Читать книгу VC Heroes - The True Stories Behind Every VC Winner Since World War Two - Nigel Cawthorne - Страница 8

In August 1950, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were mustered in Hong Kong. While their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel George Neilson, and an advanced party travelled to Korea by United States transport plane, the 1st Battalion of the Argylls boarded the cruiser HMS Ceylon in Victoria Harbour under their second-in-command Major Kenneth Muir. Although full of trepidation, the men had enjoyed one last weekend of freedom among the bars and pretty girls of Kowloon.

At around 6.30 a.m. on 23 August, with the men secured below, the Ceylon began to move away from Holt’s Wharf, played out by the pipe band of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and the Leicesters, both in full dress uniform. The pipes of the Argylls and the band of the Royal Marines responded from the Ceylon’s quarterdeck. As they sailed out into the South China Sea, accompanied by the Middlesex Regiment on board the fleet support carrier Unicorn and escorted by the Australian destroyer Warramunga, the US transport with their commanding officers on board circled the ships and dropped a flare.

Before they had left Hong Kong, the Argylls had been issued with the latest 3.5-inch anti-tank rocket launcher to replace the 2.36-inch model, the original bazooka, which had not proved effective against the Soviet T34 tanks. They had also been issued with twenty rounds of live ammunition so that they could familiarise themselves with the weapon during the voyage. In Korea, they were to be part of the UN force that had been pushed back to a small toehold around Pusan. The British contingent were to be known as the ‘Woolworth Brigade’, because they relied on the Americans for everything, from rations to artillery and air support.

As they approached the quay at Pusan, the British contingent were greeted by US Army band playing the popular song ‘Silver Dollar’, which slipped tempo into ‘God Save the King’ as the Ceylon and Unicorn tied up. Then a Korean Army band and a choir of Korean schoolchildren joined in. Korean government officials and the press corps were there to greet them.

‘They marched ashore as if they were still on parade. And they all looked fighting fit,’ noted the Daily Mail.

The soldiers were young, though anyone in the regiment younger than 19 had been left behind in Hong Kong. Then the Argyll pipers, in their distinctive white tunics and regimental kilts, struck up. An American journalist asked Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Man of the Middlesex Regiment why they had no band.

‘Well, the Scots need those contraptions to fight with,’ he replied.

Trains were waiting to carry them up to Kyongsan. The Royal Navy helped load their equipment, then the Argylls had to wait all day among the refugees who had fled the North and the stench of open sewers and the wood smoke of a thousand cooking fires. Finally, by 2330, they had boarded the train and it pulled out to carry them the 60 miles to Taegu.

As they were moving up into active service, the colours of the battalion, along with the regimental silver, had been left behind in Hong Kong, together with the heavy vehicles. The Americans were to supply the British, though this presented logistical problems. Despite a quayside speech about the ‘historic unity of the Anglo-Saxon people’, transatlantic ammunition calibres did not match and the US quartermasters had to search long and hard to find a special issue of tea that would suit British tastes.

For the next two weeks, living under makeshift shelters, the battalion survived on bread, cheese, cold sausage at midday and ‘some form of exotic American tinned meat’ for dinner. Winter clothing was held in reserve. The men kept fit by running or climbing the hills. They continued to practise with the new bazooka, while officers began liaison visits to the American units in the line.

On 4 September the British were moved into the line along the Naktong River, relieving the 3rd Battalion of the American 23rd Infantry, holding the left flank of the US 1st Cavalry Division. They were to hold 10 miles of the 35-mile front there, supported by a platoon of Sherman tanks, a battery of 155mm artillery, one of 105mm guns and an attachment of Tactical Air Control from the 5th Air Force. The Argylls were to hold the southern sector, the Middlesex the north.

The handover was to be done at night, to avoid alerting the enemy. During the day, reconnaissance parties had been sent ahead. Then, at dusk, the main body was brought up on board US trucks. They set off in single file down mountain tracks that soon petered out. After that, they navigated by compass, making as little noise as possible. This was not without its difficulties on hillsides coved with scrub and dwarf oaks. The advance was covered by Vickers medium machine guns and 3-inch mortars. But there were such gaps in the defensive cover that the enemy could come and go unseen.

By sunrise the Argylls were in position, though they had not been helped by their American guides, who had lost their way. The Middlesex were in more trouble. A subaltern returning to his platoon after a recce was shot by a sentry. On 8 September their vehicles arrived, having been bought my merchant ship from Hong Kong and by railway flatcar from Pusan.

With American and Republic of Korea troops fighting defensive actions to either side, the British set up listening posts on either side of the Naktong River and sent out reconnaissance patrols at night. They soon discovered that a large force of the North Korean People’s Army was forming up on the hills to the south of the Argylls. One early patrol engaged one of its outposts and American artillery and British mortars pummelled the enemy’s position.

The Argylls’ left flank was difficult to supply. Air drops were not accurate enough and supplies had to be brought up by Korean porters. American helicopters medevacked the wounded out. Some 230 poorly armed and badly trained Korean policemen were brought up to fill the gap between the British and the US 2nd Division to the south. An ex-World War Two prisoner of war was chosen to liaise with them because he spoke some Japanese, a language widely understood by Koreans after Japan’s long occupation.

On the night of 20 September, the British crossed the Naktong in force in an effort to begin the breakout from the Pusan perimeter. After they had established a forward position the other side of the river, the first objective was to take the high ground beyond. That afternoon, with the support of two US Sherman tanks, A Company managed to take Hill 148 without losing a man. But there was not enough time before nightfall to take to the two hills – Hill 282 and Hill 388 – that formed ends of a ridge about a mile long beyond.

During the night of the 22nd, the British brought up mortars and Vickers machine guns to guard the flanks, and American forward artillery observers joined the Argylls. Colonel Neilson set up his headquarters at the eastern end of a ridge held by A Company, which overlooked B and C Companies’ start line for the next day’s assault. The Argylls were told that they would be making a surprise attack, so there would be no artillery softening up or preliminary aerial bombardment that might warn the enemy of their intentions.

Although they had spent most of the night digging in, the 1st Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were woken at 0400 and drawn up facing northwest and the spurs that led up to Hill 282. There was a slight delay while they waited for a platoon that had got lost in the darkness. Then they finally set off at 0520.

All was quiet as they crossed a dry rice paddy and started their ascent. About halfway up, there were several bursts of fire from above. But this was probably just a response to noise heard from below. After a brief halt, the advance began again. It was hard going, since the hill was steep and covered with scrub, loose rocks and fir trees. But at 0550, just as dawn was breaking, B Company reached an open stretch just below the final ridge. There they surprised a bunch of North Korean soldiers having breakfast in the open just 100 yards from the summit.

‘The North Koreans were not used to being attacked at 5 a.m. and the leading Argylls were able to get within 50 yards before making their charge,’ said one of the Argylls who was there.

Those who stood and fought were killed. Others made off, dragging their wounded behind them. The firing alerted another Korean position that the Argylls had passed in the darkness. They opened fire with everything they had, so B Company had to turn back to clear it. Fifteen NKPA soldiers were killed for the loss of five wounded and one dead – a platoon commander. Then followed a classic ‘highland charge’. Screaming like banshees, the Argylls used their rifles and bayonets to clear the North Korean positions. The aggression of the Scots regiment was too much for the NKPA and those who were left alive fled. At 0618 Major Alastair Gordon-Ingram, the commander of B Company, could report back that they had taken Hill 282, at the cost of another ten casualties.

At 0630, C Company, under Major J M Gillies arrived, minus a platoon, which had already joined B Company. They deployed along the ridge, digging slit trenches and collecting the wounded for evacuation. This would be difficult, because the hillside was too steep for stretchers. To get the wounded down, each would have to be carried by four men holding a ground sheet. In the meantime, a request was sent for extra morphine.

Colonel Neilson then ordered Major Gillies to take Hill 388 at the other end of the ridge. This lay 2,000 yards away across a low saddle. But, first, defensive positions had to be completed and an artillery plan drawn up. At 0815, battalion headquarters moved up to Hill 148 and A Company was stood down for a wash and breakfast. Then at 0830 ranging fire of North Korean mortars began to rain down, but the ridge-top defences were almost complete, minimising British casualties. Half an hour later, small parties of North Koreans began infiltrating around the left flank and the British forward position had to be reinforced.

For Major Kenneth Muir, the position of second-in-command was a frustrating one. In the ordinary course of events, all he could do was wait until his superior officer was sick, wounded, killed or in some other way incapacitated. But Major Muir was a man of action and, when a carrier party sent forward to evacuate the wounded got lost, he volunteered to lead a second team. By 0900, he was at the top of Hill 282 and in the thick of it.

Having established the range, the enemy were now bombarding the ridge with mortar and shell fire. The weather was not good, but the Americans were trying to get a Mosquito spotter plane airborne to find out where the enemy guns were. In the meantime, they were shelling Hill 388 in the hope of dislodging a possible artillery observation post there.

As the North Korean bombardment continued, there were soon nearly thirty British casualties, more than Muir and his party could handle. It was as much as they could do to move them to the collection point. Then at 0930 the British were informed that the American artillery support would have to be withdrawn, because it was needed elsewhere. They protested, but were assured that the American batteries would continue their support until some relief was found. In fact, the guns were already on the move and the Argylls were left with no weapons with the range to reach the North Korean positions on Hill 388 that overlooked them.

On the ridge, C Company reported what they thought was a small force approaching through the scrub. Things were no better to the rear, where A Company encountered the NKPA coming in from the southwest and west, and found themselves in a battle to hold onto Hill 148.

C Company then found that they were under full attack by a much larger force than they had imagined.

‘The scrub is full of them,’ they radioed.

Two sections of B Company moved forward to reinforce them while the battalion pummelled the scrub with 3-inch mortars. Two Bren guns held back the frontal attack, but the North Koreans began another flanking action. For the next hour this infiltration increased, as did the shelling and mortaring, causing further casualties to the two companies.

Major Muir, a natural leader, took charge and consolidated his forces in the perimeter on Baker Ridge, being held by C Company. According to one report,

Major Muir, although only visiting the position, automatically took over command and with complete disregard for his own personal safety started to move around the forward elements, cheering on and encouraging the men to greater efforts despite the fact that ammunition was running low. He was continually under fire, and despite entreaties from officers and men alike, refused to take cover.

In fact, after assessing the situation, he had radioed Colonel Neilson and proposed that he take command of the hilltop defences. He was confident that he could hold Hill 282, he said, provided they were well supplied with ammunition. However, they were sitting ducks for enemy artillery and mortar fire, and could promise no offensive action unless he was given fire support.

Colonel Neilson immediately agreed that Major Muir should take command on Hill 282. Ammunition was on its way, carried by C Company’s returning stretcher bearers, and Neilson said he had already requested an airstrike on Hill 388, sending full map references. Then the news came through that three American Mustangs would strike at noon.

As the Argylls waited on the hilltop, under fire, for the American airstrike, they laid out large white panels, indicating the presence of friendly troops. At midday, a Mosquito spotter plane appeared above the ridge. The ground troops had no means of communicating with it, but its presence comforted them, since it indicated that help was on its way. In fact, the American forward air controller sent to coordinate the attacks was on the ground at an observation point some way behind.

At 1215, the three Mustangs came roaring in. They circled, looking over the ground. Then they formed a single file and began their attack. They came in low, guns blazing, dropping tanks of napalm. But these hit not Hill 388 but Hill 282. Baker Ridge exploded in a plume of flame a billowing black smoke.

‘I’ve never seen anything as black, even as a fireman,’ said Pat Quinn, an Argyll on the hill who went on to become a fire-fighter in Greater Manchester.

As the hilltop was engulfed in a sea of orange flame, survivors plunged 15 metres (50 feet) down the slope to escape the burning napalm. Then the Mustangs turned for a second run. Major Muir jumped to his feet and waved the white panel. But it did no good. This time the Mustangs fired rockets into the ridge. Then they pulled away and attacked A Company on Hill 148. It was all over in about five minutes.

Some of the wounded had been killed. Fresh wounded made their way to the collection point, if they could. Those badly burned had to be carried.

With the main defensive position destroyed, the Argylls withdrew to a position some 15 metres (50 feet) below the crest.

‘There is no doubt that a complete retreat from the hill would have been fully justified at the time,’ it was reported in dispatches.

But Major Muir was not going to give up the hill. He realised that the enemy had not taken immediate advantage of the incident and the crest was still unoccupied, although under fire.

‘I’ll take them up again, and this time we’ll stay,’ said Muir.

According to Major David Wilson, the commanding officer of A Company and the last man to talk to Major Muir on the battalion net, ‘He said he was going to get the summit back to give the wounded a chance… and in the style of the Northwest Frontier somehow got back to the top. I have never seen anything like it. From perhaps 2,000 yards away, I watched through by glasses, impotent to do anything.’

Major Muir mustered Major Gordon-Ingram, Captain Penman, Company Sergeant Major Collett and some six soldiers, and moved forward. As the flames subsided, they saw Private Watts, who had somehow survived, firing on the approaching enemy from a rocky outcrop. To their surprise, the ridge was still in Argyll hands.

With Major Gillies giving covering fire, Major Muir mustered what men he could and led them forward, cheering, to join Private Watts. According to dispatches, Major Muir

personally led the counter-attack on the crest. To appreciate fully the implication of this, it is necessary to realise how demoralising the effect of the air-strike had been and it was entirely due to his courage, determination and splendid example of this officer that such a counter-attack was possible. All ranks responded magnificently and the crest was retaken.

The NKPA were driven back, but they remained in a position to harry the Argylls with small-arms fire. Nevertheless, Muir was in a position to radio Colonel Neilson and tell him that he still held the hilltop.

Neilson gave Muir permission to hold his position or withdraw, as he saw fit. But Muir was in no mood for retreat, particularly now he had been reinforced by the returning stretcher bearers, who went scavenging among the dead for weapons.

Soon the North Koreans were advancing through the scrub again. They were greeted with a barrage of small-arms fire. Major Muir’s VC citation says:

From this moment on, Major Muir’s actions were beyond all possible praise. He was determined that the wounded would have adequate time to be taken out and he was just as determined that the enemy would not take the crest. Grossly outnumbered and under heavy automatic fire, Major Muir moved about his small force, redistributing fast diminishing ammunition.

Major Muir’s personal leadership and courage inspired the defenders who held the ridge for half an hour in the face of overwhelming odds. When ammunition for his own weapon ran out, Major Muir teamed up with Major Gordon-Ingram to man a 2-inch mortar ‘with very great effect against the enemy’. While firing the mortar, Major Muir was still shouting encouragement and advice to his men, and for a further five minutes the enemy were held at bay.

‘Finally, Major Muir was hit with two bursts of automatic fire which mortally wounded him,’ the official dispatches recorded, ‘but he retained consciousness and was still determined to fight on.’

‘Neither the gooks nor the US Air Force will drive the Argylls off this hill,’ were his last reported words.

Supported by 3-inch mortars from below, the Argylls drove the NKPA back. At the end of the action, Major Gordon-Ingram found he had only ten men left fit to fight – and three of them were wounded. With just three Brens and enough ammunition for a magazine each, they withdrew to Charlie Ridge, where Major Gillies had roughly the same strength, dragging their wounded comrades behind them.

With their ammunition exhausted and scarcely a man who was not wounded, Major Gordon-Ingram then radioed Colonel Neilson, asking for permission to withdraw and requesting stretcher bearers. Neilson said that forty or fifty men were already on their way. These included clerks, pipers, drivers, the adjutant and intelligence officer from battalion headquarters, along with volunteers from the Middlesex regiment, whose first-aid post also handled the Argylls’ wounded.

‘The battle-exhausted survivors came down the hill carrying or dragging the wounded,’ said Pat Quinn. ‘I was so badly wounded that I could not walk and had to be dragged down the hill, but at least I was still alive… The worst part of it all was the napalm. Even as a fireman I have never seen anything like the destruction that stuff does to human skin. I never want to hear of that stuff being used again.’

On Hill 282, Major Gordon-Ingram’s men searched for anyone left alive. Finding none, they pulled back under the covering fire of Major Gillies’s men. By 1500, the survivors were back down at the foot of the hill. When the company rolls had been checked, the losses totalled around ninety. However, in the heat of battle, men sometimes get lost and it is customary to wait 72 hours until they are posted missing. In fact, two men found their way back off Hill 282 the following day. The Argylls’ losses were 17 killed, including Major Muir, and 79 wounded, including one injured earlier crossing the Naktong. Around 60 of the casualties were due to the Americans’ ‘friendly fire’. The battalion was quickly reorganised into two rifle companies and settled for the night on Hill 148, waiting for whatever the next day would bring. There would be no more fighting for Hill 282, though. Later that day the North Koreans withdrew.

On the 25th, the Argylls joined the advance on Sonju. By the end of the month, the NKPA line had split open. The Argylls found themselves mopping up stragglers and taking arms caches disclosed to them by villagers. By the 28th, they were reinforced by other Highland regiments.

Meanwhile, the head of the British 27 Brigade, Brigadier Basil Coad, had written to General MacArthur, requesting an explanation of the disastrous airstrike on the Argylls by the 5th US Air Force. Air Vice-Marshal Cecil Bouchier, senior British liaison officer with the commander-in-chief of the UN forces, asked Major-General Earle Partridge, commanding officer of the 5th Air Force, for an account. He was told that the forward air controllers were not close enough to Hill 282 because they could not get across a small river and the spotter plane used a different scale of map. The officer in charge of the ground-control team had told the Mustangs that the enemy often copied allied recognition panels, so they should ignore those on Hill 282. He had been replaced.

During the following weeks, efforts were made by the US authorities and private individuals to make amends and, according to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders’ own official history, ‘the reputation of the battalion was if anything enhanced by the tragedy’.

Both the British and Americans tried to hold back the names of those injured by ‘friendly fire’ during the airstrike. However, the press had already got pictures. Time magazine carried the story and it was too late to stage a cover-up.

Announcing Major Muir’s posthumous award of the Victoria Cross, the London Gazette of 5 January 1951 said,

The effect of his splendid leadership on the men was nothing short of amazing and it was entirely due to his magnificent courage and example and the spirit of which he imbued in those about him that all wounded were evacuated from the hill, and, as was subsequently discovered, very heavy casualties inflicted on the enemy in the defence of the crest.

Born in Chester on 6 March 1912, Major Kenneth Muir had come from an Army family. A short, stocky man, he had never thought to do anything else but follow his father into the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He was commissioned in 1932 and saw active service on the Northwest Frontier of India from 1935 to 1938. There, it is said, he learned the golden rules of regimental soldiering: always occupy the hilltops; never let the enemy dominate you from higher ground; never leave your wounded behind.

During World War Two, he rose from captain to acting Lieutenant Colonel and saw active service, some of it attached to the military police, in the Sudan, north Africa, Italy, France and Germany. By the end of the war he had earned eight campaign medals and a mention in dispatches. After a spell in the provost marshal’s branch of the War Office, he was sent to Hong Kong as second-in-command of the Argylls. He was buried in the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Pusan, South Korea. The Americans were the first to honour Major Muir with the posthumous award of the Distinguished Service Cross.

On 14 February 1951, Major Muir’s father, Lieutenant Colonel Garnet Wolsey Muir, who had been commander of the Argylls from 1923 to 1927, went to Buckingham Palace to receive the Victoria Cross from King George VI on his son’s behalf. Afterwards he said, ‘I am proud beyond all words. My son, my only son, was a soldier all the way.’

However, crippled with grief and depression, Muir’s father took his own life three years later.

In March 2004, Major Muir’s name appeared on a war memorial unveiled at Malvern College, commemorating former pupils who died fighting for their country. He had attended the school from 1926 to 1929. His name was joined by that of RAF Wing Commander Nigel Elsdon, who died in a Tornado while leading the 27 Squadron bombing of an Iraqi airfield during the first Gulf War. The memorial has been left open-ended, so names can be added in the event of further losses.