have a chance to write, you’re the one I always want to talk to. I may not be able to write often later on and so I should make the most of the time now.
My lovely Darling, I want to be with you so much. I don’t know how long this bloomin’ war is going to last but it has parted us for too long already.
Cheerio for now.
All my love,
Bob
PS Hope the nylons arrived!
Bob Gill was on the front line as the Chinese launched an offensive on 31 December 1950, with Seoul falling again on 4 January 1951, and the Ulster Rifles being pushed back from Suwon a few days later.
Suwon
Jan 4th
My Dearest,
Just a note to let you know that I am quite safe after our first big battle with the chinks. We were moved north on Jan 1st to take up positions covering Seoul. The next day we had a small battle with some North Koreans and drove them off the positions they had taken.
Naturally we were very pleased with ourselves but last night the American command, to my surprise gave us orders to withdraw. We did and the Chinese ambushed us. It really was a hell of a night… Our company suffered very heavy casualties, being last to leave. Seoul has now had it presumably and we are at the moment back where we started, in the silk factory…
All my love for now Sweet,
Bob
Middle of Nowhere
Korea
Wed 10 Jan
Dearest Doreen,
You see I have some posh stationary now, thanks to you. The parcel arrived safely and I was pleased with all the odds and ends.
I wrote to you from Suwon the other day after we packed up and moved further south. We have been in this position a few days now and we all hope that each day will be the last. It is rather grim with mud everywhere and now we have had a heavy fall of snow. Settled sleep is out of the question because we are expecting the Chinese to come along here anytime. Actually though I have my doubts because all the countryside is very open or with the tanks and guns we have, we’re on ‘home ground’. These Chinks are best at night in the hills and I am rather sceptical about them meeting us in the open. If they come along here we’ll paste them!
Alternatively they may come around through the hills and outflank us. If that happens, and it is expected, we’ll move south again. You see I am going all tactical at the moment dear – soldiering may be damned uncomfortable at times, but it is never dull or uninteresting.
No more news now dearest, keep on sending me these lovely letters and the cuttings for I am not really out of touch with home when I hear from you all.
Cheerio sweet.
Affectionately,
Bob
The British forces also saw considerable action during the battle of the Imjin River in April 1951 when the 29th Infantry Brigade, and notably the men of the 1st Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, fought a desperate rearguard action against overwhelming Chinese forces.
Julian Potter served as a National Service junior officer with 11 Light Anti Aircraft Battery, Royal Artillery, in Korea, and took part in the aftermath of the battle of the Imjin, guarding the Han River bridges to the south.
Dear Mum and Dad,
In case you did not get my last letter, my release has come through; I am to be demobbed by October 1st and in ‘J’ RHU by July 1st. With this Chinese Communist offensive in full swing however, one cannot be certain that things will work out just like that. ‘J’ RHU has been practically emptied in the last few days, and there is a rumour that all leave to Japan has been stopped. If the Chinese advance is stemmed north of Seoul, we will presumably carry on in our safe role of protecting the bridges. Since the offensive begun, 11 Bty has had only one sergeant injured in the way of casualties, which shows the comparative safety of our job: the infantry battalions of 29 Brigade suffered an appalling proportion of killed, wounded or missing – I don’t know if the papers published the figures…
At the moment there is a general air of anticipation and excitement, as everyone is digging in for the defence of Seoul. All the gun detachments are scrounging and pilfering from the Americans’ supply of sandbags, in order to increase the width and height of the walls of their gunpits. The air-strip is in continuous use, as sortie after sortie of UN planes take off, loaded with napalm bombs, rockets, etc. UN gunfire has now been rumbling in the distance for 24 hours non-stop. No more refugees are allowed to cross the river, for fear of letting through enemy in disguise. To-day one of the more nervy gun detachments complained that they had spotted Koreans digging trenches on the other side of a gulley in front of the gun. On investigation, I found that the holes they had dug were filled in. Fearing the civilians might be hiding arms for the eventual use of the Communists, I made them dig the holes out again; only to find that they had been protecting their food and clothing from any bombs or shells that might come down…
Love from Julian
Following the fluctuating offensives of 1950 and 1951, as the Communist and UN forces made great territorial gains in large-scale operations, the period from July 1951 until the end of the war in July 1953 was one of stalemate and attrition. The two sides settled into a prolonged period of trench warfare, interrupted only by sporadic major operations, while peace talks dragged on.
Lieutenant Garry Smith was a National Serviceman with the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, again part of the 29th Infantry Brigade, and describes his first Christmas in Korea.
KOREA
CHRISTMAS DAY 1951
Dear Mum & Dad,
I expect you have all had the normal round of Christmas festivities, or will have had by the time you get this letter. I believe in fact although it is five minutes to five in the afternoon here, you will just be getting up on Christmas morning to go to early service. I must say we are not very cheerful here. Last night we had some Canadians who made a lot of noise up till about three in the morning. They were all very tight and had been attracted by the lights of my cookhouse where the turkeys were being roasted on our field oven which is made out of a 50 gallon oil drum and corrugated iron. The noise kept a major in HQ Squadron, who lives about 200 yards away, awake and both Dave and I who had slept through almost all of it except the last when I went out and quelled the riot, were not very popular. We did our best for the men, took them tea and rum in bed in the morning and served out the dinner which was very good, though a bit cold as we have no dining room. It started to hail in the morning, then snow till lunch, and now it is pouring with rain and we are all very damp. But the men are in good heart and have lots of sweets and nuts and beer in moderation so that’s all right. I am going to Kure in Japan on about the 27th which does not please me, but I expect you will be glad to hear.
A merry Christmas and the Best of Luck,
From Garry & Dave
PS. We had a bit of a battle yesterday, I wasn’t there but apparently one tank got stuck and everyone flapped quite unnecessarily, not much on today, though there was a lot of shelling on both sides last night. The doctor shot a deer which looks like a dog and has big front teeth and no horns but tastes quite good. We had a Carol service this morning.
G.
444 Field Rel Squadron
KOREA ASAPO 3
10/3/52
Dear Mum & Dad,
Luckily Boing Cho Jail which was our last stopping place had wooden floors and ceilings. These were brought with us … and now we have wooden floors and doors to each tent.
We are in a very pleasant position in a little valley opening onto the main plain up which the main road runs to the north. It is sunny and quite warm during the day, but very cold at night. My tooth water is always frozen…
Behind our camp up the hill there is a comfortable gook position wonderfully dug in and in places the camouflage is still on. They dig great tunnels sometimes right through a ridge, with deep entrenchments on the forward slope and little shacks on the other side. In this case one can follow the whole campaign that finally eliminated this position. First the American foxholes on the lower slopes, then tank tracks where tanks came up to support the advance then the blasted line of trenches, and finally then the crest, the second line of American foxholes…
More later,
Love Garry
PS. I have grown a moustache as threatened, I shall not be back until November definitely.
Indy. Guard Coy Pusan
BAPO 3.
3/5/52
Dear Mum & Dad,
The weather of late has been very depressing, we get two days of sun and then it rains and drizzles for the rest of the week. Yesterday I went round all the guards to pay them. Things have been very quiet surprisingly as trouble was expected over Monday and no one was allowed out, but nothing happened except that all the Koreans got very drunk on Sake. We have some excitement; a band of guerrillas has holed up in the middle of some very rough country outside Pusan which is also a big store area with only very scattered guards mostly Korean police; they have taken of late to coming out at night and shooting at lighted windows which is rather inconvenient…
Still no sign of this action ending, the Koreans certainly do not want it to, at any rate not down here, they have never had it so good in their lines and all will be lost if the Americans go home. There are some Americans whom I like very much, but collectively they are an awful lot of clots. We had one to dinner the other day whose rank over here is Colonel, but whose substantive rank is Corporal. I think theirs is probably the only army in which such a thing could exist, though the adjutant at Kure who is a major was a full lieut when he came out…
Your son,
Garry
At the same time as the British Army was providing troops for the UN commitment in Korea, it was also garrisoning the last bastions of empire around the globe. The post-war years saw Great Britain gradually withdraw from most of her imperial possessions, sometimes peacefully but often in the face of armed opposition from local groups. This was the situation in the British colony of Malaya, where the British Army carried out anti-guerrilla operations against a Communist insurgency from 1948 until 1960. Michael Rugman served with the King’s Royal Hussars in Malaya in 1955, one of the many British regiments committed to what became known as the Malayan Emergency.
23217940 Tpr Rugman
HQ Sqn
XV-XIX K.R.H.
C/O GPO IPOH
Ipoh
Monday 19th Sept 1955
Dear Mum & Dad,
The mail this end has been arriving so fast I’ve hardly had time to reply before the next one comes in… I’m glad you had a good long spell of summer weather. Pity you didn’t have a week or two away somewhere. My summer has lasted six and half months and time has flown. Yes, I’ve been in the army about a year now. And on the whole life hasn’t been too bad, it’s been interesting and I’m with people my own age and interests, but things get a bit niggling at times, you live from one lot of Sqn details to the next and you feel rather restricted at times. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but on the whole it’s passable.
The weekend before last I went into the ule [jungle] on a jungle bash. But we returned with no notches on our rifle butts. We went into a forest reserve twenty miles south of Ipoh early Saturday afternoon, pushed into the interior, stopped just before sunset to change, have a quick meal cooked on small portable cookers and chunks of solid fuel, and laid ambush for the night. Next morning we pressed on and reached a track. We stopped by a pool of murky water for breakfast, where we refilled our water bottles making the water drinkable with special sterilizing tablets. We continued until we came out in the afternoon. All the time you have your rifle cocked and keep ten yards behind the man in front, and you can only talk in whispers. But they (CT’s) must have seen us coming, for we didn’t see a sign of any bandits. It rather resembled a Live Scout widegame, the type that flop…
I expect you’ve heard about the Jubilee celebrations of the Sultan of Johore, to what extent I don’t know but it appears the Sultan made a good speech and to the point when he said if he were a Britishman he would not stay and fight the CTs as the security forces weren’t getting enough info from the civilians, leading to the capture of terrorists.
As I’ve said before, quite a few people in our troop have been getting, or are, timex (going out soon) and the main topic of conversation these days verges on this subject and is rather disconcerting…
Keep well,
Love to you all,
Michael
The British also faced opposition to their rule in the East African colony of Kenya, where a revolt by the Kikuyu tribe, known as the Mau Mau Uprising, caused a state of emergency to be declared by the British governor in October 1952. Theodore Henry Birkbeck was the commanding officer of the 70th Infantry Brigade, King’s African Rifles (KAR), which was one of the principal units deployed to Kenya by the British authorities to crush the uprising. In August 1955 Birkbeck wrote the following letter to a fellow major general, William Alfred Dimoline.
Tel NYER 76 Ext 2
Ref 800/P
15 Aug 55
I arrived here on Sunday 7th August, having spent my first night in Nairobi with General Lathbury. Coming from ‘tropical England’ I ran into some extremely cold and damp weather here which was rather odd, to say the least of it.
John Orr and I got straight down to the handover and a pretty busy week followed. The brigade was deployed in the forest in Operation Dante, mostly in the Eastern Aberdares. We visited 4 and 5 KAR early in the week and then had to go on Wednesday to a C-in-Cs conference at GHQ.
I expect you will see General Lathbury in London this week, who will give you his plan for our future deployment.
Operation Dante finishes today and all 5 Battalions are returning to their base camps where they will rest and refit until the end of the month. After that we shall deploy again right up as far as the Meru where I shall be sending the 7th KAR. The idea then is for each battalion to dominate a particular area of forest while the reserves are handed over to the Administration and the Police.
My first impression of the Mau Mau is that they are definitely on the run and that if we continue to hit them hard and confine them more and more to the forest the end may well be in sight. This is my personal view and I should be grateful if you would treat the contents of this letter as confidential and between ourselves.
I have not seen very much of the Battalions as yet but they seem to be in excellent heart in spite of nearly three years of continual operations.
Lieut Col F.H.W. Brind, DSO, OBE and Lieut Col C.V. Watson-Gandy are both on leave so I have not met them. Brigadier J.F. McNab, DSO, OBE is also away but I look forward to seeing him on his return.
It was most kind of you and Mrs Dimoline to give me lunch before I left and I am finding the talk we had together most useful. I shall send you ‘sitreps’ from time to time to keep you in the picture, but they may not be as frequent as I would desire, as I think that I shall be a bit pushed for time to start with.
With best wishes and kindest regards to you both.
Yours,
THB
It wasn’t just in the far-flung colonies that Great Britain was confronting issues arising out of the retreat from empire, even in the Mediterranean there were problems that required military intervention. The island of Cyprus was annexed by Britain during the First World War and became a crown colony from 1923, however, in the years following the Second World War a national movement demanding enosis, union with Greece, became increasingly popular. This movement broke out into armed revolt in 1955 when Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters – EOKA) launched a campaign against British rule.
Peter J. Houghton-Brown was a National Service officer in the 1st Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment, which was deployed to Cyprus as reinforcements following the outbreak of the emergency.
[1956]
1st Battalion. The Wiltshire Regiment
BFPO 53
… Landed safely and have come straight up here to Aghirda. It is a tented camp on the side of the northern range of mountains, just like any other Army camp, except that gin is 5 pence and beer is expensive at 1 shilling.
One carries a loaded pistol with one everywhere you go. It must never leave you. One man dying and two injured was their bag last night. The terrorists threw a bomb into the back of an Army truck.
In a few days I go off to my platoon at Myrtou; a village 40 minutes drive to the west. This seems a most unsavoury job. You have orders to shoot at anyone you see who might be going to throw a bomb, and you cannot tell if it’s a bomb or a stone. I cannot quite see how we are not going to get hateful to these people.
B Company,
BFPO 53
… I have been blooded. Did you read in the papers that an army Patrol had been stoned in Kyrenia (also BBC Wednesday news). That was me. I have been going to a Court Marshal [sic] every day for the last 3 days. This means going by land rover along the coast road at about 9am each morning. The first morning we got stoned badly in Lapithos, we were going under a bank and about 30 school children hurled rocks on us. No one was hit except me. I got a big stone on the arm and have a large bruise to show for it. There was only me, the driver and our guard. Not enough of us to stop and beat the hell out [of] them as we wished.
Letters from the Front: From the First World War to the Present Day Page 22