Ex-soldier remembers Korean War fallen

From Wales Online: Ex-soldier remembers Korean War fallen
SIXTY years after serving in the Korean War, former tank driver Peter Archer still has horrendous nightmares.
Peter, 80, who is collecting money for the Poppy Appeal in Wales this week, still can’t bring himself to talk about some of the terrible things he witnessed in the Far East.

But he says it’s important we never forget the soldiers who laid down their lives.

“Some awful things were done, war is no good. I still have nightmares,” said Peter, who lives in Wrexham.

When he was sent to Korea 18 weeks after joining the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in 1951, he had never been away from home before.

The 20-year-old rookie soldier drove the new Centurion tanks and later served alongside the Americans at the helm of a Sherman tank.

He remembers the horror of the notorious month-long battle of Heartbreak Ridge in the Korean conflict.

“On the first day at Heartbreak Ridge the Americans lost 500 men in an hour and a half trying to take it because the Koreans were already up there,” he recalls.

“We need to remember the men who sacrificed their lives. In those days people were not repatriated, there was no Wootton Bassett.

“A lot of them were lost in the mud. I know we went to rescue some fellas on the hill, and they clambered on the tank to get out.

“There were four tanks and as we were bringing them back from the hill they were getting shot at and mortars were dropped around them and all sorts of things so you couldn’t stop.”

Peter still recalls the shock of suddenly being at the heart of a bloody war.

“I’d never been away from home before and within 18 weeks I was heading for Korea, so it was all new to me,” he says.

“Eighteen months was the most you could serve. You could stand two summers, which got up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but you could only stand one winter because it would drop down to minus 50C,” he said.

“It’s cold I tell you, when a dozen of you are lying on the ground and sleeping under the sheet like penguins trying to all get together to keep warm, and then every so often half way through the night you’d have to change over so that those on the outside got some warmth.

More than 1,000 British soldiers were killed in action during the conflict between North and South Korea, often called the ‘forgotten war’.

The bodies of some who died were consumed by the thick mud where they perished with nothing to mark their last resting place.

Peter, a retired mechanic and plant hire operator, says he always wears his poppy to honour comrades who made the ultimate sacrifice.

And he is selling poppies and raising money through the Royal British Legion with his friend Arthur Jones, a 78-year-old ex-Royal Navy veteran of the Korean War, to help those who survived the conflict but were injured or suffered other trauma.

The friends, who both live in Wrexham, will be selling poppies for the Poppy Appeal in North Wales this week.

They will be at the Eagles Meadow shopping centre in Wrexham on November 11 and 12 .

Arthur said: “The Poppy Appeal is really important, especially now with Afghanistan.”

While Kevin Forbes, the Royal British Legion’s North Wales community fundraiser, said: “The Poppy Appeal stands shoulder to shoulder with all who serve – our brave armed forces serving in Afghanistan today, veterans of past conflict, and their families.”

“The Poppy Appeal makes it possible for the Royal British Legion to help our Armed Forces’ families with £1.2m every week in direct welfare support.

“That’s £72m each year, answering more than 160,000 calls for help.”

“On top of that, we need to raise £50m towards the recovery of our Armed Forces injured in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

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THE Korean War 1950-53, was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War between the Communist East and Capitalist West following the end of World War II.

South Korea – supported by the United Nations – fought the China and USSR-backed North Korea.

Tensions had been brewing since Korea was divided by Allies at the end of the Second World War.

The Korean peninsula had been ruled by Japan but when Japan surrendered in 1945, US troops occupied the south and Soviet troops the north.

By 1948 tension between the two political foes escalated into open war when North Korean forces invaded South Korea in June 1950.

The United Nations, particularly the United States, came to the aid of South Korea and the People’s Republic of China entered the war on the side of the North.

Fighting ended in 1953 with an armistice that restored the two Koreas and created a buffer zone between the two although tensions still exist.