Netherlands
1 infantry battalion; 1 destroyer.
Colombia
1 infantry battalion; 1 frigate.
Belgium
1 infantry battalion.
Ethiopia
1 infantry battalion.
South Africa
1 fighter squadron.
Luxembourg
1 infantry company.
In addition the Scandinavian nations, with Italy, furnished hospital units. India, conspicuously neutral, sent a field ambulance unit. Other nations furnished food, or money, in limited amounts.
The United States' contribution was ten times that of all other nations combined, excepting the Republic of Korea. The Taehan Minkuk received wholesale American aid, of course—but it suffered the devastation of most of its territory; its cities were destroyed, and it lost 1,312,836 men, women, and children, soldier and civilian alike, during the course of the war, more than one in twenty of its total population.
But while the troops sent by U.N. members were small in number, they were usually high in courage and effectiveness. Most of them, from the six-foot Imperial Guardsmen of Haile Selassie, to the half-wild Algerians of the French battalion, were professional soldiers. Some, like the British, were recalled reservists. Almost all came from units of long history and proud tradition in their native armies.
Most of them, from the bayonet-wielding Turks to the knife-swinging Thais, earned the admiration of American troops.
A few of them wrote proud history.
At the first of April 1951, the U.N. forces, now half a million strong, had crossed the parallel in most places. The CCF, bleeding badly from multiple wounds inflicted by air, sea, and ground action, were hurrying more and more troops into North Korea, until their strength reached three-quarters of a million.
The Chinese still had numerical superiority, and they thought they had the initiative, too. They began to plan what they called First Step, Fifth Phase Offensive. This offensive would concentrate on the western portion of the battle line, and its objective was the Korean capital of Seoul, thirty-five miles to the south.
In the meantime, the Eighth Army kept making limited attacks, until in the third week of April its forces were ten miles above the parallel everywhere except at Kaesong. In the center of the line U.N forces were striking toward the Ch'orwon-Kumwha-P'yonggang complex, an important communication and supply area called the Iron Triangle.
The original Iron Triangle—so called because the steel rails connecting the cities formed a rough triangle on the map—had had Hwach'on as one base, but when Hwach'on fell to the Eighth Army, the correspondents so liked the phrase that the town of P'yonggang, farther north, was put in Hwach'on's place.
The U.N. probe was confident, but cautious. Ridgway planned no sweeping attack, but he was determined to see how far the Eighth Army could go.
Spring had come to Korea, with spring rains, and the countryside was briefly beautiful with grass and flowers. But the skulls of men killed during the winter snows, loosened by the thaw, rolled down the hillsides to rest among the azalea and forsythia just bursting into bloom.
With spring there came to Korea not rebirth but further death.
The United States 3rd Infantry Division struck toward Ch'orwon, up the road running from Seoul, and on 21 April was some ten miles below the city, and ten miles north of the Imjin River. On its right, IX Corps, consisting of the Marine Division and one ROK division, prepared to attack along the line running from Kumwha to the Hwach'on Reservoir. On the 3rd Division's left stood the British 29th Brigade, with a front-line strength of four thousand, and the 1st ROK Division.
The British Brigade was just south of the Imjin, and had sent exploratory patrols across. Crossing an area of flinty two-hundred-foot cliffs and rocky gorges, the patrols reported nothing much to bar the way.
But here, some thirty miles northwest of the ROK capital, was fought the fourth battle for Seoul.
On 22 April the Chinese struck the 17,000-yard front of the British Brigade with six divisions, more than fifty thousand men.
On the eve of St. George's Day, the 29th Infantry Brigade consisted of the 1st Battalion, Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, just south of the Imjin, an attached battalion of Belgians, the 1st Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, on the brigade left, and the 1st Battalion, Royal Ulster Rifles, in reserve. In brigade support were the 45th Field, Royal Artillery, equipped with 25-pounders, and the 8th King's Royal Hussars, who had once charged on horseback at Balaclava but who now rode fifty-ton Centurion tanks.
Each of these was a unit long known to history, and steeped in glory.
The Fusiliers began in 1674, and wear the badge of St. George and his dragon on their berets. The Gloucestershire Regiment—'Glosters'—dates to 1694, and their battle standards stream with the names of Waterloo, Quebec, and Gallipoli, on 22 April 1951 forty-four in all, more than any regiment of the British Army.
Since the time English bowmen wore red crosses on their breasts, the day of their patron, St. George, has been sacred to English arms. For 23 April the British Brigade planned festivities, both gay and solemn. The Ulsters, who had lost more than two hundred dead along the Imjin in January, planned to dedicate a monument. The Fusiliers had readied a turkey dinner, and had made from colored paper the red and white St. George's Day roses for their caps. The Royal Artillery, not to be outdone, had even flown in real roses from Japan.
There would be no festivities this St. George's Day, but the men of the 29th Brigade would wear their roses all the same. They would wear them into battle as desperate as any their forefathers had seen, from Acre to Agincourt.
For on the eve of St. George's Day, at 6:00 PM. the Chinese struck.
The Belgians, across the Imjin, were surrounded first. Then, the Northumberland Fusiliers were brought to battle, but without concern at Brigade HQ. Efforts were made to relieve the Belgians; first a column of the Ulsters tried, then a patrol of tanks, without success.
While concern for the Belgians mounted during the night, they went relatively unscathed, though cut off. On the 23rd they were able to sideslip across the Chinese lines on their right, and withdraw.
It was on the brigade left, where the Glosters held four miles of rugged front, that the main blow fell, when St. George's Day was one hour old.
The Chinese, their horns and bugles raucous in the clear cool night, came across the Imjin in wide, massive waves. The very first washed screaming into A Company, in front, and swamped it. The Able Company commander went down, with two of his officers. The company command post was overrun.
The company radio operator fired his rifle until it went dry, then used it as a club to beat off the Chinese swarming out of the dark. Then, as the Chinese split around him in the fire-prickled night, he crawled to his radio.
'We are overrun. We've had it. Cheerio.'
The other companies held, while the entire brigade, from one end of the 17,000-yard front to the other, was now locked in close combat. By dawn the 1st ROK Division, on their left, had been forced back, and by midmorning Chinese crawled over the flinty hills on the Glosters' flank and rear.
The battalion supply offices were overrun, and the battalion split away from the brigade, while a full regiment of Chinese fixed them from the front.
By radio, the Glosters were told to hold their high ground, where they were, and this they did.
