British Soldiers of the Korean War: In Their Own Words

by Stephen F. Kelly

More than 30,000 British troops fought in Korea between 1950 and 1953 and more than 3,000 died, with over 1,000 being captured and held in atrocious conditions by the Chinese or Koreans. At least half of those captured died in prison camps. More than 70 per cent of those who fought were 18/19 year olds doing national service. They were poorly trained and ill-equipped, fighting much of their time in snowy trenches. This book, for the first time, tells the story of these ordinary stories, as well as sailors and airmen, in their own words. It has the full backing of the British Korean Veterans Association which has over 5,000 members. Most of the veterans are now in their eighties and this will be the last chance for them to tell their tale. So soon after the Second World War, this was a war Britain did not need but she remained steadfast by the side of the Americans, fighting in a hostile environment more than 6,000 miles away in a country nobody could point to on a map. The 'Special Relationship' may be a joke to some now - it wasn't then.

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2013

About the author

Stephen F. Kelly is an English author and broadcaster, born in Liverpool, England in June 1946. He is the author of many books, mostly on football and in particular on Liverpool Football Club. He has written a number of biographies of football managers including Bill Shankly, Sir Alex Ferguson, Kenny Dalglish and Gerard Houllier as well as an oral history of Liverpool Football Club. He was one of the first writers in Britain to explore sport through oral history, not only with The Kop but also with his oral history of Manchester United Football Club, Red Voices, and a further book on Liverpool, The Bootroom Boys.

Reviews

[Yolanda]

As a preamble to this book review: I DEFINITELY saw one of the soldiers the author interviewed - Bill Fox, formerly of the Glorious Glosters - at the cenotaph in Busan one year. He may or may not recall a girl with dark hair and a leather bomber jacket having placed a scratty little red flower there - no poppies in Korea, there is an unpleasant legacy in the country of when the Japanese used to have their opium fields to the north and it is understandable that they don't really want them. That was me. So, hi.

On to the review. This is a brilliantly laid-out and important book, whose author has categorised the reminiscences of the men into various areas and made them easier to digest in that way. By allowing them just to tell their story with its idiosyncrasies (one soldier, of the Argylls, refers to every single East Asian as being Chinese) and not putting spin on it, he has captured a part of British history that I hope more people will pay attention to. Media about the Korean War is typically absolute rubbish, with the conflict barely featuring in Western representations beyond the fine for its time, but now-dated MASH, and a lot of the films coming out of South Korea being romanticised, mawkish, borderline propaganda not fit for an old-fashioned B movie release. When you get to the bit where the Chinese are on the advance, you'll see exactly why such corny tripe is regurgitated - the sheer horror of what our soldiers really witnessed happening is even worse if you know the area and can therefore vividly picture it. The level of denial about such incidents is, in part, from grief.

There is a good deal of revisionist history about, claiming moral equivalence between the north and south and suggesting that this conflict was in some ways not worthwhile, presumably because of its strange end in a no-score-draw stalemate. The treatment of UN prisoners of war is also downplayed by many, and I would like to suggest people avail themselves of statistics so they can make a proper comparison. In WW2, 10% of allied soldiers captured by Nazis died, I believe. 26% by the Japanese, rising in specific places such as the Kinkaseki hell mine in northern Taiwan to 50%. In the Korean War, as stated in this book, it was over half our men who were taken as prisoners that died in North Korean prison camps. There is no such thing as a nice prisoner of war camp, but these ones have got to be especially egregious. As Kelly alludes, also, the 1st Battalion of the Gloucester Regiment had done the rearguard action on the Retreat from Rangoon in WW2, so some of the regulars had actually been imprisoned by Japan and now were imprisoned again by the North Koreans and communist Chinese. They were in a position to compare, and in this book, a specific unfavourable comparison is made, namely that the communists did not declare their prisoners properly (possibly thinking the Red Cross to be a decadent capitalist institution...?) but just gave random inaccurate numbers with no names or regiments. The human rights abuses alone and the lack of respect for organisations established to promote world peace are a reason readers need to check this out.

Further, regarding the no-score draw outcome, I suggest people to read what the men themselves say about this: that it was worth it to protect the South and allow it to become what it is today. One soldier also refers to a fully successful army as being as forgotten as the Korean veterans: '14th army in Burma' - Field Marshall Slim's forces, who inflicted the greatest land defeat upon the Imperial Japanese Army that it ever endured. He's quite right. If the stalemate situation in Korea is the real reason why it is ignored, why then is this staggering success also relegated to the dustbin of history? Personally I think this is just another example of an Asian conflict being arrogantly seen as not relevant to us in the West. Time to change that.