Eventually the jostling train of Glosters reached Suwon under a cold November drizzle. The area was deserted except for the massing British infantrymen and the American Negro drivers waiting to truck them to the front. Every piece of wood and other dry material was scavenged to make fires while they waited to move north into country pocketed with thousands of guerillas unwilling to relinquish their ruined ground that had been bombed and trampled over since June. When the Glosters finally arrived to their remote positions in the frosty hills, it was nearing the end of the month and by the measure of the artillery, the temperatures were dipping well below zero to an unbelievable chill that cut through battledress and left men stiff.
From Sibyon-ni they were off for Pyongyang after reports of the Chinese swarming down from the north. In the pine forested hills north of the city they dug in, quickly learning to improvise by lining their holes with straw for some insulation against the cold, and waited to act as rear guard for the army withdrawing from the north. It was a brief stay before turning back to guard the crossing over the Taedong River. As troops marched south past the Glosters, through Pyongyang which was soon ablaze and casting a deep glow against the snow dusted hills, they too soon turned around and passed through the wreckage of the North Korean capital for a sixty-mile journey back toward Seoul which would soon face a similar fate.
The signal platoon under Sergeant “Paddy” Smythe where he was affectionately known for being a ‘colorful chap,’ chased the battalion units daily with lengths of wire and signal equipment. If the terrain was not challenging enough, Smythe was also one to avoid any rest to keep the equipment operating and find ways to improve on their existing systems. It became a frequent occurrence that usually took a direct order to get him to take a short break. He quickly set an incredible standard that his signallers followed and superiors admired.
The continued retreat unfolded along frozen rice paddies and desolate villages emptied by war and disease. Smallpox had scoured Chongsok-tu-ri, leaving only silence and abandoned fields beneath a grey sky. The battalion’s withdrawal from Kaesong threaded through the ghostly village streets, past the old, the young, and the infirm left behind in the wake of retreating troops. With few vehicles, men trudged southward alongside mules, navigating shattered railways and bridges, while above, United States aircraft roared to meet the advancing Chinese with fire.
Christmas passed and the battalion moved back across the Han River. A section of signallers under Smythe went fifteen miles to the northwest to lay wire. While guarding the bridge, they saw in the distance several Koreans approaching the frozen river to throw or push bundles into the current which were quickly swept under the ice downstream. They soon realized they were mothers unwrapping their emaciated babies and killing them mercifully by the hand of the river. They had no means of providing for them – no food, no shelter, and before the war or the elements took them, they made the grim decision which no human should ever need to face. There was nothing the signallers could do and they finished their job quietly before returning to their command post.
There were few skirmishes in those days and among the greatest threats were guerillas disguised as refugees and booby traps. The Glosters came to avoid all dead bodies assuming the corpses were laid on or tied to some grenade or other explosive. Finally, by February, as the soles of their boots were peeling off, there was a rise in activity for the battalion as they prepared to assault Hill 327.
It was a major obstacle on the advance back up to the southern bank of the Han River. The Colonel notified the battalion on February 13th that the heavily defended feature would be the Glosters’ responsibility. In the hours of darkness, the Chinese moved against the neighboring 5th Cavalry Regiment. While the Glosters were not their main target, ‘his mortar fire covering this attack, though not intense, fell accurately upon many of the Battalion's positions and even had the temerity to ruffle the Olympian calm of Battalion Headquarters and the Command Vehicle.’ It was enough, by all indications, to be the cause of Sergeant Smythe’s wounds and his evacuation on February 14th. His absence spared him from the battalion’s first hard trial of the campaign, yet he would return in time for the greater test that awaited them.
IMJIN
Smythe was somewhere around the battalion command post when, on April 22nd, the Chinese first hit B Company on their eastern hill. The signallers had laid line from headquarters out to the platoons across the line, including some listening posts, with supplements of 88 sets. They had been forewarned by air reconnaissance that enemy patrols in strength were expected to cross the river that night and Lieutenant Temple’s patrol was the first to find them at Gloster Crossing well after dark. Reports of massing enemy began pouring in and soon the battalion was at one hundred percent stand-to – and not too soon to face massing Chinese behind mortars and cracking gunfire under the glow of flares.
Passing frequently through battalion headquarters in the ensuing days gave Smythe a broad glimpse of the unraveling situation from snippets of intelligence and reports from rifle companies. The command post was just far enough away that they were spared and in the early morning hours while the Chinese threw themselves into company positions, those in the command post could quietly sip coffee, waiting.
On the second night after a call from C Company made it clear that the Chinese had forced a wedge between companies and the Colonel ordered to pack up. In as calm a frenzy as possible, they packed their things, burned documents, and Farrar-Hockley, the adjutant, smashed the radio equipment which could not be moved. In less than an hour, their position was deserted, except for some of Smythe’s signallers returning for spare batteries – a most necessary item second only to ammunition. With what they had available as well as some more spares recovered from the battalion mortars, they hoped to last another twelve or fifteen hours with discipline.
They spent the night ascending their new position at Hill 235 through a steep and narrow track that left them all filthy before reaching the top, which was hard rock impervious to pick and shovel. Many men without tools but in good spirits joined in with hands and bayonets to pull out stones. After several more attacks into the morning of the 25th, the wireless batteries were getting very low and surely would not last as long as they hoped. The Adjutant agreed to keep only one of the gunners’ sets open and close the rear-link unless the battalion wished to send a message, leaving it up to Brigade to radio through the gunners’ set. It was a final resort after Smythe had done all he could to keep contact with rear headquarters and the rear echelons, limping along on batteries and blown apart radio sets.
After seven passes of an air strike and a missed supply drop, the Colonel ordered a withdrawal. For the second time there was a bustle around Headquarters Company as anything of value that could not be carried was smashed, burned, destroyed and buried. The sets that Smythe and the signallers had worked so hard to maintain were smashed without a second thought as they abandoned their hard-fought position for the sunlit valley floor.
*
It was nearly impossible to avoid capture, as Smythe soon found out. The Chinese were quite literally all over the valley, leaving no suitable routes of escape and as they found out much later, only a handful of Glosters made it out. The battle’s survivors were able to run for some time before the Chinese suddenly emerged from the trees. Some of the more cunning Glosters made it for days undetected, but for the majority of the battalion, the Chinese rounded them up by that afternoon. The captors were, at least for that moment, very hospitable and hand-shakes and even hugs were exchanged between the opposing sides who, in their varying state of shock, recognized the hard fight put up by their adversaries.
From there, Smythe was ushered to a collection point in an unorganized fashion by soldiers who clearly had no idea what exactly to do with their newfound prisoners given the amount of arguing that occurred between them. The Gloster prisoners were quiet while the Chinese eventually decided to form them up into columns. The sun was setting on their first day of many months in captivity. What lay ahead – years behind wire in sickness and hunger, and the slow erosion of time – would stretch on until his release in August 1953 for twenty-eight long months facing deprivation at the hands of the Chinese.
KENYA
The Signal Platoon welcomed Paddy back in 1954 after his return from Korea, decorated with a British Empire Medal for his services up to and including the Imjin Battle. He promptly married, happy to settle back into regimental life at home, and by the next summer was welcoming a daughter along with his promotion to Warrant Officer II. He was most elated about her and clearly at the forefront of his thoughts as, recorded in the journal, “He denies that, when asked by the Brigade Commander on the Annual Inspection, the day after the happy event, how long he had been in the Regiment, he replied: ‘Seven pounds two ounces, Sir!’” In only another year’s time, he would earn another promotion to Regimental Sergeant Major, but first – a year in Kenya with B Company as Company Sergeant Major.
While the intention was to send the battalion to the Canal Zone, their orders were changed to Kenya to quell the Mau Mau uprising. All ranks were eager for the sunshine, particularly on a dreary day of departure, and seemed less concerned with any risk of operations. The journey inland began in April, their train rocking away from Mombasa after a minor explosion from the engine, carrying them 380 miles to Gilgil. The countryside rolled out in open plains and scattered forest, the air cool in the high altitude, rain falling each afternoon and turning camp paths into mud. In the badlands west of Gilgil, B Company settled under canvas while permanent buildings held the cookhouse, offices, and stores.
The battalion had taken over from the Black Watch, their new position a small, untidy town in rolling plains, sixty miles north of Nairobi and fifteen miles west of the Aberdares. Much of the country was likened to the Mendip Hills in Somerset, but the elevation at 6,500 feet and constant rains made it a place of damp, cold nights and heavy ground. The country was floored with volcanic lava, leaving the ground treacherous and tracking almost impossible. Heavy patrols probed the gullies and bush for Mau Mau gangs, sometimes finding abandoned hides still smoking, or terrorist equipment, but frustratingly little in the way of kills – one patrol returning with a medical haversack containing a tin of Eno’s Fruit Salts.
Through April and into May, the battalion conducted constant patrols in the forest, their task to cut Mau Mau supply lines, wire farm labor lines, and support the police in preventing raids on African labor huts and farm stock. The large-scale operations that had broken up organized resistance earlier in the year forced the gangs into splinter groups, but they remained dangerous and unpredictable. The surrender talks of mid-May broke down, and the battalion moved into the Eastern Aberdares for Operation "Gimlet," acting as stops along the backbone of the range and searching for terrorists in the area. Though the operation had limited contact, it provided valuable experience in forest work, supported by air supply at altitudes up to 13,000 feet.
By July, B Company was in the Bamboo Forest for Operation "Dante," launched against a concentration of Mau Mau in thick bamboo on the southern Aberdares. The nights were moonless, the bamboo so dense that targets were invisible, forcing ambushes to be fired on noise and shadow. The operation ended with a successful ambush on one of these threatening shadows which turned out to be a sack of wheat hidden in a bush.
August brought the return to Gilgil, but there was little respite. On 30th August, the battalion mounted Operation "Rhino Lookout" on Kipipiri and the Aberdares. While A Company struck at night, killing and wounding a number, and C Company accounted for several gang leaders, B Company maintained its role in follow-up and support. Ambushes continued, including one by Lieutenant Brasington that killed an enemy and recovered nine sacks of stolen potatoes, and another by Corporal Hadrell. Lieutenant Rudgard’s patrol accounted for a self-styled brigadier in the Badlands before the Company moved back to the Aberdares.
In between these operations, the Company supported the Civil Administration, wiring cattle bomas until ordered to dismantle them, and patrolling farmland in cooperation with local settlers. Rainstorms were constant, and every afternoon without fail the ground churned into a muddy mess. Night ambushes became routine, often in forbidding terrain, and accounted for additional enemy casualties.
The hospitality from local settlers was generous, allowing the men to sometimes billet more comfortably on farms, and the Officers’ and Sergeants’ Messes held gatherings for soldiers and civilians alike. Life alternated between bursts of operational activity and interludes that revealed the lingering preeminence of the Empire in this beautiful colony, their days threaded with the dry humor that marked the Glosters’ time in Kenya.