In remaining behind with his wounded platoon members on that April 25th, Max gave living weight to the regiment’s motto: “Quis Separabit? Who shall separate us?”
He had waited a long time to become a soldier, hoping to make a career of it since he was a boy, and had been keen to go overseas and see active service. Whether or not the war in Korea was what he expected, everything changed on that day along the Imjin.
Max grew up in Coondoor, India, the only son of a tea planter who farmed the healthy green hills. They moved to England in 1936 when Max was eight years old and he attended Fonthill Prep and later Saint Edwards where he passed through the Infantry Training Center. His path into the service led to the King’s Royal Rifle Corps on May 8th, 1945 which became a regular enlistment at the end of 1946 and then straight to Sandhurst. A solitary and curious young man, Max preferred a solitary 80-mile bike ride or to be immersed in a book. He claimed to read a book a day among his interests in history and genealogy. On interviewing for Sandhurst, the sharp-nosed, firm-browed boy of eighteen was seen to have high intelligence and of good manner. His character was most fitting for that of a rifle regiment – quieter, modest, serious and tactfully astute. After the Academy, he earned his commission into the Royal Ulster Rifles.
There was little action up to the north after 29th Brigade arrived in late November. The defense of Pyongyang put the Rifles as rearguard for the Americans in retreat and they watched the battered 27th Brigade march through, exchanging friendly insults along the column. The city was burning following a scorched earth policy, and Seoul was next to fall as they withdrew back toward the 38th Parallel. It was a sad and frustrating time as they saw little or no fighting, retreating armies, and swaths of pitiful refugees fleeing their homes in a dreadful winter.
Patrols went out to nearby villages within a ten-mile radius. Max often took his platoon out past these limits, but there was no enemy activity. A jeep patrol on January 20th went out to destroy some boats suspected of smuggling supplies to Communist guerillas in the area. The prevailing weather along the coast was enough to keep the boats from igniting and the platoon returned unsuccessful. From then on, the days were strangely quiet. In mid-March, Max’s 8 Platoon was selected for a demonstration of small-arms tactics across paddy fields. Officers and non-commissioned officers of the Brigade watched the successful demonstration before an afternoon football match against the Glosters, which the Rifles won four to one.
IMJIN
Only days after coming out of reserve, they had gone through Seoul across the Han River and advanced north until coming to the foothills of Kamak San. The next morning, they had moved on to Hill 152 overlooking the Imjin where they dug in and remained looking out for Chinese for about ten days. With no sign of life, they pulled out to assault across the Imjin around the 17th of April for Hill 198. It was a five-phase battalion attack in which C Company forded at Ulster Crossing over a bridge built by the Sappers. It was poorly built in haste and the Sappers were literally holding it afloat as the battalion crossed the chilly chest deep waters. The previous companies had the luxury of riding tanks through the river, but C Company was on foot.
There had been reports of enemy on Hill 198, but the only Chinese they saw was a decomposing corpse of two or three months. The platoons dug in to old trenches occupied during previous fighting and at some distance from each other. The lacework of cutbacks made for some liabilities and they were carefully booby trapped with 36-grenades in ration cans. The companies were spread out as well and sporadic shooting at night made for a very nerve-wracking time considering their isolation.
They withdrew to Brigade reserve on April 21st and had baths, NAAFI supplies, beer, and a generally relaxing time. It was fleeting, for on the morning of the 22nd rumors flew around of increased Chinese activity. Max learned in the evening O Group they should prepare to move out should the need arise and sure enough at 0200 that morning they were woken up and ordered to move out. There was a major Chinese attack against the Glosters and at Ulster Crossing. There was some chaos and confusion over their role as at that time it seemed possible they might have to attack up Kamak San or act as a counter attack force for the Glosters.
The Company moved up to occupy Hill 398 on the right of the line to support the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers and the Belgians, passing many battered Fusiliers wearing their red and white roses in berets for Saint George’s Day. They were then told to move back to a hill feature six hundred yards to their rear intending to cover any withdrawal should it be necessary and they waited in anticipation as the growing commotion and radio chatter indicated a large attack across the Brigade front.
Under the eerie glow of flares drifting down from above, the Chinese used low scrub and brush for cover to creep up to C Company. Soon the Rifles were hurling grenades by the dozen as their .303 rifles were not the best for close range. They had an adequate number of grenades for this and kept it up for forty minutes until the Chinese retreated. Bren gunners and their Number Twos reloaded magazines with hands burned on hot barrels. While the wounded were treated, they were tasked with prying open more boxes of hand grenades to prime and ready to deter the next wave. The worst of it for all ranks was their desperate thirst.
By morning, Brigade ordered a withdrawal which the battalions on the line felt was near impossible due to the Chinese troops swarming through the valleys below. Major Rickcord hoped to move across their ridge through C Company and move down into the valley. At noon, he was ready to move and the Rifles prepared their vehicles and equipment. Before they could move out, C Company was hit by friendly shells as they moved to their rendezvous area. A mortar bomb landed among Max’s 8 Platoon causing three casualties, one of whom was Rifleman Brown, a reservist from Lancaster who had been a Chindit in Burma. A vicious blast had wounded him in the legs, leaving one nearly severed and only hanging on by a bit of skin.
The medical orderly, Corporal Geary, did his best to tend to their wounds, but it was not possible to move them off the hilltop. Max elected to stay with the men while the rest of the Company moved off as planned. They requested a vehicle to evacuate the wounded, but the armored ambulance sent forward was knocked out while attempting to scale the hill.
Soon, the party of Riflemen alone and they began a slow descent moving the wounded men off the hilltop toward Brigade Headquarters. Max had not been given the exact details and headed for a position previously occupied by the battalion only a short distance back. They ran into three men from HQ Company who informed him the battalion was headed all the way back to Yongdong-po.
After two days making their way back, Brown was suffering tremendously from his leg wounds and despite best efforts, he would die soon if not properly treated. The rest of the party was faring poorly as well and they made the decision to split up. Geary and five men remained with Brown while Max led eight others out toward safety. They were immediately spotted by a Chinese sentry and the chase began. The party that remained with Brown was immediately captured.
After getting clear, they made fair progress and came upon what Max recognized as the previous position for the Glosters’ F Echelon. By that time, they were desperate for food and pillaged nearby houses for anything to eat. One opened to a lone Chinese soldier inside and Rifleman Nelder ‘rugger tackled’ him. Under Max’s instruction they took the man with them, hoping he would prove useful when they inevitably ran into a sentry within a quarter mile. They tried to make the prisoner answer the challenge, but he refused and before the disagreement escalated, they shoved him into a ditch and sprinted for the hills.
Within another five miles, Max and his few men were finally able to move along high ground during daylight hours due to cover of low-lying mist and clouds, but this only lasted so long before they were isolated on a hilltop where the valley mist had dissipated. The valleys below were teeming with Chinese and a party of wood cutters soon spotted the Rifles men. Realizing fighting their way out was untenable due to their exhaustion, they descended into the valley to surrender on the morning of April 28th.
THE CAVES
The Chinese were remarkably hospitable, even shaking hands with recognition of a good fight. They dried the men’s’ clothes, fed them, and marched them for three miles to a collecting point where they united with Colonel Carne and a column of Glosters. From there, they continued north, marching only at night to avoid the American patrolled skies during daylight hours.
Shortly into their march, Max was given a preliminary interrogation that lasted for about an hour. The interrogator consistently ‘offered’ information, hoping to confirm his presumptions by always asking, “Is that right?” Though as far as Max was concerned, the man was ignorant of his subjects and ‘always miles away from the truth.’ The young Lieutenant found it fairly easy to resist, though he was threatened that if he did not talk, he would never go home as at that point, there was no record of him being a prisoner of war.
It was arduous travel until crossing the ‘bomb line’ at which time it was deemed safe to march during the day. They moved about twenty miles a day, stopping once for a few days’ stay in a half-way house near Pyongyang where North Korean interrogators began separating the leadership figures. The Rifles’ vintage Finnish pattern boots did little to soften the trek and their clothes became tattered and worn. They scrounged tobacco and ate a meager diet of sorghum or millet for breakfast and dinner.
On the day they were told they would arrive at a ‘safe place,’ they found a camp of emaciated Westerners and joined them in little huts with no blankets, bedding or clothing. The prisoners were lectured on their new status as captives – they were no longer officers and soldiers, but liberated students of communism. Those willing to cooperate would be shown leniency and they quickly found out the alternative for those who stubbornly refused or antagonized their captors.
The period in that first camp – the Caves as it was known and remembered as diabolical – was marked by terrible and inadequate food, sickness, and death. Burial parties departed daily to take care of those who had passed, presumably from simply giving up. There was an overall air of hopelessness as Max and his counterparts had no reason to believe they would be cared for through the end of the war. They did their best to pass the days talking, popping body lice, emptying latrines, fetching water and wood barefooted, and picking edible grass for a homebrewed tasty soup.
Their stay at this first camp ended suddenly in October when the camp was bombed during the night. They suffered casualties but agreed the bombing was perfectly legitimate as the camp was not marked in any way. Major Denis Harding of the Glosters, presumed to be wounded in the event, marched in to criticize them for it. The Communists did not remedy and instead displayed the body of Bob Gammon for the camp to march past and exhibit the follies of indiscriminate bombing. Two days later, they were off north again after many foul weeks at the Caves.
CAMP #2
The routine at the new camp was: wake up at 0600. Lectures for a couple of hours. Breakfast of runny sorghum. More lectures or study lessons. Break. More study lessons. Evening meal of dry sorghum and plain boiled daikon. Evening study and discussion. This endless cycle continued until the Chinese decided the indoctrination was having no effect on the stubborn prisoners.
The “instructors” failed, as far as Max could tell, due their ignorance on subjects and inability to carry on a logical argument. “The only way in which an intelligent individual could have been enlightened or ‘educated’ in the camps,” Max noted, “Was by reading the books provided, many of which were well written.” Only the camp prosecutor, Chen Chung Wei, used to frighten prisoners into talking. He was “noted for his extremely good idiomatic English as well as American…all important interrogations passed through his hands.” Even so, he did not escape the tenacity of humor from the British prisoners. When all of the officers in the camp were searched and ordered to hand over any erotic photos they had, he earned the nickname ‘Dirty Pictures Wong’ or ‘D.P. Wong’ as they suspected he hoped to build a collection of the images.
They received no Red Cross parcels or mail except for a few letters held as blackmail or obviously tampered with. It was possible to exchange letters between camps when the opportunity arose and with a Captain Docker, the two communicated with Lance Corporal McLaughlin of Camp 1 during meetings of the two camps, and much useful information passed between them as a result of their exchanges.
Among the others, Max was subjected to interrogation at random any time of the day or night. It was always the same – what was being done in camp, who was responsible for what, and what of their civilian lives and property, finances, education, and more. It was tedious and boring and they spent the next summer foraging wood and mud. They realized these efforts in materials gathering and construction were to construct a second camp, and in October 1952, they split in two.
The camps were ringed with trigger happy guards and barbed wire, but the prisoners were fairly free to move about outside the bounds of the camp so long as they were being productive. Any attempt to escape put one at odds with everything in North Korea, and it was futile given their poor health, distance from allied lines and the coast, and obvious position as a Westerner. Regardless, for a time in August 1953, Max was conspiring to escape with Captain A. M. Ferrie and Lieutenant E. R. Bruford-Davies, but their timing coincided with liberation.
One guard shared that peace talks meant the end of the war – and for once, it was true. After armistice negotiations, the Chinese shared the camp locations and soon they had large red signs laid out for aircraft recognition. They claimed it was due to “the efforts of the peace-loving people of the world” – by which they meant themselves. Trucks eventually came to transport the prisoners to trains where they were shoved into cattle cars to rattle south over rickety track that sometimes passed over bridges with staggering two- to three-hundred-foot drops. They arrived at Kaesong where they waited for a few weeks – those days dragging on much longer as only a few names were announced each day.
*
“I want some flowers to be delivered to my mother at Southwater, Sussex, please.” Lieutenant Nicolls gave the order for the ‘best possible flowers’ to be sent home and promptly telegrammed his mother: “Kept well all the time, best love, Max.” Two weeks later, a bouquet of chrysanthemums arrived at the Nicolls residence – less his father who had passed within the first five months of Max’s captivity. About the same time, he sailed from Japan electing to stop first in Hong Kong to visit his old battalion before returning home. He was twenty-five by the time he returned home – much older in more than just years than the boy who joined the service years prior. He had seen the worst of war that he had been so eager for, but in typical British poise remained remarkably cheerful through the very end.