Introduction v 3 v position in the British popular imagination, from early anxiety in the summer of 1950 through to growing apathy by the end of the war and beyond. Its chapters examine the response from different groups to the war, consciously drawing from material produced by both soldiers and civilians. The wealth of personal material now available on Korea also offers a new opportunity to test methodologically innovative ideas about life-writing and the construction of ‘selfhood’in the modern era. From diary entries on training and travelling to Korea, to the letters young national servicemen wrote home and interviews with repatriated POWs, we can begin to understand how British servicemen viewed themselves in the Cold War era. But by broadening our focus to include those in Britain, we can also understand how concerns about loyalty, democracy and freedom influenced citizens. Alongside ‘front-line’experiences, this book tells the interconnected stories of those at home, from the brainwashing scandals of the 1950s and 1960s, to early Cold War protest movements that pre-date the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). It involves a cast of diverse characters including military personnel, POWs, war protestors, families and political commentators. Many of these figures became household names during the Korean War, including the stoic Colonel James Carne of the Gloucestershire Regiment, held captive between 1951 and 1953; the anti-Communist peer Lord Robert Vansittart; and the infamous town planner, Dr Monica Felton, who visited North Korea in 1951. In a period typically associated with welfare, peace and reconstruction, this book sheds lights on a moment where the Cold War intruded into people’s lives–and even their views of themselves–in post-war Britain.

Yet in tracing this history, this book tells not only the story of a ‘forgotten’war in Britain, but also asks why it subsequently became forgotten. Commentators and historians ubiquitously refer to Korea by its clichéd soubriquet,‘The Forgotten War’. 12 To some extent though, all wars are forgotten. Many of the realities of conflict are incommunicable to subsequent generations: sweltering heat, itchy uniforms and moments of violence, fear and boredom are part of an ‘experiential history’, potentially inaccessible to those who were not there. These aspects of war, what Yuval Harari calls ‘flesh-witnessing’, are very difficult to describe fully afterwards. 13 Wars always remain partially untold. Moreover, many societies do not wish to remember the experience of war. Soldiers feel forgotten after war, sensing that their version of events does not fit neatly with popular narratives of conflict. 14 Ill-fitting narratives of war partially explain the ‘forgotten’place of the Korean War in British social history.