THE GLOSTERS’ GUNNERS
A handful of Royal Artillerymen were the only other British soldiers to receive a US Presidential Unit Citation for the Battle of the Imjin River
C Troop, 170th Independent Mortar Battery was a small unit of gunners who were attached to the Glosters. Armed with ML 4.2-inch mortars, which were the smallest guns in the Royal Artillery, C Troop’s job was to support their infantry comrades. During the Battle of the Imjin River, they had no medium or heavy artillery support and (like the Glosters) were thinly spread out.
Lance Bombardier Tommy Clough spoke to History of War in 2016 and described how C Troop kept up a ferocious rate of fire: “We kept firing and firing until the barrels were glowing red-hot, which was very dangerous. The mortar crews held competitions with each other to see how many they could get in the air before the first one exploded.”
Like the Glosters’ A Company, C Troop were forced onto Hill 235, where saving their guns took on a symbolic importance. “That hill still gives me the creeps but we had to take our mortars with us,” recalled Clough. “They were heavy, four-feet long and usually drawn on wheels but our guns were our colours so it was a point of honour to take them.”
C Troop eventually spiked their mortars by putting live grenades down the barrels so that they wouldn’t be captured by the
Chinese. Like Roy Mills, Clough was captured but the two men have remained friends to this day. C Troop, along with the
Glosters, was later awarded a US Presidential Unit Citation.
Clough summed up why the
UN fought in Korea: “I know it sounds like an old cliche but we were defending freedom and that’s what we were fighting for.”
However, this bloke did try to escape but they soon caught him and brought him back.”
The battle was finally over but the cost had been enormous. Approximately one quarter of 29th Brigade had become casualties, while further along the UN line the South Koreans suffered 8,000 casualties as well as 1,500 Americans. Severe though these numbers were they paled in comparison to the Chinese casualties. 63rd Corps may have incurred casualties of approximately 70,000 men, including 10,000-20,000 against 29th Brigade alone. The true figure will never be fully known but it is estimated that 63rd Corps lost around 40 per cent of its personnel at the Imjin River.
Although they were tactically beaten, the ferocious stand of 29th Brigade – including the Glosters’ holding action – enabled UN forces to regroup and the Chinese advance on Seoul was permanently halted. Nevertheless, the significant strategic benefits of the Imjin River were unknown to Mills and the other captured Glosters as they were marched away to a terrible captivity.
Resisting indoctrination
After being captured, the Glosters were forcemarched into North Korea. “We marched for weeks going north, south, east and west to get to the camp. The Americans had air superiority so the Chinese used to march us by night. We were exhausted and ate virtually no food except for what you could scrape up.”
At one point, the Glosters were crammed into an inadequate shed, where they were plagued by vermin. “We were tightly packed in and there were rats that ran all over. You couldn’t hit or get rid of them because our arms were so tightly packed and I can never forget a rat running across my face. I felt his front paws, his back paws and then his tail – it was a terrible sensation.”
The Glosters finally reached their prison camp near the North Korean-chinese border, where they were kept in horrendous conditions. There were also American POWS but the two nationalities were kept separate. “Some of our blokes died but [many more] Americans in our camp [also died]. They were averaging six to eight deaths [per day] at one point and there was an area in the camp called ‘Boot Hill’ where they buried the dead. We weren’t allowed to mix with the Americans because there was a road that separated us.”
Thirty-four Glosters died, with the death rate being partially due to malnourishment. “Korea was a poor place and so were the conditions because the Chinese didn’t have any food themselves. In the beginning they never had any food so we never got any. We lived on what we could find. Gradually, the longer we were there the better the food became.”
The prisoners not only had to contend with starvation but also attempts at political indoctrination as their Chinese captors tried to convert them to communism. These attempts to bend the British to their will included placing prisoners in solitary confinement for long
periods, including Colonel Carne and Captain Farrar-hockley. Mills himself was put in solitary confinement for a week after trying to help his ill friend David Gardiner. “Dave was in a hell of state but they were taking him up to the ‘Office’. A Chinese guard was pushing him so I pushed him back. I was put in solitary until I ‘confessed’ that I wouldn’t do it again.”
Mills’ spell in solitary confinement affected his mental health. “You’re not with it and you go out of your mind. You couldn’t see anything: there was a door but no windows so you were in the dark all the time. Your memory also played havoc on you and it took me out. The Chinese eventually said, ‘You’ve got to apologise’ so I got out by saying that I wouldn’t do it again.”
The Glosters endured this combination of hunger, indoctrination and solitary confinement for two-and-a-half years. Mills found that the best way to cope in these harsh conditions was to mentally disengage: “I didn’t enjoy being a prisoner and if I could have got out of there I would have. You didn’t think anything a lot of the time and walked around with your mind being a bit of a blank. However, that was actually the best way to be because they used to try to hammer you with communism. The average British soldier wasn’t really interested in politics and we didn’t take to them trying to indoctrinate us. Most of us didn’t take any notice.”
Despite the harsh treatment the Glosters received from the Chinese, Mills recalls that humanity could exist between the captives and captors: “We used to have to go and chop down wood. One tree fell on top of a Chinese
“THE GLOSTERS ENDURED THIS COMBINATION OF HUNGER, INDOCTRINATION AND SOLITARY CONFINEMENT FOR TWO-AND-A-HALF YEARS”
soldier and one of our blokes went to lift the tree up so that the man could get out. It was comical because we were enemies and yet he did a thing like that.”
This generosity continued even after the prisoners were released in 1953 after an armistice ended the war. “We were taken to South Korea and on the way the side of a mountain by the road collapsed. A truck behind us went right down into a river and Dave Gardiner was in it so I got out and ran back to see if he was alright. A couple of British blokes had managed to get out as it was rolling down the hill. One of them was a little Scottish cook from the Catering Corps but he got in the cab and rescued the Chinese driver.”
After years of captivity, the POWS were almost numb to the feeling of freedom. “We didn’t show the Chinese that we were pleased to be released. It was obviously a relief but we were a bit down in the dumps by then. We weren’t very strong by the end and had lost a lot of weight.”