The war in Europe was days away from concluding when Derek Rixon crossed the globe in April 1945.  He was barely twenty, a New Zealander in a Royal Navy uniform, assigned to H.M.S. Daedalus - a windswept Royal Naval Air Station at Lee-on-Solent, where the smell of oil and sea air clung to the corrugated huts and runways.

Daedalus was an airfield of transition for aircraft cycling in from operations and sailors waiting to be posted or demobilized.  The station had played a key role in launching aircraft for anti-submarine warfare, coastal defense, and offensive operations over occupied Europe, but by the time Rixon arrived, the focus was on training personnel and maintaining aircraft for final wartime engagements.

The duty was less than glamorous, particularly due to Derek’s own initiative.  A fellow New Zealander recalled their time on the Daedalus: "The latrines and ablutions were filthy, real filthy. Derek decided to do something about it. That meant action. He gathered a small group. Each morning at parade when personnel were despatched to their workstations, Derek would call his group to attention and march them off to cleaning duties."

That seemed to be the summation of Rixon’s war service - following the end of hostilities, many New Zealanders in the Royal Navy faced repatriation and reassignment.  His return to New Zealand would eventually lead him to re-enlist in 1950 with the 16th Field Regiment, where his combat experience in Korea would cement his legacy.
 
<center><h2>THE HINGE</h2></center>

Smoke coiled thick in the air, acrid with burnt cordite and churned earth, hanging over the shattered crest of Hill 317. Gunner Rixon blinked blood from his eyes, the heat of the wound searing into his scalp as he pressed low behind the remnants of a shallow trench. His radio set, his only link to the 16th Field Regiment’s guns, lay in ruins beside him, shattered by shellfire.  He and Captain Peter King had been reduced to fighting as infantry, surrounded, their connection to the world behind them lost.

Before the bombardment, the world had been eerily quiet. The Chinese were particularly elusive since the summer and the King’s Own Scottish Borderer’s were yearning for a fight.  It came surprisingly on October 3rd against Hills 355 and 317, and was quiet again for another month.  They waited again in trenches and bunkers dug out of steep sided hills of rock and sandstone, still covered in pine forest that had not yet been blasted away.  A cold wind swept across the ridge by the morning of November 4th, and the Chinese unfurled a taunting white sign across from Hill 317 on a peak known as Baldy: “Go home Britishers or this hill will be your graveyard.”

The two New Zealand gunners were attached to C Company at the tip of the Borderer’s arrowhead formation on a position known as the Hinge.  The entire battalion was stretched across a daunting three-thousand-yard front, three times more than what is suitable for a battalion.  The pair provided artillery support from the 16th Field Regiment’s 25-pounders.  The forward observation officer, Captain King, was a bit of a legend from the last war.  Having been frustrated with his post as a sergeant with the Army Dental Corps, in 1942 he brazenly conducted a raid with twenty men into occupied France to sabotage German lines.  He was picked out of the English Channel on his return, court martialed, and reduced to private, but aptly placed in a commando unit destined for Normandy where he was commissioned in the field and decorated with a Military Cross.

An increase in enemy activity during the night of November 3rd indicated the Chinese were up to something.  By mid-afternoon, the air was thick with dust and the pungent smell of explosives as air strikes pummeled the opposing hills along with mortars and artillery. The first attack of the day came at 1430 hours.  After a heavy barrage, enemy infantry attempted to come up the ridge, but Rixon relayed King’s adjustments for defensive fire and broke up the attack.  It was a prelude for a heavier attack at 1530.  Within half an hour, shells were pouring into the forward positions at a rate of six thousand in just one hour.  Battalion Headquarters noted the whole ridgeline ‘became an inferno of smoke, dust, flame and explosions: with awe we wondered how anyone could remain alive under this avalanche of fire and fury.’

The incredible barrage destroyed the radio set and cut communications.  Without the 25-pounders to support and as dusk closed in, the Chinese quickly swarmed up the hills by the hundreds, beginning an eight-hour battle against C Company.  They came in massive waves through their own blanket of artillery, stumbling over bodies, scavenging weapons from the fallen. Their assault was determined and immense - intelligence would later reveal an entire division had been thrown at the Borderers. Hinge was the first to break.  Left to their own devices without the long arm of artillery, the two men were faced with fighting at close quarters.

As if impervious to the falling shells and typical of the British officer who refused to duck, Captain King moved to the heart of the area penetrated by the Chinese assault and managed to gather some light machinegun parties.  Just behind, Rixon charged into the fray with the Captain, gathering armfuls of grenades.  He ‘flung the most terrible oaths along with his grenades’ until King tapped him on the shoulder and ordered: “Kindly moderate your language, Gunner!”

When the pair had expended their supply, they found their way back to Company Headquarters to fetch more.  For ninety minutes they fought this way, hoping to hold the shattered remnants of the hinge with the gallant Scottish.  Derek had a shallow gash across his head, and King, too had been wounded more than once.  They pitched grenades without ceasing until depleting their supply and again and again, they carried boxes of grenades and ammunition to the forward position trying desperately to hold the peak, making several trips to resupply and repeat.

As darkness crept over them, the company commander reluctantly ordered for withdrawal.  It was apparent there were simply not enough men to hold the position any longer.  Both gunners were wounded - King a staggering three times and it was a wonder he could walk at all - but he stubbornly refused to stop until loaded onto a stretcher at company headquarters.  With the company commander and Private Beardow, Rixon carried the officer out, getting hit a second time while doing so.  The two Scottish soldiers were later noted in the Chronicle to ‘now both walk around with permanently bent knees, swearing that Captain King weighs at least sixteen stone, and expressing a wish that New Zealand F.O.O.s came in smaller sizes.’

Behind them, the Hinge was gone.  It marked the pinnacle of Rixon’s Korean service—recognized with a Distinguished Conduct Medal, the only one awarded to a New Zealand soldier during the war.  In coming days, with a bandaged head and hands, he was back to business as usual.  

He stayed in Korea until July 1952 when most of the original KayForce men returned home.  He disappeared into civilian life, working at the Tomoana Freezing Works where he was known simply as ‘The Gunner’, a quiet, enigmatic figure who, at the end of each sheep slaughtering season, was tasked with laying off a few hundred workers.  The nickname was assumed to stem from him giving people ‘the gun,’ and his exploits as a war hero were presumed to be rumors.  He rarely spoke of the war, and few knew the full extent of what he had done on the night of November 4th.  One younger worker recalled: “Even though I was almost nineteen years old and as strong as an ox from handling both live and dead animals and training four times a week in a boxing gym with four current New Zealand national champions - I was terrified of Derek Rixon.”  Only years later, often upon his passing, did many learn exactly why Gunner Rixon carried such a reputation.