HigH NooN at SariwoN - WordPress.comHigH NooN at SariwoN BELOW: Men of The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders entering a North Korean town accompanied by American tanks, October 1950

Bright, late afternoon sunlight bore down. On the hard-baked dirt track south of the town, the line of

tanks, trucks and jeeps ground to a halt. Perched on the vehicles, soldiers in worn boots and faded combat uniforms peered ahead. Engines idled. Clouds of mustard-coloured dust billowed into the air behind the stationary column. Officers raised field glasses and focused on the town ahead. Sariwon – another grid reference, another town, another target on the advance up this blighted peninsula. Dominating a key crossroads on the main North-South highway that led to the enemy capital, it was an industrial centre and communications hub. It was also, reputedly, a garrison town – “the Aldershot of North Korea.”

It did not look like much. Scanning through their binoculars, the officers could see the railway suburb south of the town proper. Beyond it were streets lined with the ubiquitous wooden telegraph poles threading through a conglomeration of traditional Korean cottages, utilitarian communist concrete buildings and military warehouses – even a spired church. But it was not what it had been a few months ago. War had visited. Many of the buildings were mere shells, empty holes smashed from the sky.

Silhouettes broke the skyline on a ridge overlooking the town. Enemy! The .50 calibre machine-guns on the tank turrets barked. The North Koreans disappeared. In their first major action in this Asian war a month earlier, these British soldiers had suffered a disaster that had wiped out a company. Then, they had choked on the dust hurled up as their American allies led the advance over the 38th Parallel, the pre-war border. Now, they were the vanguard, the spearhead of the United Nations’ war machine as it stabbed into enemy territory. Would the town be a fortress? It was the last major obstacle before the Pyongyang plain. Senior officers in the rear expected “a big fight”.

Casting long afternoon shadows, the men of 1st Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders descended upon Sariwon. Fighting in built up areas is the most nerve-wracking form of infantry combat. Every street is a valley dominated by rooftops. Every building is a potential strongpoint. With ‘B’ Company, Private Richard Peet, an Englishman from Wigan – the Argylls had a significant English contingent – was moving from house to house. “… You were clearing houses as you go along, kick doors open, throw hand grenades in, shoot through windows” he later recalled.

The Argyll combat group came under fire from

a house. Peet and his platoon commander kicked in the door and hurled grenades. A Korean man, “in his 20s, in civilian clothes”, exited via another door and was immediately gunned down.

The next house contained three women huddled in a corner. They were ignored; the platoon maintained its momentum. ‘C’ Company was advancing up the main road. Private Ronald Yetman – another Englishman who at 6-foot was, like many of the bigger Argylls, a Bren gunner – moved warily. Occasional rounds of sniper fire cracked overhead, but the platoon continued: well-trained soldiers only halt when fire becomes effective or when they run into a nest of resistance. But most of the town seemed eerily empty. As they advanced deeper, the Highlanders realized that Sariwon had been abandoned by both the North Korean military and most of its civilians.

The tide has turned in the Korean War. General Douglas MacArthur’s Inchon Landing has smashed the North Korean People’s Army and United Nations’ forces are charging for

Pyongyang. Spearheading the advance on the western axis, writes Andrew Salmon, the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, is tasked to seize Sariwon, a key town en

route to the communist capital. It is 17 October 1950. The stage is set for perhaps the most extraordinary encounter of this bitter and bloody war.

HigH NooN at SariwoN

BELOW:Men of The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders entering a North Korean town accompanied by American tanks, October 1950. This battalion was one of the first British units to serve in Korea, arriving there in August 1950 as part of the 27th Infantry Brigade. During the Korean War, the Brigade was renamed the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade due to the addition of Canadian, Australian and New Zealand units. (Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, HOBJ165)

other company commanders, a Second World War veteran – slumped down in the chair of a deserted barber shop.

Outside, the ‘C’ Company officers had just returned from their recce when the battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Leslie Neilson, pulled up in his Land Rover and called them over. The three conferred over the map boards in the middle of the street. As they were talking, a truck drew up beside them and halted, apparently to ask directions. The conversation was stillborn; the realization hit all participants at the same moment. The vehicle was bristling with North Koreans.

Like a Hollywood movie, the ‘good guys’ had moved into town via one road as the enemy ‘gunslingers’ had advanced from the

other. Until that moment both friend and foe had been blissfully unaware of the others’ presence. Then everything went kinetic! Around Wilson, the barber shop mirrors disintegrated into crystal fragments. The crescendo of North Korean fire – the ripping brrrrrppp of PPsh 41 submachine guns – was amplified by the close walls. Outside, with bullets whipping overhead, Neilson abandoned his vehicle and dived behind a low wall. As he attempted to return fire, he was struck by one of those embarrassments that is not meant to affect colonels: his Sten gun jammed. Gordon-Ingram was having more success. Standing upright next to the Land Rover, “… looking exactly like the sheriff in an old-time Western”, he picked off the enemy with carefully aimed shots from his revolver at point-blank range.

By now, Yetman and his colleagues had reacted. Automatic fire hammered through

With the realization that the town was undefended, the tension began to evaporate. Yetman and his mates relaxed into covering positions while the Argylls’ ‘C’ Company commander, Major Alistair Gordon-Ingram, and his Second-in-Command, Captain Colin Mitchell, carried out a short recce. Meanwhile, trucks and tanks crowded with grinning infantry in broad-brimmed hats were rumbling up the main street as the Argylls secured the streets: 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, were passing through to set up blocks north of the town. The Argyll’s ‘A’ Company, which had cleared an enemy roadblock in the morning and had then been leapfrogged by ‘B’ and ‘C’, was also arriving in the south of the town. ‘A’ Company’s Major David Wilson – like the

28 NOVEMBER2009 NOVEMBER2009 29

BRITAIN AT WAR HIGH NOON AT SARIWON

ABOVE:Led by a Piper, soldiers of 1st Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and troops of 3rd Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR) are pictured on the march. Note their winter clothing. 3RAR were attached to the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade in September 1950, arriving from Japan where they had been carrying out occupation duties following the Second World War. In December the same year, the 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was added. (Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, 148889)

ABOVE:Soldiers from 1st Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders taking cover in an onion field whilst waiting for an air strike to finish and then pushing on. In its first major action in the Korean War, during the battle of Naktong, and more specifically the fighting for Hill 282, the battalion was involved in a tragic friendly fire incident when napalm was dropped by US aircraft on some of the regiment. (Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria)

the bodywork of the vehicle, coverless in the centre of the road. A squad of North Koreans vaulted off the truck and dashed into a monsoon ditch running alongside the road. It was a mistake: the Argylls were above the drain in defilade. Rapidly firing down the length of the ditch, the Highlanders tumbled the North Koreans down.

The North Korean driver attempted to accelerate out of the fusillade. As his perforated vehicle juddered forward, a member of Yetman’s platoon scurried alongside it in the monsoon ditch and hurled a grenade. It detonated on the truck bed. Brewing up, the vehicle careened to the side of the street, its occupants dead.

Suddenly there was silence. The furious but short-lived gunfight had been Yetman thought, “a bit dodgy.” Remarkably, given the extreme close range – no more than the width

of a street – no Argyll had been hit. Thirty North Koreans, including a group of prisoners taken earlier and mown down in the crossfire, lay sprawled out on the ground. With daylight fading, the flames flickering up from the burning truck lit the ruined street.

*Orders now arrived from Brigadier Aubrey Coad, commanding the Argyll’s parent unit, 27th Commonwealth Brigade. Coad wanted Neilson to consolidate his battalion and establish blocking positions to the west of Sariwon. By radio, Neilson summoned ‘C’ Company, clearing the north of the town, back to the south. Then with his battalion Second-in-Command Major John Sloane and Captain Mitchell, he drove out in a Land Rover and a tracked carrier to recce the blocking position. The clock ticked. The party did not return. The radio was silent. The Argylls’ intelligence officer, Lieutenant Sandy Boswell, conferred



MAIN PICTURE:On 1 October 1950, the United Nations’ Command repelled the North Korean army northwards, over the 38th Parallel and, along with the South Korean forces, crossed after them into North Korea. The initial advances were rapid and often over-whelmed the North Korean units encountered. Here, UN personnel examine a North Korean Soviet-supplied SU-76 self-propelled gun. The SU-76 was based on a lengthened and widened version of the T-70 tank chassis. Its simple construction made it the second most-produced Soviet armoured vehicle of the Second World War after the T-34 tank. (US National Archive)

BELOW LEFT:The men of ‘B’ Company, 1st Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders photographed by an Australian War Correspondent whilst advancing into a North Korean town. The tanks are believed to be from the United States Army’s 89th Tank Regiment. Note the telephone exchange blazing in the background. The men are advancing in column to minimize the effect of sweeping fire from enemy machine-guns. (Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria)

BELOW:Men of ‘B’ Company, 1st Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in a devastated village in North Korea. (Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria)

with the adjutant, Captain John Slim (son of the Chief of the Imperial Staff, Field Marshal “Bill” Slim). “This was quite fun!” thought Boswell grimly: the battalion was effectively headless in an unsecured town with night

falling. Slim thought – “with all due modesty” – that the battalion was operating fine under his own direction, but contacted Gordon-Ingram to take over in Neilson’s absence. With Gordon-Ingram in temporary command, Slim

felt compelled to go off “for a little walk”. Taking a Bren gunner as escort, he set off to find Neilson. The colonel, however, was not to be found. It was now some time after 18:00 hours. ‘C’ Company, which had deployed to the north, along with the mortar platoon and a troop of American tanks, was returning along the main road to join ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies. With sporadic sniping still echoing through the streets, the column was tactically deployed. Behind the turret of the leading Sherman stood a green

National Service officer, as yet inexperienced in combat: Second-Lieutenant Alan Lauder. Beside him, well-spaced Jocks of his platoon were pacing on either side of the crawling tank. The column entered the illumination of a stationary truck’s headlights. It proved abandoned. A Jock broke ranks and smashed the lights in with his rifle butt. Then, from his

HIGH NOON AT SARIWON BRITAIN AT WAR



On 25 June 1950, the young Cold War suddenly turned hot, bloody and expensive. In the early hours of that Sunday, North Korean troops poured across the 38th Parallel into the Republic of Korea. Within a few days, the invasion brought about a response from the United Nations in terms of a “police action” against the aggressors. While there were no illusions that the task would be easy, nobody expected that this violent conflict would continue for more than three years.

The first step came with the passing of United Nations Security Council Resolution 84 on July 7 1950. Throughout the summer of 1950, the United Nations’ states scrambled to contain North Korea’s fast-moving army, assemble the forces necessary to defeat it and simultaneously begin to respond to what was seen at the time as a global military challenge from the Communist world. No less than twenty-three nations became actively involved to one extent or other – though a few only provided medical or logistical support to the United Nation’s forces.

In mid-September 1950 a daring amphibious invasion at Inchon

fractured the North Korean war machine. In the following two months UN armies pushed swiftly through North Korea. However, with victory seemingly in sight, China intervened openly, and the Soviet Union not-so-openly, on the side of their defeated Communist neighbour. The UN was thrown back midway into South Korea. Early in the New Year, the Chinese army was in turn contained and forced to retreat.

By the middle of 1951, the front lines had stabilized near where the war started twelve months earlier. Negotiations began amid hopes that an early truce could be arranged. But this took two more frustrating years, during which the contending forces fought on, with the U.S. Navy providing extensive air and gunfire support, a constant amphibious threat, relentless minesweeping and a large logistics effort.

Finally, on 27 July 1953, with a new regime in the USSR and the blunting of a final Communist offensive, negotiations concluded and fighting ended. However, the Cold War, considerably warmed up by the Korean experience, would maintain its costly existence for nearly four more decades.

WHEN THE COLD WAR SUDDENLY TURNED HOT

LEFT:“Diggers” from 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment crowd onto an American M4A3E8 Sherman tank as it rolls through Sariwon to take up blocking positions to the North as Argylls clear the town. As night fell, one of the most extraordinary encounters of modern warfare would take place on these streets. (Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, P00675.057)

BELOW:Against the backdrop of a burning North Korean village, an Argyll Bren gunner prepares to return sniper fire. The Bren was a highly accurate weapon, suitable for counter-sniper work. The cap comforter this Jock is wearing would confuse North Korean troops entering the town of Sariwon - with disastrous consequences for the Communists. The soldier is Private J. Oates from Halifax. (Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria)

vantage point at the head of the southbound column, Lauder spotted “a horde of people” advancing up the street towards him.

Despite the gloom, he could see that they were armed and accompanied by bullock carts stacked with equipment. As the two columns converged, the newcomers – now recognizable as Asian troops – politely dragged their carts to the side of the road to let the Argylls pass. “They were giving us a friendly reception, waving and rubbing shoulders with our guys”, said Lauder. Obviously, the men were South Korean allies.

But as the Sherman trundled by, the American tank commander’s head popped out of his turret and scrutinized the strangers. “They’re goddamned gooks!” he hissed at Lauder. For the first time in his life, the Scotsman experienced something he had only read about: a crawling sensation as the hairs bristled on the back of his neck. “What am I gonna do?” asked the American tank officer. Though he had been anticipating trouble, Lauder realized he now had far more than he could handle: his column was passing within handshake range of the enemy mass. “For God’s sake keep motoring”, Lauder retorted. “I’m not going to start a fight here!” The American disappeared inside his armoured shell, clanging the top hatch firmly closed.

Ahead was a junction. The enemy column seemed endless. Seeing the opportunity to escape, Lauder led his column off the main road down a side street. The nerve-wracking drive, Lauder estimated, had taken five to ten

minutes; amazingly, the Argylls had got away with it. Then, from behind him, a shot rang out. The rear of Lauder’s column consisted of a couple of US tanks and the Argylls’ Mortar Platoon, mounted in seven Bren gun carriers. Some of the mortar men were in the carriers; others were walking alongside, shepherding half a dozen North Korean prisoners captured north of the town. At the rear of the mortar platoon was a Glasgow-born Private, Henry “Chick” Cochrane. The column halted. A tank and a pair of carriers were stopped in the town square. Cochrane saw why: a crowd of Korean troops was approaching. The soldiers and the idling armoured vehicles in the town square reminded Cochrane fleetingly of Colchester. “I said, ‘South Koreans, how the hell did they get here?’” He called one over. The man walked across, smiling. As he approached, Cochrane felt a lurching shock: there was a red star in the man’s cap! “I said, ‘Enemy troops’! We are not gonna see daylight tomorrow!”

Circumspectly, Cochrane approached his platoon commander, Captain Robin Fairrie. Echoing the American tanker’s enquiry to Lauder, he whispered urgently, “What are ye gonna do?” Fairrie was nonplussed: “You tell me!” he replied.

The mingling North Koreans, however, seemed delighted; grins were flashing, mutually incomprehensible greetings were being exchanged, and cigarettes and souvenirs were being passed back and forth. Passing enemy clapped Jocks on the back, murmuring, “Russkies!” The penny dropped: as the Argylls were returning from the north




LEFT:A section of the 1st Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders takes up position in a typically blighted North Korean landscape. Even in 1950, the massive firepower UN forces brought to bear on their objectives was raining devastation upon Kim Il-sung’s nation. By the end of September 1950, Kim was ruing his invasion of the South and begging for Russian assistance as his armies disintegrated. The dictator’s plea for Russian help almost certainly held unfortunate consequences for his soldiers as they entered Sariwon. (Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria)

ABOVE:Two United Nations’ soldiers, almost certainly members of The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, one carrying a Korean child, walk past an American tank (probably an M46). The photographer, Alan Lambert, was a staff photographer with The Age, and this photograph was published in that newspaper on 25 October 1950. (Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, P00675.065)

ABOVE:The Cover of Darkness: well camouflaged but ill-equipped - they lack even small arms - North Korean troops move in darkness to avoid UN airpower. After the September 1950 Inchon landings, the previously all-conquering North Korean Peoples’ Army was facing annihilation. The two sketches that appear in this article were done covertly by Kim Sung-hwan, a young artist resident in Seoul when it fell to the communists in June 1950 who, under the pen name “Gobau” went on to become Korea’s most famous post-war newspaper cartoonist. (With the kind permission of Kim Sung-hwan; original held at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, South Korea.)




of Sariwon to the south, the Koreans, entering the town from a separate road, had mistaken them for Russian allies joining the war. The Argylls’ kit reinforced the North Koreans’ belief, for the Jocks were wearing knitted cap comforters – almost identical to Red Army headgear – and carrying British, rather than American small arms.

By now, all the Argylls had realized who this cheerful crowd was. Inside their carriers, Jocks quietly pulled the cocking levers of Bren guns and loosened the pins in hand grenades. “There was going to be a big skirmish in a minute,” said Cochrane. “You could hear it: the calm before the storm!” Another Jock, Adam Mackenzie, was walking beside one of the carriers; Fairrie had somehow passed word to his men that they were not to speak, only nod, and to keep the prisoners moving. The platoon’s PoWs seemed not to have realized what was going on – or perhaps were too frightened to take advantage. “Let’s get out of here!” MacKenzie fretted. But the fraternization continued.

A North Korean officer approached Fairrie himself. “Russki?” he enquired. Fairrie replied with the only Russian he knew: “Tovarisch!”

This was enough to secure a special favour – a uniformed North Korean female joined him on his jeep, motioning playfully for the speechless officer to pass her his Balmoral. The impossible situation could not last. As the head of the column, led by Lauder, was turning down the junction, one of the American tank commanders got into an altercation with a North Korean. The sergeant reached down from his turret, grabbed a Korean’s rifle by the barrel, and tried to yank it away. The Korean pulled the trigger. The sergeant slumped, gut-shot. “We’d been rumbled!” MacKenzie realized. Almost immediately, the other US tank opened up with machine-guns. The convivial scene disintegrated into pandemonium. As he could see North Koreans frantically setting up machine-guns, MacKenzie, who had been beside the carriers, hit the deck and then vaulted into a carrier. Cochrane did the same. Jocks were emptying Brens and Stens, hurling hand grenades over the armoured sides of the carriers, while trying to stay as low as possible.

In the confusion, the prisoners disappeared, while the astounded enemy – those not mown down in the first fusillade – scattered in all directions. One enemy appeared around a corner from Cochrane, raised his rifle and squeezed the trigger; it clicked on an empty chamber. “They were jumping on top of us

trying to surrender but I did not know they were; we thought they were trying to kill us!” he recalled. “There was no fear – the fear had left ye, all your emphasis was to get them off you and get under cover somewhere.”

ABOVE:Tactical Bullock Cart: while newsreels concentrated on T-34 tanks, the North Korean Peoples’ Army (NKPA) was heavily reliant on peasant transport. This is a bullock cart of the type encountered by the Argylls in Sariwon. The NKPA politely moved their transport to the sides of the road as the Jocks approached. (With the kind permission of Kim Sung-hwan; original held at the National Musuem of Contemporary Art, South Korea)

TOP:A small group of officers of the 1st Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, wearing their traditional tam-o’-shanter headdress. The soldier on the left is Captain John Slim, son of Field Marshal Sir William Slim, who was one of those present during the events at Sariwon. (Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, P01813.860)

ABOVE:The Day After: Australian and American troops search a North Korean PoW. The man is being stripped as a precaution against concealed weapons.

RIGHT:The cloth formation sign of the 27th British Commonwealth Infantry Brigade. The British 27th Infantry Brigade, (comprising the 1st Battalion, The Middlesex Regiment and the 1st Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) representing part of the British commitment to the defence of its colonies in the Far East, had been moved to Hong Kong in 1949. In August 1950, the brigade was ordered to Korea. Due to its scratch nature, the brigade was dubbed the “For-God’s-sake-send-something Brigade” or “The Woolworths Brigade”. (Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, REL25957)




Another mortar man, Edward Searle, caught a fleeting glimpse of a North Korean – “a great big fellow” – diving through the rice paper window of a house. In mid-air, a phosphorous grenade hit him. Both soldier and house flared up. Suddenly, the street was clear. The enemy had scattered; the mortar men had broken clear of the chaos. However, the town was still crawling with enemy and the CO was still absent. Much of the battalion had regrouped to the south of the town proper – but not all. Small groups of lost Jocks took position in yards and basements, waiting nervously for dawn. There was no command and control; leadership devolved upon NCOs and junior officers. Confused skirmishes continued throughout the night. Parts of the town were burning; the ruddy glare was reflected in the sky above. Dawn finally lit the scene. Sariwon’s broken streets were littered with the bodies of some 150 North Koreans. Remarkably, only one Argyll had been killed. The mystery of the missing colonel was also solved when Neilson and his party motored in with a remarkable tale. They had barely left Sariwon the previous evening when they came upon two columns of troops plodding up the road towards them: North Koreans. There was a short burst from the leading enemy, but the officers could not turn their vehicles on the narrow track. Neilson ordered: “Step on the gas!” The British vehicles drove straight between the two lines of marching men.

This was no minor unit. There were hundreds, thousands of North Koreans – but they were defeated, exhausted. Unlike the sharp-eyed man at the head of the column, the tramping men did not identify the unfamiliar vehicles as

enemy. Captain Mitchell – one of the Argylls’ most aggressive officers – stood in the front carrier, his Second World War Luger clutched in his fist. Feeling “a sense of detachment … excited, alert and amused at the same time,” he could not help bursting into laughter, but his “ashen faced” driver was less amused at their predicament.

The nightmare drive between the two files of enemy soldiers continued for four to five miles. Finally, the enemy were behind them. There was no way to return to Sariwon through that mass. The party pulled off the track, camouflaged their vehicles, and formed a tight defensive perimeter in a roadside ditch – the colonel himself taking a turn on sentry – hoping that neither the enemy, nor advancing Americans, would fire on them. Meanwhile, the column had entered the town – where they bumped into Alan Lauder.

*The fate of the enemy mass soon became known. Word came that the big enemy column, having fled the hammer of the Argylls, had stumbled into the anvil of the Australians. The surprised but fast-thinking Diggers had taken 1,982 prisoners. The numbers justified Lauder’s circumspection the previous night. His lone company and the mortar platoon had walked into an entire enemy regiment. “Later you seen what you’d done,” said Cochrane, ruminating on the North Koreans killed in the almost ridiculous action. “It was laughable after – but no joke at the time.” It has been an extraordinary action, but Sariwon had fallen. With the battalion concentrated again, it was time to move on. With the NKPA falling

apart, surely, the war was in its final stages? But none of the Argylls could have guessed that in less than three weeks they would be cut off, deep inside enemy territory, fighting for their lives against a terrifying new enemy.

Unaware of what the future held, at the entrance to Sariwon the Highlanders planted a laconic sign for the benefit of troops coming up behind. It read: “Have no fear – the Argylls were through here.” n

Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author of To the Last Round: The Epic British Stand

on the Imjin River, Korea, 1951 (Aurum Press, 2009). This article is the prologue to Year of the Tiger: The Commonwealth versus Communism, Korea, 1950 - a

book Andrew is currently working on.

BELOW:The Korean War came to a halt at midnight on 27 July 1953. On this day an armistice was signed. Incredibly it has never been followed by a treaty – in effect the war has never been officially ended. Even today, occasional skirmishes are reported in the border region. Here, a US Army Captain confers with counterparts from the Republic of Korea’s Army at Observation Post Ouellette, April 2008. The men are looking north out into the Demilitarized Zone. The Cold War has yet to end in this part of Asia. (Courtesy of Public Affairs Office, US Army, Korea Region)

BELOW:Marching to the tune of the bagpipes, soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders move on. Following the confrontation at Sariwon, the Argylls and Australians fought a desperate action at Pakchon to escape encirclement, were involved in the subsequent winter retreat after the Chinese intervention, and then in the UN recovery and counter-attack to ‘Line Kansas’, near the present cease-fire line. The battalion finished its tour of operation in April 1951. (Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria)

Documents

HigH NooN at SariwoN - WordPress.comHigH NooN at SariwoN BELOW: Men of The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders entering a North Korean town accompanied by American tanks, October 1950