The Imjin and Kapyong Battles, Korea, 1951

2 IMJIN: THE SECOND DAY

55 Imjin:TheSecondDay The coming of spring daylight to the Land of the Morning Calm on Monday, 23 April revealed just how serious the situation was becoming for 29th Brigade after a night of hard fighting. The Chinese, instead of slackening their assaults, seem to have redoubled their efforts to break resistance, and not without effect. The decisions made by those in command in the next few hours would help save one battalion but contribute to the destruction of another.3 On the western flank, the two forward Gloster companies were in serious danger. In particular A Company on Hill 148 had been steadily ground down during the previous night’s fighting, often virtually handto -hand in nature as the Chinese kept pushing and machine-guns were knocked out. Platoons were being reduced to the strength of sections and officers were being felled one by one. At around six in the morning the enemy managed to take the summit of Castle Hill and installed themselves below it in a covered observation post that had been built to offer General Ridgway a view over the Imjin during his next tour of inspection. A couple of shots from a super bazooka drove them out for a time, but as with the Belgians and their troublesome bunker, within half an hour the Chinese were back and had set up a machine-gun that dominatedthelowerreachesofthepositionandthreatenedtoforcewhat was left of A Company to abandon it entirely.4 Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Major Pat Angier–having ordered his platoon commanders to report to him in person as phone lines had been cut and theforwardradiolinkprovedunreliable5–detailedoneofhisremaining two 56 The Imjin and Kapyong Battles, Korea, 1951 young subordinates, Lieutenant Philip Curtis, to take the remnants of two platoons and make a last-ditch effort to retake the top of Castle Hill. “You’ve got to shift ’em off it, Phil.” “Right.”6 Theprimaryaimwastosilencethemachine-gunintheobservationpost; “our object,” Sam Mercer, one of the participants in the counterattack explained, “was to go in there and winkle the enemy out.” The chances of success were slim at best. 70 Field Battery of 45 Field Regiment fired in support, but the roof of the observation post protected the occupants fromanythingotherthanadirecthit;theUSAF wasoccupiedelsewhere, so there would be no air strikes; the bazooka had evidently run out of ammunition, meaning grenades would have to be thrown close in; and there was no real ground cover. Curtis nonetheless, revolver in hand, valiantly led a charge from the trenches lying two hundred yards below thesummit.“Hewasthesortofpersonwhowasnotcontenttoleadfrom the back,” Mercer remembered; “he was not content to chivvy you on from the rear; he was very much a leader.” Soldiers were cut down one after another in seconds by bullets and grenades, and a bad situation was apparently made worse by Curtis and some of those he led mistaking a Britishtripflareforanenemyexplosivedeviceandscattering.Curtiswas hit in his right arm and left side–one jaundiced observer said the buttock –but despite severe bleeding insisted that other casualties be seen to by the medical corporal and took it upon himself, pistol in one hand, grenade in the other, to make a final solo effort to silence the machinegun under the covering fire of those who remained unwounded. Just as he was fatally cut down Curtis threw his grenade into the observation post with deadly effect. For this valiant effort he was posthumously awarded a Victoria Cross.7 This act of heroism, alas, counted for little in the wider scheme of things. With the officer having been killed, the counter-attack sputtered out. Indeed, even as Curtis was organizing his “winkle group,” Pat Angier was on the radio to Battalion HQ –which Carne had prudently relocated to the top of Hill 235 held by C Company–making it clear that A Company was in a bad way. “I’m afraid we’ve lost Castle Site,” he told the adjutant, Captain Tony Farrar-Hockley. “I am mounting a counter- Imjin: The Second Day 57 attacknowbutIwanttoknowwhethertoexpecttostayhereindefinitely ornot.IfIamtostayon,Imustbere-enforcedasmynumbersaregetting very low.” Farrar-Hockley passed the message on to the CO, who then spoke to Angier himself over the radio. Carne knew that both A and D companies could not resist the encroaching enemy indefinitely, even with the extra ammunition he was sending forward in Oxford carriers. Nevertheless he also did not want to withdraw his two forward companies in case this allowed the Chinese to outflank either units of the 1st...