My Experiences With
In Korea
I joined the regular army in September 1949, I was 17yrs. 6mths old.
I did my basic training at the the then Welsh brigade barracks in Brecon, The barracks in the town were built in 1840 and from there troops went out to the Zulu Wars in South Africa in 1879. They are the 'Dering Lines', named after Sir Edward Dering who formed the 24th Regiment of Foot in 1689, was built in 1930 as No 21 Infantry Training Center and during the Second World War more than 27,000 men were trained there. In 1946, the camp became the 'Wales Brigade Training Center' until the Parachute Regiment Battle School was set up in 1960. Thereafter it became the home of the Non-Commissioned Officers' Tactical Wing of School of Infantry, part of the new Training Agency. The Army has recently announced that the base is to become the service's top training center. The Ministry of Defense is moving its infantry training for officers from Warminster in Wiltshire to Wales. Almost a third-of-a-million soldiers already come to the Brecon Beacons to train on the Epynt ranges above Sennybridge.Now 300 young Sandhurst officers are to train in Wales each year as well. The high-profile platoon commanders battle course will turn out some of the future generals of the British Army.
When I enlisted the brigade was made up of three regiments, The Royal Welch Fusiliers, The South Wales Borderers and The Welch Regiment. Two of these Regiments of foot have been disbanded as separate entities in recent times. The RWF escaped the 'cut'. Only Proud and nostalgic memories remain of the SWB and The Welch, and items of treasured regimental paraphernalia, the Regimental Colours, the once coveted trophies of military achievement and selfless acts of bravery, with Battle Honours like 'Rorke's Drift', 'Inkerman', 'Sevastopol'. (The name 'Zulu' conjures up scenes from the film of that name, the soldiers represented by the actors, were members of a Welsh regiment, portrayed using their actual names. Bravery was abroad in full measure in conflicts such as that , they being the forerunners of the South Wales Borderers I believe) and Trophies of impressive peacetime sporting achievements. They as with similar items belonging to them and other Great British Regiments that no longer exist, Regimental properties that were once displayed and paraded so proudly, are now just artifacts that adorn regimental museums, Silverware, ex. officers mess, once proudly displayed around the walls and along dining tables on mess nights gathering the aroma of sausages and mash, or jugged hare, gin or port wine and a wafting of tobacco smoke. Old swords and muskets, souvenirs from places emblazoned on the regimental Standards, The Rolls of Honour of those who perished in battles, fighting and dying in a wide variety of localities throughout the world, those columns of names, invariably written in gold leaf on dark oak varnished plaques, conjure up visions of great bravery, I'm afraid I never dwelt overlong on the detail of the regiment's battle honours otherwise my list would be longer and the names probably spelt differently. proud to be called Men of Harlech, even the non Welshmen amongst them, after all were not nine of the 'eleven VCs before breakfast' won in that epic defensive action awarded to 'adopted' Men of Harlech who were well represented there. As with the Welch regiment in Korea, a goodly proportion of the 1st. battalion were non-Welsh. being English, Irish, north and south, only relatively few Scottish, that owing to the 'Scot's' invariable loyalty to the Highland regiments.
On completion of my basic training I was posted to the Air Transport Training and Development Center, at Abingdon near Oxford. and served there with members of The Royal Air Force, and The 3rd. Battalion Parachute Regiment. My association there with the 'Paras' qualified me to don the Red beret and the Pegasus shoulder flash, permitting me to bathe in some un-earned glory surrounding that Regiment.
(The original Flash) 
The function of the AATDC, the Unit referred to above, was to experiment with, and hopefully perfect the process of supplying ground troops by air. An enormous amount of military hardware and types of vehicle were dropped by parachute at that base, often to an audience of visiting domestic and foreign top brass and high ranking political dignitaries, sometimes with the spectacular and embarrassing result of parachute and load parting company on leaving the aircraft and plummeting to earth to bury itself in the the air field ground.
It was while at Abingdon that I was involved in a road accident. I was one of a group of people returning from week-end pass , passengers in the Station liberty truck driven by the Airfield fire engine driver, he lost control and turned the thing over. My injuries meant a temporary physical downgrade, rendering me unsuitable for the heavy lifting involved on that Station, resulting in a further posting.
My next 'home', where I thankfully, quickly made a full recovery was another airfield, the base of 'R.A.F. Old Sarum', located a couple of miles from the town of Salisbury, in Wiltshire. The Old Sarum base was a strange place, to this day I've been unable to fathom its purpose, or function. I found it a relatively undemanding existence, not a bit 'regimental'. I think I could quite happily have spent the rest of my army service there. however the Welch Regiment and the Korean war had found reason to get together and felt that I would be better employed doing what I was in the army for and invited me to go along. It was at this time that I removed my Royal Welch Fusiliers cap badge and other identifying attachments to my uniform and donned the Welch Regiment's replacements.
Farewell for a while to the RWF cap badge, Hello Welch Regiment
Between the barracks at Colchester, where all those like myself were rounded up and deposited, and the MOD military training area at Buckingham Tofts, near Norwich, we were weaned off of 'beer and skittles' and introduced to some 'muck and bullets'. I forget how many weeks we spent tramping around the Norfolk countryside, or how many miles we were force marched wearing full kit, or how many times we were dumped miles off the beaten track in the dead of night and told to dig defensive positions that would be appraised for defensive effectiveness and quality of camouflage at daybreak.
I remember well the
end of training Parade, where we were addressed by the CO. and heard his opinion of our
preparedness for battle. He wasn't a happy man. I think that was the first occasion
I heard the term 'esprit de corps', he spoke of our desperate lack of it. We returned to
the Barracks in Colchester with that message ringing in our ears. Within days of our
return we boarded the train at Colchester Railway Station on the 9th. of October 1951 en
route for Southampton Docks to board the troopship H.M.T. Empire Fowey 
and set sail for Pusan, Korea. on the 10th.
calling at: Gibraltar, (no shore leave) Aden, Colombo, (now Shri Lanka) Singapore and Hong
Kong, arriving at Pusan on the 10th. November 1951.Our arrival was greeted on the quayside
by two military bands, an English one playing D'ya Ken John Peel followed by an American
one 
playing The Saint Louis
Blues March, you can guess which one we preferred , it was at the time of the Big
Band era and teenagers at that time were avid listeners to a radio station called AFM
American Forces Network, broadcasting from somewhere in Europe, who promoted all the
better known American Big Bands and their singers, so the 'In thing' was Swing and even
military bands of the American army knew how to 'Swing'.
We boarded a train shortly after docking and headed north to Uijenbu. The morning after we moved by road up to Britannia Camp in the Commonwealth Division area, and without a lot of delay, on the 11th. 12th. and 13th., moved up to Chondong-Ni, to relieve what was left of the 'Glousters', incurring on the 11th. our first loss of life, (2nd. Lieutenant Burgess ).
It was November 1951
when The 1st. Battalion Welch Regiment arrived and 'settled in' on the bleak, trench and
bunker strewn positions, that a few months earlier had been the setting for decimation of
The Glosters, the chill in the air was not unlike it would have been in the UK.for
that month, the weather ranging from clear and cold, to mild and wet,again reminiscent of
that we would expect back home for that time of year.
Although a reserve area, the defenses were virtually non existent on that position,
presumably the Glousters had not had long enough to established themselves since the
remnants were pushed back following the April the 23rd. onslaught. Things
weren't a great deal better when we departed the place, our puny attempts to 'dig in'
appear pathetic in retrospect. The bunkers we dug were less than adequate to keep out the
rain, let alone shells or mortars, they were that flimsy we had to erect barriers of twigs
marking the position to stop anyone walking on the roofs and falling through. In contrast,
bunkers we were building just a few months later, after sampling a considerable amount of
incoming artillery and realising its potential, were strong enough to withstand any amount
of mortar rounds and all but a direct hit by shell-fire.
On the 24th. November the Battalion moved up the eastern side of Sammy-chon valley
and replaced the 1st. Republic of Korea Regiment, on a section of the line referred to as
The Hook,
a two and a half to three mile long, 80 to a 100feet high spur of hill features that form one side of a Westerly off-shoot valley branching away from the main Sami-chon river Valley, formed a claw shaped northerly distortion of the line of conflict, towards the enemy territory, hence its name. 'THE HOOK'. Before we arrived it had already seen some punishing encounters between the UN forces and the North Korean and Chinese units. Still more furious actions took place after we departed. The Canadians PPCLI were to be on the receiving end of particularly furious and sustained attack, which they bravely and successfully resisted. Incurring a number of casualties, six killed and a greater number wounded. The attackers paid a heavier price losing Thirty-one killed with untold wounded. The Black Watch and The Duke of Wellington's each in turn successfully resisted attempts by the Chinese to take the position, both taking heavy casualties in the process. A publication entitled: 'Fortune Favours The Brave' gives a detailed and graphic account of the 'Dukes' defense.
The Vickers Machine-gun section I was with (commanded by Cpl. Gerald O'Shea, MM) was initially positioned on Yong-Dong, a feature at the southern end of the Hook confluence of the Sami -chon valley (see map below). We commenced to 'dig-in' on the forward lower slopes of an eastern spur of Yong-Dong.
Having arrived on the position later than expected owing to the Oxford Carrier we were travelling in suffering a snapped drive shaft (caused by extreme cold) leaving us a mile or so walk so as the daylight faded the gun positions were only partially dug, then a heavy snow blizzard made further progress impossible. We huddled together in the partially dug trenches and settled down for the night. Come morning we were covered with several inches of snow and almost paralysed with the cold.
A fire was lit and we attempted to thaw out prior to commencing the trench work. We had made very little further progress with the gun positions when we were visited by a Brigadier who was not impressed with the position we had chosen and promptly ordered us to move to a higher location on the same feature. No sooner had we completed the basics of a defensive position (defensive positions are never 'complete'. They must be ever made better) that we were ordered to relocate to a position closer to the enemy. Namely: (as it later was to be given it's Brigade title) 'The Hook'
Being well into winter the ground was rock hard with frost, making the task of
re-establishing the neglected defenses and crawl trenches a long and back-breaking one.
The enemy lines facing us were across some 500yards of Paddy fields and then a similar
distance to the crest of a range of hills, whose forward sloping features, forming a right
angle to our front and right were contested territory, these ranged from Hill 169
(height 169 feet), at the corner of the angle, spurring down from that, from our
left to right at about 50 feet less, was a second feature, some 200yds in
length,culminating at a narrow cutting between itself and the third feature,of similar
height, but some 100yds longer. These three features had been designated the codenames Top
Hat for 169 then Pheasant
During the Welch regiments spell at
that position, Pheasant and Peacock were unmanned areas, the only activity was patrol
movement, either by the Chinese or ourselves, 169 on the other hand was occupied on an
alternating 'arrangement'. A patrol of ours, about 12 strong would, each dawn, walk across
the paddy fields, into the cutting between Pheasant and Peacock, traverse left up the
south facing end of Pheasant, along the cover side of the crest and onto 169, invariably
finding it unmanned. There were a couple of occasions when the Chinese laid on an ambush
from cleverly concealed foxholes on the forward slopes of 169, but these were dealt with
quite effectively. The unwritten arrangement was, that we occupy 169 by day and the
Chinese by night, our patrol returning before sunset.
This activity was
persisted with, in spite of it flying in he face of convention and the accepted strategy
of not being too predictable within sight of the enemy.
Link to Map \/ aerial view
At dawn on the 9th. of February 1952 we watched that days patrol
pick its way across the raised dykes between the paddies, to the wide dirt track that
ran the length of the valley taking in the foot of both Pheasant and Peacock, cross it and
enter the cutting, which, on this particular morning was filled to a height of about eight
feet with thick white mist. no sooner had the last man disappeared
in the mist than a cacophony of small arms fire and grenade explosions shattered that calm
morning, black smoke from the exploding grenades drifted up out of the white mist, the
small arms fire tailed off to an odd single shot here and there. In spite of the absence
of wireless transmitted messages giving the patrol's situation,( the wireless operator
having been killed ) it soon became apparent they were in deep trouble.
A Patrol from A company set off from a point at the southern end of the Welch positions to provide support to the ambushed patrol and to escort it to safety. However, crossing the valley they encountered an unmarked mine field. Whilst formulating a recovery plan they became the target of a 2" mortar barrage, incurring casualties. They regrouped and eventually succeeded in its mission, bringing back it's own wounded and the survivors of the first patrol. Also the bodies of 22458555 Private Norman Babbage (Wireless Operator) of the original patrol and 22205830 Corporal Reginald Greaves a member of A Company.
The regiment stayed on The Hook position until March, pulling back to the less traumatic end of the Sami-chon valley, (the positions we had relieved the Glosters of) there we picked up a few late arrivals, lads who were under age for the initial draft,( you had to be 19 years old to be on active service ).
That first phase had cost the Regiment fourteen dead. Some of them I'd never met, some I knew only as a face I couldn't put a name to, some I had met quite often, to talk to, to drink and share a joke with, some I knew well, a couple were friends. All were comrades.
Shortly after we vacated the The Hook
the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, who replaced us, were involved in a
defensive action that cost them three dead, a tenth of the Chinese losses, no consolation,
but the day was theirs, they gave no ground.
The Editor of this Web Site would like to register his gratitude to John H. Dart, The Curator of The Welch Regimental Museum, The Black Barbican Towers, The Castle, Cardiff, for information on The Welch Regiments service in the Korean war, making it possible to include data and dates on which there was previously some uncertainty of accuracy
