Across a career that spanned empire, global war, and the early Cold War, what distinguished Robert de la Hogue Moran was his repeated entrustment with responsibility, both under fire and in quieter but no less consequential roles where judgment and personal authority mattered more than rank alone. He entered a profession in the 1930s that fostered adaptability in its men who moved across continents and roles throughout the Empire’s colonies. Over the decades that followed from those first days as a subaltern, he would serve and command at battalion level in war and peace, represent British interests in clandestine guerrilla operations and broader Allied structures, and lead soldiers in conflicts that bore little resemblance to one another. Despite all extra-regimental postings, he always remained rooted in the Duke of Wellington’s.
There was, as contemporaries later noted, nothing inevitable about this path. Moran was a gifted all-round sportsman and might easily have pursued a very different life, one marked by athletic distinction rather than campaigning and command. Instead, his posting to India in the early 1930s set the course of his career. It was there, among the hills and valleys of the Northwest Frontier, that he first encountered the realities of active service that would shape his career for the next quarter century.
LOOE AGRA
Jagged ridges and parched valleys around Looe Agra baked beneath a harsh sun that cracked the ground into dry plates under the boots of the 2nd Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment. The arid winds of the North-West Frontier carried fine, choking dust that crept into uniforms, between teeth, and left fine silt on every surface. It was early 1935, and for the young Robert de la Hogue Moran – still a young officer newly absorbed into the battalion – the country was as unforgiving as the operations that lay ahead.
Moran had joined the regiment after a conventional beginning. Posted first to the 1st Battalion at Aldershot in January 1932, he arrived as the Army at home was cautiously emerging from its long assumption of “no war for ten years,” experimenting with mechanization while still deeply rooted in older habits. In December of that year, he was posted to the 2nd Battalion, which had already spent years overseas, moving from Egypt to the Far East and then on to India. On joining A Company, he met Ramsay Bunbury for the first time, who later claimed they were the two fittest men in the battalion in that era. By the time Moran joined them, the battalion was settled on the Frontier, rotating between Nowshera and the hill station at Cherat, where mountain warfare training – conducted in thin air and steep ground – was no longer theoretical preparation but a necessity.
That preparation was soon tested. In August 1934 the Fakir of Alingar crossed the Swat into British territory, his influence among the tribes unsettling a region that had long resisted control. The Looe Agra salient – an angle of land formed by the River Swat and hemmed in by narrow valleys and precipitous ridges – had been a source of trouble for decades. Roads reached as far as Kalangai and Kot, but beyond them lay country so broken that no European had entered it since 1907.
The Nowshera Brigade was tasked with restoring control. Moving by stages through Mardan, Jalala, Dargai, and Khar, the column reached Kalangai on February 23rd. Resistance came quickly. Attempts to establish picquets on dominating ground met opposition, and fighting broke out among the hills overlooking the camps. Air support – CL/R aircraft dropping bombs onto enemy sangars – proved decisive, breaking up concentrations that ground troops alone would have struggled to dislodge.
Two days later the brigade marched into Looe Agra itself, crossing five passes, each over 4,000 feet. Men and mules alike strained on narrow tracks where a misstep meant a fall into ravines. Mechanisation had yet to reach the Frontier in any meaningful sense; transport depended on pack animals, communications were rudimentary, and radios were scarce or absent altogether. The battalion advanced much as its predecessors had done decades earlier, with muscle, endurance, and discipline carrying the burden.
On February 26th, a jirga was held at Looe Agra. The 1907 agreement was reaffirmed and a permanent levy post approved. For a moment, it appeared that the operation had achieved its aim. That illusion lasted barely a week. On the night of March 5th, the Fakir reappeared, leading a lashkar of some 600 men across the Swat. The levy post was taken – its defenders withdrawn by prior arrangement – and once again the battalion was drawn back into active operations.
What followed was a grinding pattern familiar on the Frontier: long marches, constant picqueting, and persistent sniping from unseen heights. Rain fell heavily on the night of March 24th, soaking equipment and leaving men to sleep in drenched clothing. On April 5th, an enemy force attacked a picquet near Looe Agra, the fighting degenerating into hand-to-hand combat before the position was relieved. The scale of resistance grew, lashkars swelling toward a thousand strong.
On April 11th, the brigade struck decisively. Moving before dawn, the battalion secured high ground north of Bargholai, then supported attacks that rolled up enemy positions east and south of Looe Agra. By midday the heights were in British hands and by nightfall the village itself had been cleared under heavy opposition. The lashkar broke and scattered across the river, its cohesion finally destroyed.
In eighteen days the battalion marched over 200 miles, crossing eight major passes and relying on more than 2,000 mules to keep the column moving. Six of those days were spent in the hard work of clearing the Looe Agra salient itself, much of it conducted in country described officially as “especially difficult from a military point of view.” Health remained remarkably good – an achievement in itself under such conditions.
Though relatively small in the grand scheme of British colonial warfare, such operations on the North-West Frontier – sufficient to warrant a bar to the India General Service Medal – shaped an entire generation of pre-war officers. Those posted into “The Grim,” as the Frontier was known, matured quickly beyond their contemporaries who saw little more than rifle ranges and parade grounds. For Moran, Looe Agra was formative: a campaign defined less by set-piece battle than by endurance, terrain, and the steady assumption of responsibility under pressure.
MOHMAND
The respite after Looe Agra proved brief. In August 1935 the Peshawar and Nowshera Brigades were again called out, this time against a lashkar drawn from the Burhan Khel and Isa Khel tribes, reported at first as 400 strong and later swelling toward 1,500. The incursion centred on the Gandab road, and once more the Dukes found themselves moving into country chosen carefully by tribesmen who understood every fold and spur of the ground.
During the advance the 2nd Battalion was frequently employed as rearguard, a role that brought with it continuous long-range sniping. The tribesmen occupied concealed positions on commanding ground, well supplied with food and prepared to hold out for days. Progress was slow and tense. Even the act of making camp required the capture of surrounding ridges, often at the cost of casualties.
By late August the battalion rotated through Kilagai and Dand, remaining there into September. The conditions were oppressive. Temperatures averaged 104 degrees, there was no breeze, and flies swarmed incessantly. Fever took its toll, reducing the battalion’s effective strength sharply. The work itself – road protection, picqueting, and monotonous marches – offered no relief, yet demanded constant vigilance.
Night movement became the answer. Columns began climbing steep ground after dark, a tactic the tribesmen disliked and struggled to counter. Lashkars slipped away rather than risk surprise attacks on their camps. In Upper Mohmand the British presence was still resented, but many of the maliks favored peace, and negotiations ran in parallel with continued sniping into camps.
Even after terms were agreed, resistance did not end cleanly. Mopping-up operations continued into late September, including a hard-fought engagement marked by close-quarters fighting and artillery support. Only in October did the situation finally stabilize, allowing the brigades to withdraw without incident.
With the conclusion of the Mohmand operations in early October, the battalion withdrew without incident and returned to Nowshera. Life soon settled back into its familiar rhythm. Training resumed, duties eased, and attention shifted once more to sport – particularly rugby, which again became a central focus of battalion life. Matches and competitions provided both diversion and cohesion after months spent under strain in heat, sickness, and constant alert.
For Moran and many of his contemporaries, the Frontier now receded into memory. When war erupted in Europe in September 1939, it was some time before its full weight reached them in India. The hard lessons of Looe Agra and Mohmand remained, however – quietly carried forward, waiting for circumstances far more demanding than any lashkar to call upon them.
SITTANG BRIDGE
The air in Burma was thick with the weight of an unwelcome certainty – though they had been anticipating something since September 1939, war in the East had arrived suddenly and more brutally than anyone had anticipated. The 2nd Battalion, to which Bob Moran was still assigned, was at Multan in the Southern Punjab that September. His brother, Philip “Pip” de la Hogue, had also joined during the late 1930s, but being just a few years younger, had missed campaigning on the Frontier with his senior sibling. They would have their chance to fight together in Burma.
The campaign in Malaya had collapsed with terrifying speed, and Singapore had fallen in early February. By the time Moran's battalion embarked from Madras on February 9th, 1942, it was clear they were arriving in the midst of battle. Having spent much of the interim on duties in Delhi, ‘collective battalion training for war was, of necessity, somewhat neglected’ and ‘training for modern war was impossible. The Dukes had no carriers, mortars or light automatics, and, in view of the urgent need at home, they were not likely to get any, in large quantities, for some time.’
It was in that state that, as commander of Headquarters Company, Bob Moran hastily mobilized his men (with the addition of new 2-inch mortars and anti-tank guns) and set off for Burma with barely enough time to grasp the gravity of their situation. Three days in Rangoon’s stifling heat passed before orders came – frontline reinforcement was needed immediately. They marched for the 17th Indian Division near the Sittang Bridge, a crossing over a river that was the last thread connecting all British forces to Rangoon. While the battalion moved by rail, Major Moran took the unit vehicles by the narrow and dusty road across the Bridge beyond the eastern bank. His 1-inch map showed no country south or east of the Sittang, but remained most valuable as it was the only one in existence for the battalion. He relinquished it to Major Faithfull and instead took a route card for the remaining twenty miles of the journey.
‘The large clouds of dust overhanging the roads produced ample evidence to the Japanese that the Division was moving, and on this occasion their aircraft did not remain inactive. It was therefore quite an achievement in itself that all the unit vehicles reached their destination without loss.’ Accompanied by the second-in-command, Major Faithfull, Bob reached a point two miles from the Sittang before the rest of the battalion. It was late evening by the time they reunited in the middle of a field with no cover. They had no digging tools and resorted to digging in by bayonet and with bare hands to spend an uncomfortable chilly night without greatcoats or blankets. That night, as the men froze in their scratched-out holes, several loud explosions indicated the bridge was blown – demolished prematurely in a desperate bid to halt the Japanese advance.
By morning, the Japanese were mortaring the open field position and the Dukes could do little to fight back with their limited arms. Within four hours, they were making their way to the Sittang under fire. The battalion commander, Colonel Basil Owen, had gone missing during the night – Major Faithfull took command and Moran respectively moved up to second-in-command, though he still managed the motor transport. There was no intelligence regarding the Japanese whereabouts or movement and their activity became increasingly exaggerated as the hours passed. Regardless, it was clear that the small force of Dukes, fighting the rear guard for what remained of their beleaguered Brigade, were facing a vastly superior force as they retreated to the east bank. ‘The Battalion suffered severely…but they showed that they could whack the Japs, given a fair chance to do so; but he was too many, and he had the air support.’
The wide river, now impassable by vehicle or on foot, was a most formidable obstacle. Nearly three-quarters of a mile at its mouth, with fast and merciless currents, the Dukes were going to need to find their way across the 800-yard churning expanse by any means possible. Major Faithfull ordered Moran to organize assembly of rafts and cross the river and try to organize relief efforts. For the entirety of the day, from 1015 until 1800 that evening, the river filled with scattered bamboo rafts and swimmers. ‘Many men had to abandon their arms and equipment on the east bank in order to cross safely. No boats were available and many of the rafts constructed in a hurry disintegrated in the water.’ Many men could not swim, and the river’s current swept them away and ‘many non-swimmers were drowned. It was an appalling and depressing sight to see a procession of virtually naked men walking in groups to rallying points on the west bank after crossing the river.’
Bob Moran emerged, ‘clad picturesquely but simply in vest, long shorts and a canvas water bucket in lieu of a topee.’ He gathered what survivors he could and they eventually stumbled into a village three or four miles away, exhausted from fighting the river and the subsequent march to safety. They found a train there that offered temporary salvation. At Waw, he found his brother Pip, and remaining parties of Dukes arrived in time.
The battalion, decimated and scattered, reflected the larger tragedy of the Burma campaign. Supplies had been inadequate from the outset: no modern equipment, no radios, and outdated weapons ill-suited for modern warfare. The Japanese onslaught had exposed every vulnerability, and Moran’s survival, alongside those few who followed him across the Sittang River, was as much an act of resilience as it was luck.
Their retreat continued for the next three months. From the initiation on February 24th through May 22nd, the Dukes withdrew a total of 700 miles from Sittang to Imphal. Major Moran was spared the last month of the retreat after he was transferred to Army Headquarters in April. He briefly held command of the Battalion after Faithfull was evacuated on April 1st. The Dukes fought, dug, and marched almost continuously, often with little understanding of how precarious the wider situation had become. Japanese forces repeatedly slipped around the flanks and rear, establishing roadblocks that forced sudden changes of direction and hurried night marches. Vehicles were scarce, wireless unreliable, and orders often arrived late or not at all.
The battalion’s cohesion eroded slowly as companies were detached, scattered, or temporarily lost altogether, reappearing days later reduced in number and exhausted. Men were killed in ambushes or simply vanished during the confusion of night movement. Others fell out through wounds, sickness, or sheer exhaustion. The battalion was reduced to little more than a pair of under-strength companies, and combined with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry to become the ‘King’s Dukes,’ it continued to be committed wherever a blocking position or rearguard was required.
By the time the Dukes reached the safety of India (after Bob Moran had already been at Headquarters for a month), the regiment that had crossed into Burma scarcely resembled the one that had first gone into action at Sittang. The first Burma campaign was over. The Japanese threat was still most prevalent, especially along the borders, and soon enough there were efforts to keep them out of India. Though the British Army could not hold the lengthy jungle-covered border running south to sea, there were postings available for galivanting types, and the brothers Moran detached from the Regiment for a guerrilla army.
V FORCE
When the Japanese forces surged through Burma in 1942, threatening to extend their reach across India's borders, an urgent need arose for a special kind of resistance. “Guerrilla Forces, Eastern Frontier: Plan V” initiated out of General Headquarters, and thus from the Roman numeral, V Force was born. This secretive organization was established to operate along and behind enemy lines, harassing Japanese communications and providing vital intelligence to Allied commanders.
V Force was created to fulfill two specific objectives – collection of information and the second, to harass the Japanese (who cross the border) and making the country inhospitable to them. Their area of responsibility stretched the rugged mountain chain from the Himalayas in the north to the Bay of Bengal in the south. This formidable barrier ranged in width from fifty to over one hundred fifty miles, averaging heights of 6,000 feet, with peaks soaring beyond 10,000 feet. Covered by dense subtropical forests, this difficult terrain provided both protection and challenge for Moran and his comrades.
At that time, operational secrecy was paramount and at least during the first year, little to no paper record ever existed of their operations. The headquarters of V Force, initially known as the Assam Organization, was set up discreetly in a tea planter’s bungalow at Cinnamara near the Assam District headquarters. They reported directly to GHQ, operating largely independent from local military commanders, and aside from the few British officers attached, were commanded mostly by enterprising civilians. A selection of planters, political officers, and those involved with the Forest Service, all who knew the country well, were recruited into V Force staff.
The Assam Rifles, local troops of Gurkha and regional origin, formed the core of each operational area. These units were supplemented by a thousand guerrillas per area, tasked with patrols, intelligence gathering, and caching critical supplies. Bob Moran remained in the Assam area along the border while his brother Pip went south to the Chin Hills. They navigated the complex logistics of transporting arms, ammunition, food, medical supplies, and equipment across rugged, often inaccessible terrain. Movement was complicated by chaotic railway conditions, strained by the influx of refugees fleeing Japanese advances. The Force was left completely on its own to furnish all of these logistics – the only thing they were provided was funding, and ‘in its early days, the only things V Force was not short of was money.’
Rifles were the most difficult to obtain, with deficits of hundreds against their needs, and second to that were suitable officers. ‘An appeal to Delhi obtained six attached army officers for each zone. These and those who came after them were to prove invaluable. The idea of V Force appealed to many younger officers who were spoiling for a fight.’ During the recruitment in that first month, the Morans were among those to join in earnest.
By the end of May 1942, V Force had considerable progress and patrols probed deep into enemy-held territory, while local guerrillas were trained meticulously in sabotage, ambush tactics, and stealth operations – skills many of them had honed since childhood in these harsh conditions. Moran coordinated efforts to build and maintain supply caches in secretive locations, a challenging task given the deteriorating stocks and the relentless wet climate. Despite the inhospitable environment, cooperation with local civilian administrators – particularly district commissioners – proved vital. Their efforts were to rally local tribal support, manage supply logistics, and mitigate conflicts between military demands and civilian needs.
What began with questionable success and resources grew into an ‘integral and indispensable part of the defense of India’s eastern frontier.’ Their secrecy was still respected, and only in later years did the name and purpose of V Force become well known and publicized, but many of those tales were from their later operations. If V Force became indispensable operationally, it remained almost invisible administratively. The early days – in the romantic moment after retreat where a few brave men volunteered for duty that could put a price on their heads – remain largely undocumented outside of footnotes like those in Moran’s service file. Under ‘Appointments and Movements’, a single line noting: ‘Joined “V” Force, Assam / Burma Command’; in ‘Details of Battle Experience’, after ‘Burma 1941/42’: ‘Assam - Burma 1942/43, Special Appointment’; and just as vague recognition for the period with, in the London Gazette: ‘The King has approved that the following be Mentioned in recognition of gallant and distinguished services during the Operations in BURMA and NORTH-EAST INDIA, 21st May 1942 to 20th June 1943’ with both brothers Moran included, Mentioned in Despatches for their un-mentionable involvement with V Force.
NEW GUINEA
Those brief lines of operational service included one more unusual posting for a British officer during the war. New Guinea was a battleground claimed by the Australians and to nearly equal extent, the Americans, and only a handful of British officers and men set foot on the dense, muddy island of sharp mountains. After his year with V Force, he returned to the 2d Battalion, but left prior to their Chindit operations in 1944 for a posting as GSO II of “A” Training Team. It was mainly instruction, but enough responsibility that by the end of it he was made a temporary brigadier. The Training Team stayed local to Quetta except for a few weeks in early 1944 when Bob Moran and Colonel R. P. Freeman-Taylor of the Norfolk Regiment left for a tour of Australia and ultimately New Guinea.
The two officers first visited the 2/1st Battalion during its long period of reorganization after a campaign through New Guinea. They had converted to a jungle warfare establishment and during that March, were off to Mount Fisher twice for exercises.
The Australians had emerged as jungle specialists out of both necessity and environment. Long before Allied doctrine caught up with reality, they had developed a practical understanding of bush warfare that emphasized movement, concealment, supply discipline, and endurance. By 1943, they had formalized this experience into a network of jungle warfare schools that were widely regarded as the most advanced of any Allied nation in the region. Every brigade trained before deployment – a standard that remained uneven or absent across much of the Allied order of battle.
In contrast, British forces in Burma were still in the process of learning under fire. By early 1944, improvements were evident, but they had been uneven and hard-won. Training remained piecemeal, often confined to units already considered elite. Formations such as the Chindits, Gurkhas, and select Indian divisions gradually closed the gap, but jungle warfare instruction was not yet universal, nor consistently institutionalized across the theatre. The consequence was that experience accumulated slowly and at high cost.
Australia, by comparison, had transformed its army systematically after its early defeats. By late April and into May and June 1944, Australian formations fighting in New Guinea were operating within a coherent jungle doctrine that emphasized light infantry tactics, decentralized command, stealth, and careful logistics. These methods were reinforced by compulsory medical discipline, realistic field training, and schools designed specifically for jungle conditions. Drawing on a population accustomed to harsh bush environments and driven by the immediacy of homeland defense, Australia had created a jungle-infantry culture that functioned at scale – something no other Allied nation had yet achieved in the Pacific. It was this system, rather than any single operation, that Moran and Freeman-Taylor set out to observe.
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On returning to India, Moran carried these observations with him into instructional and staff roles where doctrine could be shaped rather than merely applied. At Quetta, where he took over the Staff Course at the end of the war, the emphasis on realism, environment-specific training, and disciplined preparation found a receptive audience among officers who had already seen the cost of improvisation in Burma. It was there that he first met Dick Ince, who later recalled: “To my great delight I found Bob was one of the Directing Staff. He was kindness itself to me, and I am sure the fact that I passed the course can in no small way be attributed to him.”
WASHINGTON
The British Joint Staff Mission in the United States in the late 1940s and 1950s was a critical appointment at a moment when the shape of the postwar world was still uncertain and increasingly dangerous. For Britain, the overriding concern remained Europe. The continent lay exposed, its armies exhausted, its political future fragile, and the possibility of a renewed conflict with the Soviet Union was regarded not as speculative but as a matter of timing.
Just weeks after the founding of NATO, Moran was posted as British Liaison Officer at the Office of the Chief of Army Field Forces in Washington and Fort Monroe, assigned to foster cooperation with what was perhaps Britain’s greatest ally in the post-war years. British planners understood that any future war in Europe would be fought as a coalition effort from the outset, and that differences in doctrine, training, and equipment – tolerated in peace – would be paid for dearly in war.
His role was not ceremonial. Embedded within the United States Army’s principal doctrinal headquarters, he worked at the point where field training, force organization, and tactical standardization were being shaped for the new era. He was required to put forward British views – informed by recent campaigns and hard experience – to American officers often senior to him in rank, and to do so with sufficient personal authority that those views would be accepted, debated, and incorporated.
This demanded more than diplomacy. It required professional credibility and an ability to translate British operational thinking into a form compatible with American doctrine. Moran was expected not merely to represent British interests, but to help ensure that cooperation between the two armies was practical, durable, and rooted in a shared understanding of how a future war might actually be fought.
The Chief of Army Field Forces personally requested that Moran’s tenure was extended for an additional year – an unusual endorsement that reflected both his effectiveness and the value placed on his contribution. The British, too, recognized his value with an investment into the Order of the British Empire. In the unsettled years before NATO’s machinery had fully matured, Moran served as an essential architect of Anglo–American military understanding that fed directly into the doctrinal foundations of Britain’s early Cold War army.
When war did come, it arrived not as expected in the fields of northern Europe but surprisingly on the Korean peninsula. The outbreak of fighting in June 1950 came as a surprise to many who had been focused on the central front in Germany, and it forced Western planners to confront the reality that Cold War conflict might erupt at the margins as readily as at the center of their focus.
THE HOOK
The rugged terrain of Korea was at least in topography, not unlike the sharp peaks of the Frontier he was so acclimated to from years prior. A series of hills scarred by trenches and foxholes stretched endlessly beneath a steel-grey sky, offering little comfort even in what was deemed an ‘easy’ sector. Unlike the battalion Major Moran took to Burma in 1942, the Dukes of 1952 were extremely tight and well trained. Still, as one officer described, Korea was a ‘sinister place’ and not one for the ‘elderly,’ which may well have been the direction Moran was headed at the age of forty in such a young mans’ profession.
The Regiment was first warned for Korean service in early 1952 while they were in Minden and once Bob heard of this, he applied to rejoin them. He had not been with the Regiment since 1949 when he was posted to the United States to be liaison officer for the War Office. Once he had passage arranged via Canada to the United Kingdom, he took his leave finally rejoined the 1st Battalion in late December. It took time, but it was only one month after the Dukes joined the 29th Brigade in the quiet sector of Yongdong and in their first days on the line – the same day they suffered their first casualty.
‘The essential ingredients of Battalion H.Q. in the line are a large hill, the C.O., 2IC, and Adjutant normally at its summit…We have spent the larger part of our time here on such a hill, for which in time we came to have a grudging regard. It was capped with myriad wireless aerials, and draped with a profusion of telephone wires.’
Working so closely again with his old friend Ramsey, he and Bob spent considerable time ‘hatching up various plots to try and capture a North Korean prisoner, which was an almost impossible task. Their labors were eventually successful, but unfortunately the prisoner died before he reached our lines.’
Colonel Bunbury set up the routine to keep up camaraderie and discipline and they ‘carried out all their “firsts” – their first standing patrol, recce patrol, fighting patrol and ambush patrol.’ Mortars and artillery became normal and the once startling ‘sound of screeching trains’ still set hearts fluttering. The second battle of the Hook occurred thousands of yards away and they watched the Black Watch fight off hordes of Chinese. The Dukes sent long arcing indirect fire from their Vickers, marked by long streaks at night.
In the new year, the Commonwealth Division rotated to reserve, and the avid golfers took part in Colonel Bunbury and Major Moran’s innovative course ‘in order to while away the evenings and get some form of amusing exercise.’ Around the Officer’s Mess, they had repurposed the natural obstacles of trees, stream beds and wire to lay out nine holes. They used fir cones painted white for balls and at first, a walking stick to club them until they procured a hockey stick. Their evening games culminated in a competitive meeting on March 20th with sixteen officers playing for the Silver Putter. It was the lighter side of the war in Korea.
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The nights on the Hook carried a routine of anticipation with radio conversations always beginning with the ominous: "Tonight might be the night." Each evening the battalion held its breath, waiting for the inevitable wave of assaults to crash against their defenses. It was well understood that the Chinese intended to capture the feature, and as the days wore on it seemed increasingly inevitable that any given night would indeed be the night.
The Battalion Command Post, instead of being perched on top of the hill as it had been at other locations, was sited behind a ‘comparatively small hill’ and ‘was not a position which endeared itself’ to the officers. The dirty bunkers were hastily reinforced with additional sandbags in anticipation of shelling, which crashed down daily.
The predicted assault finally came. Shells dropped into rice paddies fifty yards behind them and soon the ‘whole top of the Hook was seen to be cased in steel.’ In such a torrent of shells it was impossible to move from one’s hooch and very soon the occupants of the Command Post were eager for information. Wireless was their only means of communication after lines were severed early on during the brutal bombardment – they would not be spliced until morning. For many, the night was spent stooped near the radio for any news and information coming through the warbling and static.
‘Moran, Bunbury’s Second-in-Command who, according to the manual dictating the code for conduct of a battle, should have been miles away at the rear of echelon headquarters, ‘Left Out of Battle’ but ready to take over if Bunbury became a casualty.’ The Major should normally have been with A Echelon, communicating with Battalion Headquarters by radio and frequent visits, but the ‘peculiar conditions’ of the static war in Korea encouraged Bob to remain with Bunbury in the Battalion Command Post. Throughout the thunderous nights in late May, he ‘nervously paced up and down the restricted confines of the command post, smoking the cigarettes of those who had come to tolerate his cheery habit of cadging.’
From their post on the reverse of the hill, the Command Post was not subjected to the same destruction as the hooches and forward trenches. Cave-ins were common and many men, if they were able to dig out, faced Chinese on exiting and fought out in close quarters. They were outnumbered five-to-one, but by early morning had claimed the Hook again.
Dawn revealed the masses of Chinese bodies strewn along the hill. Rescue parties began excavation operations immediately for those Dukes still trapped in their bunkers. Only then did the Battalion commanders begin to stand down from the night’s relentless demands of communication and control. As the Royal Fusiliers arrived to take over the position, the exhausted staff closed the Command Post, leaving behind a hill that had been held through another night that had indeed been the night.
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Off of the Hook, the Officer’s Mess moved into more comfortable accommodations furnished with ‘décor a cross between an Alaskan log cabin and the garish type of nightclub’ and on the ledge just outside sat five chairs in which ‘a favorite sport for the occupants of these was to sit, glass in hand, and hurl insults at visiting officers as they panted up a staircase of one hundred and thirty-nine mortar boxes from the bottom of the hill.’
With the truce came torrential rains that saturated everything to a point that even the hottest days in between did little to dry everything out. Orders came to move into Gloster Valley which went from a leisurely planned affair to a very disruptive one-day event to be completed by nightfall. It began to rain again, going throughout the night, and the new mess fell down and Moran ‘was marooned on the top of his bed by swirling waters.’
They moved the dilapidated mess the next day into a more spacious area that included the beginnings of a Japanese garden and returned to entertaining guests and friends, among which was Major Wu of the Chinese Communist Forces. The officer had commanded a company of the 397th Battalion opposing the Dukes around Naeochon that past January. What was curious about Major Wu is he and Bob Moran knew each other from days at Sandhurst.
‘A short, stout, middle-aged officer of the pre-Communist school and, still wearing a pig tail, was accompanied by his aide, Captain Wong, who, in contrast, seemed typical of the new generation with his tall, smart and efficient bearing. Extra lighting had been arranged for the occasion and, at about 8 p.m., there was a fanfare of trumpets and our Chinese friends for the evening arrived in a yellow rickshaw drawn by two weary Chinese. Major Wu had not forgotten all his English so that, after the rather difficult introductions, the atmosphere was soon a friendly one and the evening was a great success. The one regret felt was that neither Major Wu nor Captain Wong were able to teach the members of the Mess any new after-dinner games.’
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The Dukes moved out in mid-November 1953 – off to Gibraltar where Colonel Bunbury was decorated by the Queen for his services in Korea and Major Moran finally received his Order of the British Empire for his work in Washington in 1952. He then took over command of the first battalion from Bunbury and settled in to the garrison station that was very much a transition from active service in a combat theater.
After a ‘few weeks of exercising and sunning ourselves on the Malta beaches’ the Battalion was sent to Cyprus for a year for operations in the Troodos Mountains trying to rout out EOKA terrorists, particularly General Grivas. ‘During the whole of this period Bob Moran commanded the Battalion with conspicuous success,’ wrote Ince. ‘He worked us very hard, but in the short periods allowed for relaxation he allowed us to play hard as well.’
Their movements during the period of the Suez Crisis were often made at the shortest possible notice, the battalion repeatedly working to establish new camps only to abandon them almost as soon as they were settled. Bob oversaw his men through that unsettled year as they combed the island’s groves and forested mountainsides in pursuit of elusive terrorist bands. After attending staff school, he departed for the War Office in July 1957 and relinquished command to his younger brother, Pip, who assumed command of the battalion until Bob’s retirement from the Army in 1960.
In the annals of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, the Morans so often appear in close succession – often indistinguishable in the text without proper context. From India and Sittang through V Force and the post-war garrison, their service frequently ran in parallel, their appointments carrying them far beyond the routines of regimental life. For all the breadth of his career, Bob remained, at heart, a battalion officer – formed in the early days on the Frontier and shaped by service that carried him from imperial soldiering into the volatility of the Cold War.