The day 650 Glosters faced 10,000 Chinese

One of the great tragedies of British military history will be remembered this week as 120 veterans join the Duke of York in Gloster Valley, South Korea. Fifty years ago, the valley saw a battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment all but annihilated when its position on the Imjin River came under attack by a huge Chinese force. David Rennie in Beijing reports

HALF a century ago, 650 British fighting men - soldiers and officers from the 1st Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment - were deployed on the most important crossing on the Imjin River to block the traditional invasion route to Seoul.

They knew they faced a major Chinese attack. They did not know quite how big, or how soon. The enemy came at around midnight on April 22, 1951, a day earlier than the Glosters had expected. The Chinese had marched 17 miles to the river's edge and, rather than stop, simply continued across the river.

As appalled British patrols reported "huge forces" advancing on them, it became clear that China had sent an entire division - 10,000 men - to smash the isolated Glosters aside in a major offensive to take the whole Korean peninsula.

In all, the United Nations forces seeking to repulse the Communist onslaught had some 3,000 men guarding the 12-mile line on the river. They consisted of Glosters, the Royal Ulster Rifles, the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, Belgian forces and other supporting units.

All the units fought bravely, but it was the tragedy of the Glosters, who lost 622 men and officers to death, injury or captivity, which shook the world. Capt Anthony Farrar-Hockley, a young Glosters adjutant, was one of those waiting.

Now Gen Sir Anthony, he recalled the last hours before the attack. "The Glosters were holding an ancient invasion route to Seoul - the key ford across the Imjin River where vehicles could cross. On the day of the 21st, we saw lots of little groups of the enemy getting into position."

Aircraft reported that the Chinese were filling in anti-tank ditches on approach roads and releasing smoke clouds to hide troop movements. What the Glosters did not know was that Chinese "deep reconnaissance units" were already above them gazing down from Kamak-san, the 2,000ft peak which separated the Glosters from the rest of the line of defence.

On Sunday the 22nd, as men prepared for a major battle, Protestant and Catholic padres of the whole British brigade preached to packed congregations. At midnight, the main body of the Chinese division, part of the Sixty Third Army, arrived at the ford and poured in their thousands across the river.

The Chinese fell on the defenders like "a swollen wave . . . breaking on the shore", Sir Anthony records in his official history of the war. Some of the Glosters waited in the dark in prepared ambushes. As battle raged nearby, one unit waited for four hours until the rattling of tin cans on barbed wire revealed that the enemy was almost upon them.

The defenders unleashed a hail of small arms fire, grenades and mortars to murderous effect. But still the attackers came and in ever greater numbers. By daylight on Monday, the scene was "grim".

Chinese forces had reached the heart of the lines that had been dug and wired with such care and swarmed across the endless hills and clifftops overlooking the river valley. Now the Glosters were being fired on from their own prepared hilltop positions. One Chinese machinegun post was set up on the key summit of Castle Hill.

Lieut Philip Curtis "ran forward alone, a pistol in one hand, a grenade in the other". Missed by the first wave of fire, he was killed by the second as his grenade fell into the Chinese position, destroying it. Lieut Curtis was awarded a posthumous VC.

By Tuesday, ammunition was running out and the Chinese poured fire from all sides on desperate bands of men as they scrambled down sheer, rocky slopes for the cover of gorges or trees. The British tried to resort to ingenuity as their supplies ran out.

The Chinese, who lacked radios, were using trumpets to direct their battalions. Sir Anthony's history records: "Drum-Major P E Buss was instructed to sound a range of British calls to confuse the enemy" - to excellent effect. Slowly, it dawned on the US-led High Commanders, well to the Glosters' rear, that nothing short of a division would now be able to rescue the trapped men.

But such an effort would endanger the entire line and relief never came. A debate rages to this day over whether the Glosters could have been pulled out or relieved sooner. Cultural differences were a factor in the confusion.

On Tuesday afternoon, an American, Maj-Gen Robert H Soule, asked the British brigadier, Thomas Brodie: "How are the Glosters doing?" The brigadier, schooled in British understatement, replied: "A bit sticky, things are pretty sticky down there." To American ears, this did not sound too desperate.

Gen Soule ordered the Glosters to hold fast and await relief the following morning. With that their fate was sealed. On Wednesday morning, 25th, the young Capt Farrar-Hockley heard the news. "You know that relief force?" his colonel told him. "Well, they're not coming."

By then, some 100 of the original 650 men were either dead or too seriously wounded to fight. All that was left was to try to break out en masse, every man for himself, to reach the American positions a few miles to the rear.

Sir Anthony explained: "The hope was that with a large number of men streaming across the countryside some would get through." The wounded were placed on top of a hill with a Red Cross flag. Their medical officer and orderly volunteered to stay with them, as did the Glosters' padre, to await capture.

Sir Anthony clapped the medical officer on the back, then prepared to lead his men for the run to safety under cover of a supporting artillery barrage.

Men joined close comrades in arms or officers they had come to trust. Sir Anthony.said: "At a given moment there was to be a tremendous whack of artillery, then every man should make his own way. We expected to have to cross about two or three miles through a lot of Chinese."

Only 40 men escaped. Six more Glosters would have made it, but were gunned down by American tanks who took their muddy, ragged figures for Chinese. A Mosquito pilot overhead averted further disaster by dropping a scribbled note, and the American forces gathered in the remaining survivors.

Sir Anthony and a dozen men ran three quarters of a mile, before a large force of Chinese opened up a withering fire across their line of escape. "They were firing shots across our bows. I could have ordered the men to fight on, but to what effect? I ordered the men to smash up their weapons and surrender."

Across the cold landscape, some 500 Glosters, radio operators and gunners were suffering the same process. Three days after the Battle of Imjin River began, they were prisoners of war.