HOW IT WAS

(A Northumberland Fusilier's experience of the Korean War)

My battalion took part in an action in Korea to take a hill called Mariyan San. It was a piece of high ground with a commanding position overlooking both our and the enemy’s positions. For my part, I had only a very limited idea of what was happening during our attack. It was a complete and utter shambles.

After a long approach march lasting the whole day, eating on the move from our tins of compo rations, we could hear our guns firing on the Chinese positions and their return fire. As night fell, we halted in the dusk and started to dig in, working in two-man teams. One man dug while the other snatched a little sleep.

As soon as we got down three feet or so, we ceased digging. One man sat on the edge of the slit trench watching his front while the other made some sort of meal from the remaining cans of food. It soon became pitch black, with no moon or stars to be seen. I think I took the first stag (guard).

We did not have a watch, so we gauged our turns on guard by instinct. The clouds dispersed somewhat, and I could just make out some small shrubs twenty yards or so away. It was an open front with the possibility of a passing Chinese patrol. We were rather jumpy, and I sat on the edge of our slit trench with a round up the spout and the safety catch on. In my imagination, the shrubs seemed to move. My oppo was gently snoring away in the bottom of the trench, dead to the world.

Suddenly, there was a chattering of either Korean or Chinese voices in the valley just below us. They seemed to be quite close. This really put the wind up me, but whoever it was eventually passed on. I didn't wake my mate at this stage, as we all had to maintain silence.

Eventually, I woke my mate up and got a few hours' kip. Come dawn, we stood to as usual.

"Watch your front," said the sergeant, "and keep quiet."

After a cup of tea and some hard tack biscuits, we saddled up and started to trek up the hill and down dale, wading through a small stream before climbing towards our objective. In our army, there was no excitable yelling or waving of arms like you see on the cinema screen and TV. We were not excitable Americans. There was not even an order to march. We just started walking.

It was the end of summer and still quite warm, and you soon got a sweat on during the long approach march over the valley floor. We started to climb a gradually increasing slope, the small shrubs and trees slowing our progress. Others had been that way before us in the to-and-fro of infantry warfare, so at least we did not have to hack our way through.

The sound of firing increased sharply, with the occasional overshoot flying over our heads. A young 19-year-old national serviceman near me hit the deck and lay there, obviously terrified. I tried to get him going by telling him, "It's OK, those rounds are miles away, you're fine." His eyes were rolling wildly, and he was obviously of no use, so we left him and trudged on up the hill.

The action was pretty hot by now, the chatter of Bren guns and rifle fire very close. We came to a trench to our front, about ten yards away, and went to ground. There was no sign of any enemy, although shots were coming our way. No one was in charge anywhere. We had no NCOs or officers with our particular little action. I could see an officer about a hundred yards away standing up and firing at someone with a revolver.

I lay behind a tree, wondering what the hell to do. I pulled the pin out of a grenade and threw it in what I thought was the general direction of the enemy. They were so well camouflaged and dug in that it was impossible to locate where they were firing from, but there was return fire.

The lad next to me raised himself up to pass a full magazine to the Bren gunner. He fell back, shot through his thigh. I pulled him to me and rolled him over. Blood was pumping out of two bullet holes. Another fusilier and I dragged him into some dead ground. I ripped off his jungle greens and stuck my thumbs into the holes in his thigh, while my mate ripped open his 'First Field Dressing'—a padded bandage we were all issued with—and I wrapped it around his leg. I was soaked in his blood by this time; it was pumping out like a fountain.

Having done what I could, we both started screaming for the medic. Eventually, he turned up, and I administered an ampoule of morphine into the lad’s leg. The medic then went off to attend to the other wounded. He was kept very busy that day.

We sustained thirteen killed and eighty-four wounded out of quite a small force of three companies. The battalion had been in Korea for twelve months and had already sustained many casualties, which may go some way to explaining the lack of leadership and equipment. For instance, I only saw one stretcher for the wounded. Fortunately, most of the wounded were walking wounded and were just about able to make their way back to our ‘B’ echelon, the main support base, some six kilometres behind the firing line.

The young lad we took out unfortunately died as we knelt over him. He just said, "Mother!" and died. He was only nineteen, fresh from Germany as a reinforcement. It was his first and last action.

I had seen a few battles in Palestine, but nothing compared to this.

We left the boy at the side of the track. I busied myself taking off his two dog tags to be handed in to an officer at some stage to account for his death. Suddenly, a Chinese grenade landed alongside us and went off with a terrific bang. I was showered with small metal splinters on my knee and right arm.

We got ourselves into some dead ground and lay there for a while, getting our wind back.

The hill had by now been taken, and the Chinese had retreated, leaving behind their dead and wounded. One of our men was lying about twenty yards in front of us, motionless. I recognized him as someone from my platoon, so we went forward to him. He had been hit with a burst of machine gun fire and was well and truly dead.

The battlefield was now relatively quiet except for the occasional shot ringing out. I never saw a Chinese soldier, dead or alive. As darkness fell, we were able to see a line of Chinese stretcher bearers walking quietly away from the scene of the battle, taking their wounded with them.

We had no stretchers and had to carry our wounded as best we could. I went back to the little nineteen-year-old lad we had tried to save. I went through his pockets and found a wallet with a few photographs inside—his mother and sister, I assumed. I also found a letter from his girlfriend. These I put in my pocket to send home later.

We started to move back down the hill. The fighting was over, and all we could do now was evacuate our wounded and gather our dead. We carried those who couldn’t walk as best we could, sometimes using a rifle as a makeshift stretcher. It was slow, exhausting work, and the night was pitch dark, making the terrain even harder to navigate.

When we finally reached our own lines, we handed over the wounded to the medics. There were not enough ambulances, so some of the badly wounded had to wait for transport. We were exhausted, filthy, and still carrying the stench of blood and sweat.

I went to an officer and handed over the dead lad’s dog tags and his personal effects. The officer looked grim but said nothing, just took them and nodded.

We were finally able to get some rest, but sleep didn’t come easy. The faces of the dead and wounded haunted my mind. The young lad’s last word—“Mother!”—echoed over and over in my head.

That was the reality of war. No heroics, no grand speeches, just exhaustion, blood, and loss.

The next morning, we moved out again. There was no time to dwell on what had happened. Orders were orders, and the war was far from over.