The Korean War in Britain: Citizenship, selfhood and forgetting 9781526118967

Citation preview

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The Korean War in Britain

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Cultural History of Modern War Series editors Ana Carden-​Coyne, Peter Gatrell, Max Jones, Penny Summerfield and Bertrand Taithe Already published Carol Acton and Jane Potter  Working in a world of hurt: trauma and resilience in the narratives of medical personnel in warzones Julie Anderson  War, disability and rehabilitation in Britain: soul of a nation James E. Connolly  The experience of occupation in the Nord, 1914–​18: living with the enemy in First-​World-​War France Lindsey Dodd  French children under the Allied bombs, 1940–​45: an oral history Rachel Duffett  The stomach for fighting: food and the soldiers of the First World War Peter Gatrell and Lyubov Zhvanko (eds)  Europe on the move: refugees in the era of the Great War Christine E. Hallett  Containing trauma: nursing work in the First World War Jo Laycock  Imagining Armenia: orientalism, ambiguity and intervention Chris Millington  From victory to Vichy: veterans in inter-​war France Juliette Pattinson  Behind enemy lines: gender, passing and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War Chris Pearson  Mobilizing nature: the environmental history of war and militarization in Modern France Jeffrey S. Reznick  Healing the nation: soldiers and the culture of caregiving in Britain during the Great War Jeffrey S. Reznick  John Galsworthy and disabled soldiers of the Great War: with an illustrated selection of his writings Michael Roper  The secret battle: emotional survival in the Great War Penny Summerfield and Corinna Peniston-​Bird  Contesting home defence: men, women and the Home Guard in the Second World War Trudi Tate and Kate Kennedy (eds)  The silent morning: culture and memory after the Armistice Spiros Tsoutsoumpis  The People’s Armies: a history of the Greek resistance Laura Ugolini  Civvies: middle-​class men on the English Home Front, 1914–​18 Wendy Ugolini  Experiencing war as the ‘enemy other’: Italian Scottish experience in World War II Colette Wilson  Paris and the Commune, 1871–​78: the politics of forgetting

www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/history/research/cchw/​

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The Korean War in Britain Citizenship, selfhood and forgetting

v G r ac e Hu x ford

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Grace Huxford 2018 The right of Grace Huxford to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN  978 1 5261 1895 0  hardback First published 2018 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Out of House Publishing

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For my parents, George and Sarah

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Contents

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List of figures Acknowledgements Select list of abbreviations Introduction: The Korean War in Britain 1 No woman wants any more war: Popular responses to the outbreak of war 2 You’re in Korea my son: Experiencing battle 3 Citizen soldiers: National servicemen in the Korean War 4 Brainwashing in Britain: Korean War prisoners of war 5 How to bring the boys home: Popular opposition to the Korean War 6 Forgetting Korea: The Korean War in popular memory, 1953–​2014 Conclusion Appendix  Battle experience form (1952) Select bibliography Index

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1 30 52 73 96 127 157 179 183 184 199

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Figures

1 ‘Welcome Gate to Freedom’, Kaesong, 1953 (Imperial War Museum, BF 11034, Ministry of Defence Post 1945 Official Collection. © Imperial War Museums (BF 11034)) page 107 2 Hewlett Johnson inspecting test tubes (University of Kent Special Collections, UKC-​JOH-​PHO.CH5205, c. 1952) 141 3 The 35ft long Chinese petition against the alleged use of ‘germ warfare’ by the Americans during the Korean War, which Nowell and Hewlett Johnson brought back from China in 1952 (University of Kent Special Collections, UKC-​JOH-​PHO.CH52PET01, 1952) 142 4 Monica Felton, 1 March 1955 (Keystone Pictures USA/​Alamy Stock Photo) 148 5 Korean War Memorial, London, 2016 (photograph by the author) 173

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Acknowledgements

I have been tremendously fortunate during the research and writing of this book in the support I have received from so many people. My thanks first go to those institutions and schemes that provided generous financial support: the Institute of Advanced Studies (Warwick), the Warwick Chancellor’s Scholarship, the Royal Historical Society, the Social History Society and the Arts Faculty at the University of Bristol. I am also enormously grateful for help from archives and libraries with Korean War collections, including the National Archives, Imperial War Museum, National Army Museum and the Bishopsgate Institute Library. My thanks also go to David Read at the Soldiers of Gloucester Museum, Darren Treadwell at the People’s History Museum, Ian Bailey at the Adjutant General’s Corps Museum and Joanna Baines at the University of Kent Special Collections for their assistance, as well as to Bob Wyatt for access to his private collection. Special thanks also go to the family of Hewlett Johnson and to the Mass Observation archive for permission to use their collections, as well as to Oxford Journals (Oxford University Press) for allowing me to use previously published material. I  would also like to thank the publication and production team at Manchester University Press for their patience and assistance, particularly Emma Brennan and Paul Clarke, as well as reviewers of the manuscript. Thanks must go as well to my academic colleagues for their thoughtful advice: to my colleagues in the History Department at the University of Bristol for being so generous with their time and expertise, particularly Robert Bickers, James Freeman and Will Pooley; to present and former members of the History Department at the University of Warwick for their encouragement, including Daniel Branch, Jennifer Crane, David Doddington, Elodie Duché and David Hitchcock. I  am particularly indebted to my doctoral supervisor, Carolyn Steedman: her unswerving v ix v

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Acknowledgements generosity, good humour and insight were instrumental in the early stages of this research. I am also very grateful to my doctoral examiners, Penny Summerfield and Mathew Thomson, for their helpful guidance on researching the social history of this ‘forgotten war’ and to members of the Centre for War, State and Society at the University of Exeter, the Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories at the University of Brighton and the Prisoner of War Studies Network for their thoughts on my research. Thanks also go to past and present students on ‘Britain’s Cold War’ and ‘War and Society’ at the University of Bristol for their enthusiastic, forthright and insightful engagement with this material. Finally, I  would like to thank to my family and friends for their unwavering support:  to my wonderful parents, George and Sarah, to whom this book is dedicated; to my brother George for providing timely laughs and bike parts; to Bill George, Mary Finnegan, Naomi Pullin, Jason Pullin, Sophie Rees and Dave Toulson for their help along the way; and to John Morgan, for all his kindness, inspiration and support.

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Select list of abbreviations

ABCA Army Bureau of Current Affairs BCFA Britain-​China Friendship Association BKVA British Korea Veterans Association BPC British Peace Committee CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain CPV Chinese People’s Volunteers DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) EUSAK Eighth United States Army Korea MO Mass Observation NCO non-​commissioned officer NKPA North Korean People’s Army POW prisoner of war PRC People’s Republic of China ROK Republic of Korea (South Korea) SDC Stevenage Development Corporation USAF United States Air Force

Regimental and Corps abbreviations (alphabetical) c. 1950 AGC A&SH KOYLI KSLI QARANC RA RAEC RAPC

Adjutant General’s Corps Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry King’s Shropshire Light Infantry Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps Royal Regiment of Artillery Royal Army Educational Corps Royal Army Pay Corps v xi v

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newgenprepdf

Select list of abbreviations RASC RE RF RUR

Royal Army Service Corps Corps of Royal Engineers Royal Fusiliers Royal Ulster Rifles

Unless otherwise stated, Korean place names are quoted verbatim from British source material and are in accordance with contemporary British spelling.

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Introduction: The Korean War in Britain

In the summer of 1950, the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge was holidaying in Portofino on the Italian Riviera when the news broke that, on 25 June, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) had invaded its southern neighbour, the Republic of Korea (ROK). Muggeridge worried about how he and his wife would re-​join their children should this be the beginning of a wider war. Journeying steadily back to Britain, Muggeridge wrote in his diary in Monte Carlo that everyone was ‘frenziedly following the Korean news, some panic beginning’. By the time he reached London and the House of Commons press gallery, he observed that his friend Winston Churchill looked ‘ill’ over the affair and that the Labour Party benches seemed ‘dazed, as though they wondered what was happening and why they should find themselves going in the opposite direction to what they intended’. Muggeridge was not reassured by Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s speech pledging support to the ROK and later that year concluded that ‘the conflict between East and West has become so fierce that there is no little possibility of being “liberal” about it’.1 The Korean War had come to Britain. This book assesses the social impact of this ‘small war’ on Britain, a war frequently overlooked by popular culture and historians alike. During three years of war on the distant Korean peninsula post-​war Britain was confronted with the complex realities of the Cold War. From allegations about American use of ‘germ’ warfare to anxiety over Communist ‘brainwashing’ methods, the Korean War precipitated a series of short-​lived crises in 1950s Britain. Throughout late June and July 1950 newspapers feverishly analysed the outbreak of war and its ramifications, with articles tracing the history of Korea, the North Korean invasion, the South Korean response and the formation of a United Nations (UN) force, led by the United States in support of the ROK.2 Many diary v1v

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The Korean War in Britain entries sent to the social survey Mass Observation (MO)3 during July and August began with anxious comments about the war in Korea. Mathilda Friederich even wrote to her husband, the American journalist Andrew Roth, that her next-​door neighbour had begun stockpiling oatmeal, despite the fact she hated it, commenting that ‘she has had the war-​outbreak hysteria about every month since the last war, as regular as menstruation. Maybe it replaced it’.4 For many in Britain and Europe, the invasion of South Korea raised the possibility of a repeat of the sufferings and dislocation of the Second World War. Mass Observers caught whispers about another ‘world war’ and mass mobilisation.5 Others worried it was a rehearsal for a Cold War confrontation in Germany.6 Britain initially pledged naval support in July 1950, followed by the deployment of over 40,000 British servicemen during the three years of war that followed.7 Many of these were young national service conscripts, their service extended to two years from eighteen months, due to the Korean War.8 These young men were joined by war-​hardened reservists and regular servicemen. In the Korean War Britain’s military engaged in some of the most ferocious battles in its post-​war history, at Imjin (April 1951) and at the Hook (May 1952). Some 1,078 British servicemen died and a similar number were captured and held as prisoners of war (POWs).9 The conflict also posed deeper, disquieting questions for Britain: how far and fast should Britain rearm? Could atomic weaponry be used once again? And how should the growing power of Soviet Russia and of Communist China be addressed? The novelist Graham Greene summed up the situation, saying that the ‘whole world’ was transfixed with ‘whether war is on or off in Korea’.10 But despite this febrile response to the onset of the conflict, by the time of the cessation of hostilities in 1953 Korea had slipped from public view. One news report noted that England’s cricket victory in the Ashes had occasioned more enthusiasm in Britain than the return of troops. Elsewhere, the residents of Bury St Edmunds were mystified as to why the UN flag was flying above the town hall on 27 July 1953, the day the armistice was signed in Korea.11 Why did the initial concern about the war dissipate so quickly? Given its impact and Britain’s sizeable contribution, why did Korea fail to occupy a more prominent position in British popular memory? What does its history tell us about how British people engaged with the early Cold War and how does it advance our understanding of ‘post-​war’ British history? These are the central questions of this book. Using MO surveys, newspaper commentary and a wide range of under-​used ‘life-​writing’ material, this book charts the war’s changing v2v

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Introduction 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. v3v

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The Korean War in Britain Coming just five years after the end of the Second World War, a monumental conflict of seemingly unambiguous moral value, the complex and inconclusive Korean War did not fit with any prevailing or emerging narratives of British identity. Unlike the Second World War, Korea did not show a coherent, embattled nation struggling against the odds, nor did it tell a story that 1950s Britain wanted to hear, as it rebuilt and modernised itself under the auspices of the modern welfare state. Nor did British people generally know a great deal about Korea, despite the swift education in Korean affairs that was introduced in the summer of 1950: the BBC offered overviews of Korean history and culture and Dr Whang-​Kyung Koh, later founder of Seoul Women’s University, gave an astonishing lecture series of 318 talks on Korea around Britain during the first two years of war.15 She later recalled being asked by an audience member: ‘I don’t see how a country like Korea with such a long history and unique and admirable culture has been buried from our eyes. Is it our fault?’16 The Korean War also remained absent from British popular culture after the fighting ended. One veteran wrote that ‘no Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, or Siegfried Sassoon has emerged. Neither has a Pat Barker, Sebastian Faulks or Louis de Bernières been inspired to write of life in Korea during the period’.17 British historians have similarly overlooked the conflict, until relatively recently. Korea is typically mentioned only in relation to the Attlee government’s infamous introduction of prescription charges to cover rearmament costs in 1951 and Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan’s acrimonious resignation as a result.18 We have tended to regard the Korean War as a violent outlier in the early history of the British welfare state, rather than analysing it as part of the complex legacy of the Second World War and the intertwined anxieties associated with the post-​1945 world: the demise of the British Empire, the small wars of the 1950s and 1960s, Britain’s increasing redundancy on the world stage and its complex, often ambiguous, role in the Cold War. Korea also posed difficulties for Britain’s post-​war economy: it challenged the welfare agenda of Attlee’s post-​war Labour government, threatening party unity, and it exhibited the weaknesses of Britain’s international position in the early Cold War and the complexities in its relationships with the United States, the UN and the Commonwealth. This book shows how, despite being forgotten, the Korean War marks a critical moment in British society’s understanding of conflict. The Second World War bestowed a specific lexicon of wartime service and social relations, which British people attempted to repurpose in the v4v

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Introduction early Cold War. Responses to war in Korea show how quickly the Second World War embedded itself in national identity and how immoveable it would become. By contrast, the Cold War never exerted the same imaginative influence and featured little in British people’s view of themselves. The Korean War thus exposes the mechanisms and make-​up of British society precisely because it was forgotten: its inability to fit within prescribed narratives of British history uncovers the characteristics and tensions of British culture and society in the second half of the twentieth century. By focusing on several key areas where the Korean War and British society intersect or collide with one another, The Korean War in Britain tells the story of when and why this war became forgotten, and the consequences of this omission. Three strands underpin the story of the Korean War in Britain and explain its place in post-​war British history. The first is ‘citizenship’. Matthew Grant has highlighted the plethora of meanings associated with the term, from popular engagement with politics and the welfare state, to immigration. Grant argues that citizenship is thus both a status and a practice.19 A person is born into or achieves citizenship, but they can also practise it and articulate it in relation to their fellow citizens.20 The Korean War was caught between several conceptions of post-​war citizenship, in a world where both warfare and welfare defined a particular set of duties and expectations. For some, warfare and welfare were incompatible:  Nye Bevan, for instance, saw the two as mutually exclusive and blamed governments for conceding to military experts’ requests for increased rearmament.21 Yet the connection between warfare and the new welfare state was more blurred elsewhere. In the one of the only British novels set in the Korean War, A Hill in Korea by Simon Kent (Max Catto), one character, Private Rabin, challenges one of his fellow national service conscripts:  ‘We don’t fight wars no more with bullets. We fight with ideas. Where’s your education? Is that all the Welfare State’s done for you?’22 According to Rabin, the welfare state had produced a new type of soldier:  a reconceptualised ‘soldier-​citizen’ for the modern era, who knew in theory both his role in the military and the reasons behind the tasks he was asked to fulfil. This soldier-​citizen was an important figure before the 1940s and 1950s, but the Cold War gave a pressing urgency to discussions about his role in British society and the world. In 1948, Field Marshall Lord Wavell stated that ‘the soldier is also a citizen and must be encouraged to take an intelligent interest in the problems of the day. Our type of democracy can only survive if freedom of opinion amongst free men is maintained’.23 The Korean War was a moment of v5v

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The Korean War in Britain convergence: older ideas of British duty and citizenship coincided with new concerns over the spread of Communism, but also new formulations of welfare and democracy. Soldier and citizen were cast as compatible, indeed mutually reinforcing, roles. Second, Korea raised issues about individual agency and ‘selfhood’ in the Cold War world. Nikolas Rose, Peter Miller and Mike Savage have all argued that in the post-​1945 period the state shaped the formation of the modern ‘self ’, through mechanisms of centralised observation, quantification and surveillance.24 This selfhood –​the perception people have of themselves as individuals –​has emerged as a key interpretative framework for post-​war historians.25 For instance, historians of selfhood have labelled the post-​war period as the era of the ‘psy’ disciplines:  through psychiatry and therapy but also through more diffuse psychological language, these disciplines provided the framework through which many post-​war ‘subjects’ viewed themselves.26 Selfhood also mattered deeply to governments in the post-​1945 period: people’s sense of selfhood affected how governments gathered information and ultimately how they ruled their populations. The concept of citizenship hinged on a particular understanding of selfhood and individual agency. Certain individuals were encouraged think of themselves in specific ways as part of wider society, with particular responsibilities. This subjective strand to post-​war governance and society led sociologist Anthony Giddens to argue that the ‘reflexive project of the self ’ in fact underpins modern life.27 But not everyone felt that the modern state shaped the self. In a 1953 book produced by his captors, the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV), British POW Andrew Condron wrote that:  ‘The soldier today can no longer be viewed as a robot[.] … That is why all those who consider the soldier merely as a thing to be used, like the rifle he carries or the pack he wears, are bound to come out very badly in their calculations’.28 Condron, who was the only British POW to refuse repatriation back to Britain after the war, argued that soldier-​citizens did not all view the world in a uniform way: their sense of themselves was not simply shaped by military authorities alone. The Korean War accompanied a broader period of change in the history and language of selfhood and deepening debates over who had the power to shape it. Although the post-​war era can be interpreted as the age of ‘psychological subject’, the psy disciplines did not always provide a simple universal model:  as Mathew Thomson argues, subjectivity was not necessarily wholly built around control and regulation.29 The Korean War was not simply a background v6v

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Introduction to these charged discussions but an integral part of them, no more so than with the emergence of the term ‘brainwashing’ during the war. Brainwashing, based on the Chinese word hsi-​nao, was first used by an American journalist in 1950 to describe a sudden and inexplicable adherence to Communism. As seen in this book, its remarkable popularity as a concept, despite its dubious scientific credentials, emanated from its timeliness: it encapsulated the suspicions of the Cold War world, but also the growing concern over who shaped people’s ‘minds’, views and actions. Brainwashing scandals raised questions about how far individuals could be controlled by external forces, whether malign or benevolent. As with citizenship, selfhood was shaped by warfare as much as welfare in the post-​war world. The Korean War forced British people to scrutinise individual capacities and freedoms, not just of soldiers, but of other citizens too. But again we return to the question:  if Korea caused such fraught debate in British life, then how was it so readily forgotten? The cultural memory of warfare –​and of the Second World War in particular –​ pervades each chapter of this book. The 1939–​45 war was a constant reference point for both soldiers and civilians. For British servicemen, particularly those national servicemen too young to have served during the Second World War, it provided a constant yardstick of experience. For civilians, it characterised how they viewed war, with some wondering whether they would have to rebuild their air-​raid shelters in the summer of 1950. As Geoff Eley has noted, immediate post-​ war generations were ‘suffused’ with the memory of the Second World War, even if they remembered little of it themselves.30 David Reynolds too explains how British public discourse was able to construct a satisfying narrative of 1939–​45 with astonishing alacrity. The conflict was ‘a struggle that had a dramatic and heroic start, a clear turning point in the middle, and an utterly decisive ending –​a war waged for unimpeachable moral reasons’.31 By contrast, Cold War military occupations, small wars and emergencies told a far more ambiguous tale.32 In this book, the phrase the ‘long Second World War’ is used to denote this deep and lasting impact on British life and memory. Although a familiar technique in historical writing (almost every century has a ‘long’ and ‘short’ alternative), the longevity of the Second World War in British memory is vital to understanding the Korean War’s forgotten status at the time and subsequently.33 The Korean War in Britain explains the British social and cultural experience of the war through these three areas:  citizenship, selfhood and forgetting. Each has a specific but shifting significance in the v7v

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The Korean War in Britain chronology of Britain’s Korean War. Discussions over citizenship and selfhood characterised the early part of the war, forgetting becoming the most dominant response by 1953. In exploring particular ‘panics’ associated with the war, first over the use of nuclear weapons and later over ‘brainwashing’, I argue that Korea was a deeply unsettling, if brief, moment in post-​war British history. Its inability to fit with any sense of what Charles Young has termed the ‘usable past’ contributed to its omission from British history.34 By analysing responses thematically from a purposefully wide range of individuals and groups, the chapters that follow consider how people in Britain understood the early Cold War period and how the Korean War was fought, discussed and subsequently forgotten. This book is not intended to be a military or political history of the war, as several detailed studies already exist, but delineates its social impact beyond the battlefield, five thousand miles away in Britain. But first it is vital to understand the key events of war and this introduction gives a brief overview of Korean War literature alongside a summary of the war itself, before exploring the position of the Korean War and the Cold War in British history-​writing in further detail. It highlights how selfhood and citizenship have emerged as growing categories of analysis in Cold War studies and argues why it is important to consider them in the context of post-​1945 Britain. It closes by exploring the challenges and possibilities of writing the social history of warfare and bringing domestic and military ‘spheres’ together in a meaningful way.

The Korean War in history Despite its ‘forgotten’ place in British popular culture, a sizeable literature on the Korean War has developed over the last sixty years. Korean War historians have focused, almost exclusively, on the origins of the war. Many histories begin in 1945, with the end of the Second World War and the agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union about the future of Korea. Japan had occupied Korea since 1910 and its surrender in August 1945 led to a joint agreement by the United States and Soviet Union that they would temporarily divide Korea into two occupation zones, along a latitude line –​the 38th Parallel North. Although initially couched in terms of joint trusteeship, all major powers erred against this by the end of 1945 and in 1948 these zones became two separate states: Kim Il-​sung’s DPRK and Syngman Rhee’s ROK. There were violent skirmishes between the two states, but also within them. Both the growing Stalinist-​Communist regime in the north and the nationalist v8v

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Introduction regime in the south adopted increasingly repressive measures against their own subjects in the period prior to the 1950 invasion.35 Bruce Cumings argued that this period of unrest, where he claimed 100,000 lives were lost, indicates how the Korean War was in fact a long-​running civil war, not a ‘limited’ international war as the Americans claimed.36 But since the 1980s, historians have pointed out how the international context was more important than Cumings claimed.37 Following North Korea’s initial attack in June 1950, the UN Security Council agreed to assist South Korea in repelling the attack and Supreme Commander for Allied Powers General Douglas MacArthur was appointed to lead the UN forces in Korea.38 As early as 30 June 1950, President Harry Truman ordered US ground troops to Korea to support the UN ‘police action’. Following a successful amphibious operation at Inchon, they pushed back the North Korean People’s Army’s (NKPA) initial advance and throughout the autumn UN forces moved steadily up the peninsula into North Korea.39 The UN force was diverse:  Turkey, the Philippines, Colombia, Belgium, France, Greece, Holland, Thailand and Ethiopia sent infantry brigades or battalions to Korea, with South Africa sending air support and medical support from others, including India and Italy.40 The Commonwealth played an important role too. After lengthy discussions amongst Commonwealth governments in the first year of the war, the 1st Commonwealth Division was formed on 28 July 1951, incorporating the British and Commonwealth units already in Korea under one command structure.41 Robert Barnes has argued that the Korean War brought the Commonwealth together more than it had ever been before, pre-​ dating the foundation of the Commonwealth Secretariat in 1965 and the Singapore Declaration in 1971.42 In 1955, former Commander of British Forces in Hong Kong Terence Airey claimed of the 1st Commonwealth Division that ‘Commonwealth unity is the leitmotif and indeed no one who visited the division could have missed that remarkable and inspiring spirit’.43 As this books shows, the extent to which these allegiances were felt by troops in Korea, despite Airey’s claim, is less clear. The initial military successes of UN forces were short-​lived. The historian Peter Lowe noted how British chiefs of staff warned about the consequences of pushing too far north beyond the 38th Parallel. But by mid-​October, MacArthur had pressed ahead, focused on the total defeat of the NKPA.44 Attlee flew to Washington in December to express anxiety about MacArthur and the lack of British influence in decision-​making. The previous month, China had suddenly entered the war, declaring that v9v

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The Korean War in Britain its security was threatened by the imperialist forces now approaching its borders. On 8 October 1950, Mao sent a segment of the People’s Liberation Army, 120,000 CPV troops, to support Kim Il-​sung and to push back the rapid UN advance up the peninsula. Some historians argue that China had not been involved in planning the North Korean invasion in 1950 and only entered the war due to provocation by the United States, in particular General MacArthur’s threat to march further up the peninsula.45 Lowe added that ‘Chinese participation could have been averted by the adoption of more sensitive, realistic policies’.46 But, using newly accessible material, historians including Chen Jian, Shen Zhihua and Donggil Kim have questioned this version of events, arguing that UN forces crossing the 38th Parallel was far less significant than previously assumed in prompting China to join the war.47 Kim notes that China had been keen to intervene before November 1950, only being held back Stalin.48 Chen argues that its decision to join was more complex than protecting the border with Korea. It was instead predicated on the outlook of the Chinese Communist Party leadership and their commitment to maintain the momentum of the domestic revolution of 1949, teamed with a sense of ‘responsibility’ towards an Asian-​wide Communist revolution.49 China’s impact in the war was decisive. It launched an immense Spring Offensive in April 1951, which had serious consequences for UN –​and British –​forces. By this time, MacArthur had been recalled by Truman, ostensibly for criticising the administration’s policies in Asia in a letter to the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, and had been replaced in Korea by General Matthew B.  Ridgway. As Chinese forces moved down the peninsula, the British were forced to retreat and to fight the oncoming Chinese forces. The largest number of British captives were taken at the Battle of the Imjin in April 1951, the scene of the Gloucestershire Regiment’s famous ‘last stand’.50 Successful UN counterattacks followed and by mid-​1951 fighting had concentrated largely around the centre of the peninsula. The nature of the fighting changed at this point, with many more patrols and static positions along the front. Negotiations about a possible ceasefire began on 10 July 1951, continuing intermittently for two years, until an armistice agreement was eventually signed on 27 July 1953. Three years of war had a devastating effect on the Korean population. One estimate suggests that the north lost over 11 per cent of its population and that 300,000 NKPA troops died: in the south, some 227,000 ROK troops lost their lives.51 Other estimates are substantially higher, claiming that over one million South Koreans were wounded, killed or missing, with v 10 v

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Introduction a similar number of casualties in the DPRK.52 Millions of Koreans were forced to leave their homes during the conflict and many British soldiers recall seeing people on the road, carrying their possessions, to avoid the fighting.53 One British soldier even described witnessing mass executions of civilians and corpses piled up in the grounds of Seoul University.54 Why were civilians so embroiled in this war? Many historians argue that the origins of the particularly cruel war in Korea lay in the racialised war in the Pacific between 1941 and 1945. The bitter and brutal conflict ‘fanned the fires of race hate’ and stark racial animosities came to define relations between the United States, its allies and the Japanese.55 The tensions of such a ferocious confrontation took a long time to dissipate. A popular view of Asian commentators at the time was that US foreign policy was racially motivated, starting with the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 and still evident from its flagrant disregard for the lives of Koreans.56 For the United States and its allies, racialised images of Asian ‘fanaticism’ in battle persisted from the earlier conflict. In the British case, the memories of Far East Prisoners of War’s (FEPOWs) cruel treatment also fed into widespread anti-​Japanese sentiment in the immediate post-​war period.57 As Matthew Jones has pointed out, these characterisations of the Japanese as fanatic and cruel were easily shifted to describe the North Koreans and Chinese.58 As the following chapters show, such racialised assumptions framed British experiences and interactions with Korea, but so too did older British ideas of Asia and imperial exoticism. The suffering of the local population was still starkly obvious to many servicemen though, as well as to observers on the peninsula. In June 1951, Picture Post’s James Cameron decried the ‘monstrous game [where] a million and a half lie dead among the disintegrating chaos of their flattened country’.59 Such coverage was seized upon by anti-​American opposition campaigns back in Britain which attempted, with limited success, to use images of Korean suffering to undermine the United States and the war in the eyes of the British people. Decolonisation also shaped the fate of the peninsula. Christopher Goscha and Christian Ostermann have argued that Western-​orientated historical writing tends to disaggregate the Cold War and decolonisation, rather than exploring the deep connections between two. They ‘collided’ most obviously in Asia, where Cold War politics intertwined with independence movements in Indochina or bolstered certain imperial powers (even if just for a short time).60 For example, the British colonial government in Malaya enjoyed a brief boost in its revenues due to the ‘boom’ v 11 v

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The Korean War in Britain in rubber prices, precipitated by the rise of raw material costs during the Korean War, even amid the state of emergency then in place in Malaya.61 In June 1948, the Malayan Communist Party had targeted British colonial managers on rubber estates and violence escalated, prompting the British to establish a ‘state of emergency’.62 Although not the focus of this book, concerns about Malaya and decolonisation certainly informed the British reaction to Korea. On one level, British troops were sent to Malaya and Korea simultaneously and the two were connected by the shared experiences of military personnel. As one Crown Film Unit film Men of the World described, Korea and Malaya were connected outposts in the post-​war British military world, which spanned from ‘Gibraltar to Hong Kong’.63 Violence in Malaya also peaked at a similar time, in 1951, so both preoccupied political and military authorities. But decolonisation was not just a violent background to events in Korea. Elsewhere in Asia, the relationship between the Cold War and decolonisation provided a ‘third way’ for newly independent countries.64 India, for instance, played a vital part at the end of the Korean War, offering neutral supervision for POWs in UN hands who did not wish to return to China or North Korea.65 Yet the social history of the war in combatant countries remains largely untold, particularly beyond the US context. The memories of American servicemen have been captured by some historians including Melinda Pash, David Halberstram and Sheila Miyoshi Jager.66 Servicemen’s experiences differed sharply from those of the generation before, but also from the following generation, who burnt their Vietnam draft cards.67 Susan Carruthers explored the impact of the Korean War and brainwashing on US domestic culture, uncovering the apprehension it revealed in the ‘age of McCarthy’ and what the Cold War meant to average Americans.68 Charles Young and Marilyn Young have also examined the ambiguous legacy of the Korean War in the United States and the extent to which it has been ‘forgotten’ by Americans.69 But how far can we apply these particular arguments to Britain? And why does Britain continue to forget its involvement in this international conflict?

Britain’s Korean War Despite the vibrant literature on the origins, outcomes and allegiances of the war, Korea has rarely featured in histories of the post-​war period in Britain, although Nye Bevan’s high-​ profile resignation from the Cabinet in April 1951 over the increase in defence spending is the clear exception to this. David Kynaston has set out the figures motivating v 12 v

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Introduction Bevan’s decision. The defence expenditure ‘ceiling’ was initially set at £2,340 million in 1949 for the period 1951–​53, but was revised in August 1950 to £3,400 million and again to £4,655 million by September 1951. By 1952–​53 defence expenditure represented 11.3 per cent of Britain’s Gross National Product (GNP).70 Not everyone agreed with Bevan that this constituted a challenge to the welfare state: Kynaston notes that one 1950 Gallup poll saw 78 per cent of people supporting this increased defence expenditure.71 However, aside from Bevan’s resignation, Korea has featured little in standard texts on post-​war Britain. Kynaston largely focused on the economic consequences of the war and David Edgerton, whose book Warfare State (2006) puts forward the argument that Britain’s economy was still geared up for war –​not welfare –​after 1945, makes little mention of Korea.72 Yet since the late 2000s Korea has come under more scrutiny, particularly Britain’s diplomatic policies and relations. Anne Deighton noted that Korea marked a watershed in British influence in decision-​making during the Cold War and Thomas Hennessey has stated that the war’s significance in Anglo-​American relations was as pivotal as the Suez Crisis of 1956.73 This growing attention has carefully uncovered some of the Cabinet’s motivations for sending British forces to Korea. One reason put forward was that the Cabinet wished to support the collective security ideals of the UN. Two days after the invasion of the ROK, when discussing sending naval ships to the region, the Cabinet agreed that it ‘was the clear duty of the United Kingdom Government to do everything in their power, in concert with other members of the United Nations, to help the South Koreans to resist this aggression’.74 One month later the Cabinet also felt that their actions might encourage other UN members to commit forces too.75 This reason was cited later in the war too: Churchill’s Conservative government, elected in October 1951, stated that it too wished to continue the collective ideals of the UN.76 Sean Greenwood has argued that in fact the ‘UN flag … hid the reality of American power’ and, without the Soviet Union sitting on the Security Council, the United States could use it as ‘an instrument in the Cold War’.77 However, William Stueck argues that whilst the United States mostly ‘had much of its way in the United Nations’, other member nations tried to slow down the UN’s decision-​making process as they were concerned that the conflict might escalate.78 British representatives at the UN even succeeded in diluting some US draft resolutions.79 Mediating US policy was another reason for British involvement. US policy towards China had made successive governments uneasy, v 13 v

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The Korean War in Britain particularly its staunch defence of Taiwan (Formosa), where the ousted Chinese Nationalists had settled. Policymakers in Britain had largely accepted that mainland China was now a Communist state and that the Nationalists on Taiwan had no great political sway:  US Secretary of State Dean Acheson had yet to be convinced that this was the case.80 Unlike Britain, the United States had not recognised the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the new government of mainland China. On 27 June 1950, the Cabinet noted how Truman wanted to ‘prevent any attack on Formosa’ and would do anything to prevent its occupation by Communist forces.81 The following week, Kenneth Younger expressed the difficulty of the British position on Far East policy:  ‘whatever we say is likely to subject our present difficult relations with China to an even greater strain[.] … Similarly, whatever we say may have repercussions in the United States, where failure on our part to express clear support might well leave us open to the charge of “dragging our feet” ’.82 Younger advised making no statement on either side, if it could be avoided. Supporting the United States in East Asia did, however, have its benefits. Greenwood notes how Attlee and the Cabinet were keen to maintain aid to post-​war Europe.83 Britain also wished to safeguard British imperial interests in the Far East, although not at the expense of stability in Europe. On 6 July 1950, the Cabinet agreed that it ‘was [e]‌specially important at the present time that preoccupation with Korea should not divert attention from other danger-​spots in these areas; and also that we should not allow the situation in the East generally to blind us to the risks to which we were exposed in Europe’.84 Solidarity with the United States was thus seen as important both to Britain’s strategic interests and to the domestic well-​being of Europe. Although the shifting political intricacies of the ‘Special Relationship’ are largely beyond the scope of this book, the United States had a complex cultural impact on Cold War Britain. One MO respondent, for instance, noted that the United States was feeding the British, so the least they could do in return was support them in Korea.85 Elsewhere, opponents of the war criticised the United States as imperialist or insensitive. The cultural history of the ‘Special Relationship’ thus infuses the wider history of the Korean War in Britain. But these strategic considerations only tell part of the story of the Korean War. In order to understand its social impact more fully we need to interrogate the meaning and importance of the Cold War in Britain. v 14 v

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Introduction

‘Thinking soldiers’: the Cold War, citizenship and selfhood Like the Korean War, the Cold War was once a somewhat forgotten episode within British social history. Peter Hennessy noted that, unlike the Second World War, the Cold War was never a ‘people’s war’: Britain was a ‘bit player’ in a dichotomous conflict and its people were only affected marginally.86 Yet this orthodoxy has been questioned. Historians have increasingly examined how British society responded to living with the uncertain, even unthinkable, exigencies of the Cold War. This era generated a distinct societal unease: Joanna Bourke points out that the nuclear age was the first era where neither doomsayers nor prophets of apocalypse could necessarily be dismissed as irrational.87 Matthew Grant and Jonathan Hogg explored the prevalence of this ‘nuclear culture’ on British society, through organisations such as the Civil Defence Corps but also in British film, television and journalism.88 The effect of the Cold War on radical political organisations such as CND is well-​known, but more recently historians have explored its impact on conservative communities too.89 Cold War rivalries were not alone in shaping these developments, but the manifold effects of the conflict on British social life are becoming steadily more evident. In studying responses to the Korean War, this book consciously brings the social histories of post-​ war Britain and the Cold War together. It does this first by focusing on the impact of the Cold War on British culture and society. From juvenile literature to consumerism, the Cold War’s tendrils crept far beyond the political sphere.90 Cold War culture must be distinguished from the cultural Cold War:  as Patrick Major and Rana Mitter highlight, the latter refers to targeted cultural diplomacy, whereas Cold War culture refers to a broader ‘system of meaning and behaviour’ during the Cold War.91 It is this wider definition of culture that this book explores. This book also contributes to the expansion of Cold War studies, by purposefully analysing a context beyond the United States and Soviet Union. Vociferous debate has accompanied the geographical and conceptual diversification of Cold War studies over the last two decades. Anders Stephanson has called for a stricter definition of the Cold War. Stephanson argued that in many histories, particularly cultural ones, the Cold War becomes ‘little more than an empty container of time, a homogeneous stretch where sundry things happen in sundry places for sundry reasons’.92 Federico Romero stated that widening the geographical scope of the Cold War has rendered it

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The Korean War in Britain ‘more and more indeterminate and amorphous, as the traditional paradigm of a highly specific bipolar conflict … is superseded by a complex fabric of disparate interactions’.93 The result of all this, in Romero’s words, is that Cold War history is obscured by an ‘indistinct global haze’.94 But incorporating countries beyond the traditional US–​ Soviet dichotomy does not dilute the meaning of the Cold War, nor does it damage its value as a category of analysis. As Odd Arne Westad argues, US-​centred histories are themselves a product of the cultural battles of the Cold War and to reduce our focus to political rivalry between two superpowers weakens our understandings of the conflict’s global reach.95 Broadening the focus of the Cold War also allows more scope for appreciating human agency, or limits of it, in the Cold War. The ‘everyday’ actions, deliberations and musings of those not directly involved in political or military affairs must feature in any understanding of war, let alone a highly ideological war, where hearts and minds  –​not to mention wallets, education and voting practices –​are so critical. The Korean War in Britain argues that popular understandings of the Korean War in a British context tell an important Cold War story. The social impact of the Korean War in Britain can show how distant, international conflict can resonate deeply with a range of different people, particularly with people who had very recent experience of war themselves. Likewise, appreciating the relevance of the Cold War to British life nuances and enriches domestic post-​war history. Far from diluting the Cold War, such approaches acknowledge its global, domestic and social reach. The broadening of Cold War studies has also enabled the study of more abstract concepts, such as selfhood. Inner lives were an integral part of the Cold War. Recent advances in the field of ‘Soviet subjectivity’, for instance, demonstrate how telling your life was a deeply politicised activity in the Soviet Union, particularly in the case of diary writing.96 Autobiographical writing was actually taught in youth institutions and as part of ‘historic’ economic projects.97 This historical field gives British historians a refreshingly different perspective on selfhood, in addition to the theories of governmentality so favoured by post-​ war historians. Selfhood could taught, shaped and inculcated through both bureaucratic mechanisms and everyday activity. We should not presume that selfhood mattered only to Communist states engaged in ‘thought reform’. A sense of self was a key aim of citizenship education in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1941 the British Army set up the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA) under the orders of the Adjutant-​General, Sir Ronald Adam, who sought to innovate British Army education and recruitment to improve morale and v 16 v

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Introduction the ‘quality’ of British servicemen.98 Group settings were used to discuss current affairs and to encourage the development of thinking, soldier-​citizens. The format of group discussion reinforced the value of the group over the individual and encouraged self-​reflection.99 Nor was this attention restricted to the military. The ABCA model in adult education was also deemed so successful that a civilian counterpart, the Bureau of Current Affairs (BCA) was established in 1946 by the Carnegie Foundation to ‘to encourage a civilized [sic] and liberal interest in current affairs’.100 The BCA published discussion pamphlets on a range of political topics, including summaries of the situation of Korea, the nature of Chinese Communism and the Cold War.101 Closer to home, one discussion booklet entitled ‘Think before you vote’ (1950) listed the different types of political argument, reasons for voting and questions one should ask before casting one’s vote.102 As an article in the Army Educational Corps journal noted: ‘Today, more than at any other period in world history, [the] aims and ideals of civilization [sic] are the concern and topic of discussion among all types of citizens.’103 Individuals’ view of themselves mattered to governments during the Cold War, whether in the Soviet Union, the United States or Britain. This book argues that this contextualised study of selfhood is a vital element in the social history of the Cold War: it can act as a lens through which to analyse the impact of highly abstract concepts on individual lives, concepts such as citizenship, democracy and even the Cold War itself. Not only was selfhood actively shaped by military authorities and governments, but the language of selfhood underpinned many of the scandals that accompanied the Korean War, from ‘brainwashing’ to political loyalty. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, selves and souls formed as much a part of the Cold War as spies and secret states.

Methods and sources Advances in the history of selfhood, as well as the range of personal material now accessible to historians, offer an opportunity to ask a new set of questions of the Korean War  and the Cold War in Britain. This book examines the significance of selfhood, citizenship and forgetting by using a range of unexplored ‘life-​writing’ material in each of its thematic chapters. Life-​writing is an imperfect way to access subjectivity: it often captures action rather than inner thought and is criticised for being ‘non-​representative’.104 Nevertheless, even if selfhood is never fully accessible, its traces are present in a range of historical sources. Analysing life-​ writing practices among Japanese servicemen, Aaron Moore argues that v 17 v

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The Korean War in Britain soldiers use diaries to understand their position in great world events: in this way a diary is a concrete example of an individual participating ‘in the act of defining (subjectifying) themselves and the world around them’.105 In other words, life-​writing is selfhood in action. It is through the letters, diaries, questionnaires and oral history interviews produced during and after the Korean War that we see individuals trying to understand themselves and their role in the world. As each chapter of this book sets out, it is vital that we understand the process by which such material is produced. This book explores the dynamics and function of different types of life-​writing, such as letters and diaries, but it also broadens the definition of what can be classed as life or self-​writing. For instance, MO responses and military questionnaires also prompt their writers to consider themselves and their roles in a similar way to oral history interviews or written memoirs. Many of these sources have not appeared alongside one another in historical analyses of the Korean War before. One particularly important set of life-​writing comes from recorded oral history collections from the National Army Museum and Imperial War Museum, recorded between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. Using ‘secondary’ oral history interviews alongside other life-​writing sources presents exciting methodological possibilities.106 In examining these responses to Korea by both civilian and soldier, this book offers a deliberately wide-​angle perspective on Britain’s experience of the Korean War. Military history, in its most traditional sense, has often seemed at odds with this kind of social history. It is typically associated, particularly by academic historians, with empirical accounts of armies at an operational or strategic level. From the 1970s, however, ‘new military history’ aimed to place human experience at the centre of historical analysis. Historians used literary criticism, psychology and autobiographical theory to provide a more nuanced account of military experience. John Keegan’s The Face of Battle (1976) is often acknowledged as one of the first works of new military history and remains a comprehensive and moving examination of soldierly experience.107 Richard Holmes too noted that military history can reduce ‘one of the most passionate of dramas … to a knockabout affair dripping with clichés … [or] to a desensitised operational narrative in which the individual is lost in a welter of arrows on a map’.108 Nonetheless, the transition from traditional to new military history has not been seamless. Joanna Bourke notes that the new military historians, who hail from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, have adopted this ‘convenient soubriquet’ primarily to vent their frustration v 18 v

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Introduction at the prevailing historiography and its hegemony over the history of warfare. As a result, she noted that new military historians form quite a disparate body of scholars.109 More traditional military historians have argued that they are woefully ignorant about the details of wars, preferring to focus on the representation of those wars: as Bourke concedes, war cannot simply be a collection of ‘tropes’.110 The challenge that remains for new military historians is to scrutinise human experience whilst still rigorously analysing military sources and their context. It is a difficult task. One of the main stumbling blocks to such writing is the continued tendency to divide military and civilian ‘spheres’. Military and social historians alike have deepened the conceptual gulf between the two.111 Samuel Hynes’ underlying assumption in The Soldier’s Tale (1998) is that war profoundly changes a man: he travels from innocence to experience, from naivety to knowledge through his immersion in war.112 But although the distinction between soldier and civilian is helpful on a basic level in analysing employment, legislation, and fighting itself, it is not necessarily applicable when assessing the wider social impact of conflict. A central argument of this book is that the two ‘spheres’ are different but also intimately connected and that it is misleading to depict the civilian and the soldier as worlds apart during the 1950s, not least because of peacetime conscription and the recent memory of the Second World War. As the Labour MP James Harrison noted in March 1953, ‘every family has [had] someone in the Army now, so that it has become part and parcel of our daily lives’.113 This is not to belittle the Korean War serviceman’s sense of separation. Servicemen understandably felt isolated at times and there remain some areas of experience that are ‘impossible to describe’. Nevertheless, by examining areas of commonality in more detail, I  suggest that it is productive to consider the crossovers which characterise both the military and wider society at this time. This book’s structure further demonstrates the connection between military and civilian ‘worlds’. Chapter 1 explores the popular responses from British people to the invasion of the ROK in June 1950. Although initially uncertain about war aims (and even where Korea was), British people became more concerned during the course of the summer of 1950, aggravated by anxieties over the potential use of the atomic bomb on the peninsula. This chapter highlights the pre-​existing cultural assumptions about Korea and the ‘Far East’ in the British imagination, as well as the complex legacy of the Second World War and its impact on how British people conceptualised any conflict. This is evident too in the latter half v 19 v

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The Korean War in Britain of this chapter, which offers a detailed analysis of MO surveys conducted in 1950. Conducted largely around central London, the survey responses demonstrate the enduring impact of total war on urban communities, and how different people conceptualised and rationalised the early Cold War. Chapter 2 introduces the perspective of servicemen, sent to Korea from July 1950. The first section examines the relationship between the Second World War generation and younger servicemen in Korea. Following the lead of Richard Vinen, it uses letters sent home to investigate the reach of the ‘long Second World War’ and the influence of post-​war domesticity and masculinity in framing responses to Korea. It also asks how ‘experience’ –​a central concept for social historians –​was conceptualised on an everyday level and the second half of this chapter uses a neglected body of source material, ‘battle experience’ questionnaires, completed by all British Army officers upon their return from Korea. In using these new sources, this chapter points out that British servicemen were some of the most prolific form-​fillers in post-​war history and ‘battle experience’ questionnaires should be analysed as part of wider social surveying projects –​and projects involved in shaping selves –​in the post-​war era. Chapter  3 provides a deeper analysis of one particular type of serviceman:  the conscript. Conscription is an important component in the history of the Korean War, as national servicemen formed up to 50 per cent of some units. National servicemen offer unique reflections on the Korean War and this chapter investigates the continuing significance of class and masculinity in the interactions between these young men, coming from many different social backgrounds. This chapter also explores the broader significance of conscription and citizenship in post-​war Britain. It argues that citizenship and duty became especially prescient in the early 1950s as Western governments sought to cement their ideological stance against Communism. The national serviceman epitomised the soldier-​citizen in practice, yet it often failed to translate into practice or into the mindsets of those sent to Korea. Chapters 2 and 3 together centre largely on servicemen in the British Army, as they formed the bulk of Britain’s military force in Korea, although the Royal Air Force (RAF) and Royal Navy (RN) played important supporting roles.114 The nature of the war shifted in mid-​1951 as fighting became more static and in the wake of the capture of many British servicemen in spring 1951. Chapter 4 explores the experiences of the 1,060 British servicemen who were taken prisoner by the NKPA and CPV during the war. It explains the political education prisoners received, as well as the defection of twenty-​one American and one British servicemen (Royal v 20 v

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Introduction Marine Andrew Condron) to China at the end of the war. This defection prompted concern back at home that servicemen had been ‘brainwashed’ whilst in captivity. Few detailed studies exist on the specific cultural impact of brainwashing in Britain, where the idea was more than just a cultural import from the United States. This chapter charts the specific history of brainwashing in Britain, first by examining the interrogations British POWs underwent when they returned home and the suspicion with which they were treated. The growing popular concern –​or fascination  –​with brainwashing in 1950s and 1960s Britain emanated from specific British anxieties and popular views on freedom and democracy. In exploring this history, this chapter offers a new analysis of one of the twentieth century’s most widely used and ill-​defined concepts. The treatment of POWs was also a major concern to those who opposed the war, particularly to groups associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), who argued that the CPV were, to some extent, enlightened captors. Chapter 5 examines several key elements of British opposition to the Korean War. It explores resistance to the war from political groups and organisations, such as the Britain–​China Friendship Association and the early Cold War peace movement. It argues that the Korean War was a definitive but overlooked moment in the history of the British left and set the tone for subsequent opposition to Cold War geopolitics. For instance, some of those galvanised by the Korean War would go on to play important roles in CND and other anti-​war movements. British opposition to the Korean War tells a different story of Cold War resistance, one which begins long before the first CND Aldermaston march in 1958. The final section of the chapter delves into the case study of one particular opponent, the town planner Monica Felton. Felton’s visit to North Korea and claim that US forces were committing war crimes resulted in her dismissal from the Stevenage Development Corporation and this caused quite a stir in post-​war Britain. Although opposition was never far-​reaching, this chapter nevertheless indicates how citizenship did not go unchallenged in post-​war Britain and the language of loyalty and treason abounded. Chapter 6 analyses the impact of the war after 1953. It explores the small number of popular representations of the Korean War in film and fiction, from poetry to Fawlty Towers, and considers again the impact of the Second World War in eclipsing the Korean War. This chapter highlights a notable change in tone across the second half of the twentieth century. Malcolm Muggeridge’s early panic had been replaced with apathy in many quarters and the dominance of the Second World War in v 21 v

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The Korean War in Britain popular culture ousted any sense that the Korean War –​or indeed, the wider Cold War –​might have been formative in British life. This book traces that change and illuminates moments when the Korean War was central to debates about selfhood, citizenship and the memory of conflict.

Notes 1 Hoover Institution Archives, Malcolm Muggeridge collection, Box 1, diary 26 June 1950, 29 June 1950, 5 July 1950 and 21 November 1950. 2 ‘Hot war in the east’, Daily Mail, 26 June 1950, p. 1; ‘Strategic position of Korea’, The Times, 27 June 1950, p. 5; ‘Korea, a test of liberty: resisting aggression’, Manchester Guardian, 10 July 1950, p. 7. 3 Mass Observation Archive materials reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of The Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive (© The Trustees of the Mass Observation Archive). 4 Bishopsgate Institute Library, ROTH/​3/​42, letter from Mathilda Friederich to Andrew Roth, 6 July 1950. 5 Mass Observation Archive (hereafter MOA), 9–​1-​A, public opinions of the Korean War, June–​July 1950; MOA, 9–​1-​B, news quota survey of public attitudes to Korean War, July 1950; MOA, 9–​1-​C, news quota survey of public attitudes to Korean War, August 1950. 6 Kenneth Ames, ‘Korea:  a warning to Germany’, Daily Mail, 27 June 1950, p.  4; Brian Horrocks, ‘The lesson of Korea:  could this happen in Western Germany?’, Picture Post, 12 August 1950, pp. 12–​13. 7 Estimates vary widely due to the lack of official statistics. Farrar-Hockley stated there was a standing commitment of 27,000, but total contribution of 81,084. It is unclear if this total included Commonwealth forces. Anthony Farrar-​Hockley, The British Part in the Korean War, Volume II: An Honourable Discharge (London, 1995), p. 420. 8 An estimated 40 per cent of 20,000 troops stationed in Korea during 1953 were National Servicemen and up to 50 per cent of certain units were composed of them, see Hansard, House of Commons Debate (hereafter HC Deb), vol. 518, cols 1304–​43529, Mr Nigel Birch MP, 29 July 1953. 9 Farrar-​Hockley, The British Part in the Korean War, Volume II, p. 491. 10 Graham Greene, ‘Malaya: the forgotten war’, LIFE Magazine, 30 July 1951, p. 51. 11 ‘The war which was forgotten in excitement of the Test Match’, Bury Free Press, 31 July 1953, p. 1. 12 Joe Shute, ‘Britain’s Korean War veterans win their final fight’, Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/​history/​britain-​at-​war/​11260575/​ Britains-​Korean-​War-​veterans-​win-​their-​final-​fight.html (accessed 10 June 2016); John Ingham, ‘Korean War remembered: hundreds gather to honour the dead of Britain’s forgotten war’, Daily Express, 3 December 2014, pp. 20–​1.

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Introduction 13 Yuval Noah Harari, The Ultimate Experience:  Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture 1450–​2000 (Basingstoke and New York, 2008), p. 7. 14 Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (New York and Oxford, 1989), pp. 267–​8; Aaron William Moore, Writing War: Soldiers Record the Japanese Empire (Cambridge, MA and London, 2013), p. 244. 15 BBC Written Archive (hereafter BBC), S322/​85/​1, home news and entertainment, ‘Korea in world politics’, 8 September 1950. 16 Whang-​Kyung Koh, Korea through British Eyes (London, 1952), p. 22. 17 Anthony Perrins (ed.), ‘A Pretty Rough Do Altogether’: The Fifth Fusiliers in Korea, 1950–​1951 (Alnwick, 2004), p. 338. 18 David Kynaston, Family Britain, 1951–​ 57 (London, 2010), p.  80; Peter Hennessy, Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties (London, 2007), p. 219. 19 Matthew Grant, ‘Historicizing citizenship in post-​war Britain’, The Historical Journal, 59:4 (2016), 1189. 20 Ibid., 1198. 21 Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear (Weybridge, repub. 2008; orig. edn, 1952), p. 129. 22 Simon Kent (Max Catto), A Hill in Korea (Watford, 1954), p. 12. 23 Archibald Wavell, ‘Minerva’s owl, or education in the army’, Army Education: The Journal of the Army Educational Corps, 22:1 (1948), 11. 24 Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (2nd edn, London, 1999), p.  10; Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose, ‘The Tavistock programme: the government of subjectivity and social life’, Sociology, 22:2 (1988), 171; Mike Savage, Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940:  The Politics of Method (Oxford, 2010), pp. 68–​9. 25 Such examinations include:  Simeon Koole, ‘How we came to mind the gap:  time, tactility and the tube’, Twentieth Century British History, 27:4 (2016), 528–​9; Celia Hughes, ‘Negotiating ungovernable spaces between the personal and the political: oral history and the left in post-​war Britain’, Memory Studies, 6:1 (2013), 70–​90. 26 Roger Smith, The Norton History of the Human Sciences (London and New York, 2007), p. 579; Rose, Governing the Soul, pp. xviii–​ix. However, Rose maintains that language ‘is only one aspect or element of the ways in which the human being’s relation to itself is shaped and reshaped historically’. 27 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-​Identity:  Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge, 1991), p. 244. 28 Andrew M. Condron, Richard G. Corden and Larance V. Sullivan, Thinking Soldiers: By Men Who Fought in Korea (Peking, 1955), pp. 1–​2. 29 Mathew Thomson, Psychological Subjects:  Identity, Culture and Health in Twentieth-​Century Britain (Oxford and New York, 2006), pp. 6–​7. 30 Geoff Eley, ‘Finding the people’s war: film, British collective memory, and World War II’, American Historical Review, 108:3 (2011), 818–​19. Echoed elsewhere in James Hinton, Nine Wartime Lives: Mass-​Observation and the Making of the

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The Korean War in Britain Modern Self (Oxford, 2010), p. 1; Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850–​2000 (London, 2000), p. 221. 31 David Reynolds, ‘Britain, the two World Wars and the problem of narrative’, The Historical Journal, 60:1 (2017), 217. 32 Graham Greene argued that an air of ‘moral disapprobation’ hung over conflicts like Malaya, see Greene, ‘Malaya: the forgotten war’, p. 51. 33 I would like to thank Professor Mathew Thomson for his observations on the ‘long Second World War’. 34 Charles S. Young, Name, Rank, and Serial Number:  Exploiting Korean War POWs at Home and Abroad (New York, 2014), p. 180. 35 Adrian Buzo, The Making of Modern Korea (London and New York, 2002), pp. 67–​8. 36 Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (New York, 2011), p. 66. Similarly, other have argued that the Japanese repression of political dissent and Korean collaboration led to a stultified resistance movement in Korea and no agreement between different groups of modernisers, even by 1945. This added to the already substantial social, economic and even cultural divisions in post-​ 1945 Korean society. See Allan R. Millett, ‘The Korean War: a 50-​year critical historiography’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 24:1 (2001), 189–​90; Edward I-​Te Chen, ‘Japan: oppressor or modernizer? A comparison of the effects of colonial control in Korea and Formosa’, in Andrew C. Nahm (ed.), Korea under Japanese Colonial Rule (Kalamazoo, 1973), p. 252; Buzo, The Making of Modern Korea, p. 51. The ‘limited war’ thesis, that the war was aimed at forestalling Soviet aggression elsewhere, was disputed as early as 1952 by the historian I.F. Stone, see I.F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War (London, 1952). Rosemary Foot argued that there was support from within the United States for an expanded conflict against Communism, not least from MacArthur, see Rosemary Foot, The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950–​1953 (New York, 1985), p. 25; David Rees, The Limited War (New York, 1964). 37 William Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History (Princeton and Oxford, 2002), pp. 1–​3. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the release of more documents in the mid-​1990s, the involvement of the Soviet Union has come to light. Scholars have pointed to Joseph Stalin’s direct involvement in the North Korean invasion of 1950, as he attempted to both safeguard Soviet interests in South Asia and check the power of the fledgling Chinese Communist state, see Shen Zhihua, ‘Sino-​Soviet relations and the origins of the Korean War:  Stalin’s strategic goals in the Far East’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 2:2 (2000), 44–​68. 38 The Soviet Union were boycotting the UN Security Council due to UN’s refusal to include Communist China, although the Soviet Union returned in August 1950 and presented a counter-​resolution to US plans to unify the peninsula. 39 The (North) Korean People’s Army was referred to as NKPA in UN documents.

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Introduction 40 National Army Museum, Project Korea:  The British Soldier in Korea 1950–​ 1953 (London, 1988), p.  22; Max Hastings, The Korean War (Basingstoke, 2010), p.  345. Peter Lowe argues that many of these contributions were largely nominal, see Peter Lowe, The Origins of the Korean War (London and New York, 1986), p. 178. 41 Jeffrey Grey, The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War:  An Alliance Study (Manchester and New  York, 1988), pp. 88–​108. These included the following contributions:  UK (58 per cent), Canada (22 per cent), Australia (14 per cent), New Zealand (5 per cent) and India (1 per cent). 42 Robert Barnes, ‘Branding an aggressor:  the Commonwealth, the United Nations and Chinese intervention in the Korean War, November 1950  –​ January 1951’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 33:2 (2010), 232. 43 Terence Airey, ‘Review: the First Commonwealth Division: the story of British Commonwealth land forces in Korea 1950–​3 by C.N. Barclay’, International Affairs, 31:4 (1955), 506. Not all Commonwealth historians see Korea as quite so definitive. Using oral history interviews Sue Onslow has observed that, although the Commonwealth was profoundly influenced by the Cold War, it ‘defied ideological typecasting’, containing members from NATO countries (Britain and Canada), a member of SEATO and CENTO (Pakistan), as well as later Non-​Aligned countries, such as India, see Sue Onslow, ‘The Commonwealth and the Cold War, neutralism and non-​alignment’, The International History Review, 37:5 (2015), 1059–​60. 44 Lowe, The Origins of the Korean War, pp. 189–​90. 45 Allen S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu:  The Decision to Enter the Korean War (Stanford, 1960), p.  57; Anne-​Marie Brady, Making the Foreign Serve China: Managing Foreigners in the People’s Republic (Maryland, 2003), p. 84. 46 Lowe, The Origins of the Korean War, p. 201. 47 Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-​American Confrontation (New  York, 1994), p.  4; Shen, ‘Sino-​Soviet relations’, 44–​68; Donggil Kim, ‘New insights into Mao’s initial strategic consideration towards the Korean War intervention’, Cold War History, 16:3 (2016), 240; Christopher Goscha and Christian Ostermann, ‘Introduction’, in Christopher Goscha and Christian Ostermann (eds), Connecting Decolonisation and the Cold War in Southeast Asia (Washington, DC, 2009), p. 6. 48 Kim, ‘New insights into Mao’s initial strategic consideration’, 241. 49 Chen, China’s Road to the Korean War, p. 5. 50 For more on the Battle of Imjin, see S.P. Mackenzie, The Imjin and Kapyong Battles: Korea, 1951 (Bloomington, 2013); David Green, Captured at the Imjin River:  The Korean War Memoires of a Gloster 1950–​1953 (Barnsley, 2003), pp. 93–​4. 51 Buzo, The Making of Modern Korea, p. 88. 52 Anthony Farrar-​Hockley wrote in the official history of the British in Korea that one million civilians had been killed, along with 100,000 NKPA troops

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The Korean War in Britain and almost one million Chinese troops killed, wounded or falling ill during the war, see Farrar-​Hockley, The British Part in the Korean War, Volume II, p.  416. Using official UN publications, Peter Lowe estimated that the ROK had 300,000 authenticated casualties but that the total was in fact far higher, around 1.3  million total casualties; China had 900,000 casualties and there were one million civilian casualties in the DPRK overall, see Lowe, The Origins of the Korean War, p. 218. 53 National Army Museum (hereafter NAM), 1989–​05–​164, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Frank R. Wisby, 1989; NAM, 8905–​261, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Sebastian ‘Sam’ Mercer, 18 July 1988. 54 Imperial War Museum (hereafter IWM), 19913, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Thomas Ashley Cunningham-​Boothe, 8 December 1999. 55 John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (London and Boston, 1986), p. 11; Matthew Jones, After Hiroshima: The United States, Race and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945–​165 (Cambridge, 2010), p. 7. I thank the reviewers of this book for their guidance in this area. 56 Jones, After Hiroshima, p. 56. 57 Lizzie Oliver, ‘ “What our sons went through”:  the connective memories of Far Eastern Captivity in the Charles Thrale Exhibition, 1946–​1964’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, 7:3 (2014), 242–​4; Felicia Yap, ‘Voices and silences of memory: civilian internees of the Japanese in British Asia during the Second World War’, Journal of British Studies, 50 (2011), 928–​9. 58 Jones, After Hiroshima, pp. 21, 7 and 59. 59 James Cameron, ‘Korea: twelve months’, Picture Post, 23 June 1951, pp. 13–​14. 60 Goscha and Ostermann, ‘Introduction’, pp. 2–​3. 61 Benjamin Grob-​Fitzgibbon, Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire (Basingstoke, 2011), p. 150. 62 The standard narrative of the Emergency is that it began in June 1948 with twenty-​six murders in British-​owned rubber plantations, leading to three years of unchecked violence and ending with the murder of High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney in 1951. After this point, the British perfected their counter-​ insurgency techniques to rid much of the country of insurgents by 1955 and the Emergency ended in 1960. Martin Thomas, however, questions this over-​ simplified narrative, arguing that the political failure of the Malayan Union in early 1948 and the resentments it stirred up played an important part in the origins of the emergency. See Martin Thomas, Fight or Flight: Britain, France and their Roads from Empire (Oxford, 2014), p. 132. 63 Men of the World (dir. Ronald Clark, Crown Film Unit, 1950). 64 Goscha and Ostermann, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. 65 Robert Barnes, ‘Between the blocs: India, the United Nations, and ending the Korean War’, Journal of Korean Studies, 18:2 (2013), 263–​86. 66 Melinda L. Pash, In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans who Fought the Korean War (New York and London, 2012); David Halberstram, The

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Introduction Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (London, 2008); Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea (London, 2013). 67 Pash, In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation, p. 37. 68 Susan Carruthers, Cold War Captives: Imprisonment, Escape and Brainwashing (Berkeley, 2009), pp. 21–​2. 69 Charles S. Young, ‘POWs: the hidden reason for forgetting Korea’, in Robert Barnes (ed.), The Korean War at Sixty:  New Approaches to the Study of the Korean War (Abingdon, 2012), pp. 155–​70; Marilyn Young, ‘Korea: the post-​ war war’, History Workshop Journal, 15 (2001), 112–​26. 70 David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–​51 (London, 2008), p. 545. 71 Ibid., p. 548. 72 David Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain 1920–​1970 (New York, 2006), p. 5. 73 Anne Deighton ‘Introduction’ in Anne Deighton (ed.), Britain and the First Cold War (New York, 1990), p. 4; Thomas Hennessey, Britain’s Korean War: Cold War Diplomacy, Strategy and Security 1950–​53 (Manchester, 2013). 74 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), CAB 128/​17, Cabinet conclusion 4 –​Korea, 27 June 1950. 75 TNA, CAB 128/​18, Cabinet conclusion 3 –​Korea, 25 July 1950. 76 Callum MacDonald, Britain and the Korean War (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 60–​5; ‘Mr Churchill on Korea’, The Times, 29 June 1950, p.  3; ‘Mr  Churchill on Britain’s “enduring strength” ’, The Times, 18 January 1952, p. 4. 77 Macdonald, Britain and the Korean War, p. 19. 78 Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War, p.  129. Stueck argues this delay actually allowed time for situations to stabilise, like in April 1951 when General MacArthur was dismissed. 79 Bodleian Special Collections, MS Attlee 102.227, instructions to UK representative at the United Nations, June 1950; Bodleian, MS Attlee 118.2–​7, statement by the Prime Minister, 1 February 1951. In particular, British diplomats were able to dilute the strong wording used by the United States about China’s apparent non-​cooperation in peace negotiations and to stop allegations of ‘Communist imperialism’. 80 Sean Greenwood, Britain and the Cold War (Basingstoke and New  York, 2000),  p.  87; MacDonald, Britain and the Korean War, p.  15; Callum MacDonald, Korea: The War before Vietnam (Basingstoke, 1986), p. 22; Lowe, The Origins of the Korean War, p. 154. 81 TNA, CAB 128/​17, Cabinet conclusion 4 –​Korea, 27 June 1950. 82 TNA, CAB 129/​41, Cabinet memorandum, Formosa, 3 July 1950. 83 Sean Greenwood, ‘ “A war we don’t want”: another look at the British Labour Government’s commitment in Korea, 1950–​51’, Contemporary British History, 17:4 (2003), 2; MacDonald, Korea, p. 84; Kynaston, Austerity Britain, p. 546. 84 TNA, CAB 128/​18, Cabinet conclusion 2 –​Korea, 6 July 1950. 85 MOA, 9–​1-​A, public opinions of the Korean War, June –​July 1950.

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The Korean War in Britain 86 Peter Hennessy, The Secret State:  Whitehall and the Cold War (London, 2003), p. 2. 87 Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (London, 2006), p. 284. 88 Matthew Grant, After the Bomb: Civil Defence and Nuclear War in Cold War Britain, 1945–​68 (New York and Basingstoke, 2010); Jonathan Hogg, British Nuclear Culture:  Official and Unofficial Narratives in the Long Twentieth Century (London, 2016). 89 James Hinton, Protests and Visions: Peace Politics in Twentieth-​Century Britain (London, 1989); Jodi Burkett, ‘Re-​defining British morality:  “Britishness” and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 1958–​68’, Twentieth-​Century British History, 21:2 (2010), 184–​205; Christopher Moores, ‘Opposition to the Greenham women’s peace camps in 1980s Britain:  RAGE against the “obscene” ’, History Workshop Journal, 78:1 (2014), 204–​27. 90 Michael Paris, ‘Red menace! Russia and British juvenile fiction’, Contemporary British History, 19:2 (2005), 117–​32; Susan E. Reid, ‘Cold War in the kitchen: gender and the de-​Stalinisation of consumer taste in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev’, Slavic Review, 61:2 (2002), 211–​52. 91 Patrick Major and Rana Mitter, ‘Culture’, in Saki Dockrill and Geraint Hughes (eds), Palgrave Advances in Cold War History (London, 2006), pp. 240–​1. 92 Anders Stephanson, ‘Cold War degree zero’, in Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell (eds), Uncertain Empire:  American History and the Idea of the Cold War (New York, 2012), p. 21. 93 Federico Romero, ‘Cold War historiography at the crossroads’, Cold War History, 14:4 (2014), 687. 94 Ibid. 95 Odd Arne Westad, ‘Exploring histories of the Cold War: a pluralist approach’, in Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell (eds), Uncertain Empire: American History and the Idea of the Cold War (New York, 2012), pp. 52–​6. 96 Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on my Mind:  Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, MA and London, 2006), p. 7. 97 Such as during the construction of the Moscow Metro, see ibid., p. 86; Jochen Hellbeck, ‘Working, struggling, becoming: Stalin-​era autobiographical texts’, Russian Review, 60:3 (2001), 343. 98 Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves (London, 2000), p.  231; Ronald Adam, ‘Foreword’, in Henry Harris, The Group Approach to Leadership Testing (London, 1949), pp. vii–​viii. 99 Boris Ford, The Bureau of Current Affairs 1946–​1951 (London, 1951), p. 24. 100 This civilian organisation was rather short-​lived, folding after five years, see ibid., pp. 6 and 8. 101 C.F. Fitzgerald, ‘Korea:  the background’, Bureau of Current Affairs, 116 (1950); Anne Whyte, ‘The Cold War’, Bureau of Current Affairs, 121 (1950). 102 Rupert Crawshaw-​Williams, ‘Think before you vote’, Bureau of Current Affairs (1950).

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Introduction 103 L.J.F. Brimble, ‘Science and society (Part II)’, Army Education: The Journal of the Army Educational Corps, 22:2 (1948), 56. 104 Eric Naiman, ‘On Soviet subjects and the scholars who make them’, The Russian Review, 60 (2001), 313. 105 Moore, Writing War, pp. 12 and 17. 106 April Gallwey, ‘The rewards of using archived oral histories in research: the case of the Millennium Memory Bank’, Oral History, 41:1 (2013), 39; Joanna Bornat, Parvati Raghuram and Leroi Henry, ‘Revisiting the archives: opportunities and challenges’, Sociological Research Online, 17:2 (2012), 2; Joanna Bornat and Gail Wilson, ‘Recycling the evidence:  different approaches to the re-​analysis of elite life histories’, in Rosalind Edwards (ed.), Researching Families and Communities: Social and Generational Change (London, 2008), p. 99; Luisa Passerini, ‘Work ideology under fascism’, History Workshop, 8:1 (1979), 92. 107 John Keegan, The Face of Battle:  A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (London, 1991); Joanna Bourke, ‘New military history’, in Mathew Hughes and William J. Philpott (eds), Palgrave Advances in Modern Military History (Basingstoke, 2006), p. 266. 108 Richard Holmes, Firing Line (London, 1985), p. 6. 109 Bourke, ‘New military history’, p. 258. 110 Ibid., p. 274. 111 Allan Allport, Demobbed:  Coming Home after the Second World War (New Haven and London, 2009), p. 11. 112 Diana C. Gill, How We Are Changed by War: A Study of Letters and Diaries from Colonial Conflicts to Operation Iraqi Freedom (New York and Abingdon, 2010), p. 136; Samuel Hynes, The Soldier’s Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War (London, 1988), pp. 16–​17. 113 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 512, cols 844–​ 910, Col. James Harrison MP, 9 March 1953. 114 At the outbreak of war, twenty-​two Royal Navy vessels were in the Far East region and were quick to provide naval support. During the war the Royal Navy’s contribution centred on aircraft carrier provision, see ‘British Commonwealth naval operations during the Korean War—​part VII’, RUSI Journal, 99:593 (1954), 102. Fifty RAF pilots served in Korea, either with the US or Australian air forces, see David Lee, Eastward: A History of the Royal Air Force in the Far East 1945–​1972 (London, 1984), pp. 110–​18.

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No woman wants any more war: Popular responses to the outbreak of war

In July 1950, MO surveyors questioned people across London about the outbreak of the war in Korea. This questioning followed the decision that month to dispatch 27 Brigade, then based in Hong Kong, to support the UN Force. Amid concerns over the scale of British involvement, the prospect of nuclear warfare and general distrust of both the United States and Soviet Union, another concern emerged. One fifty-​year-​old woman in Victoria noted that: All the women round our way are living on their [wits’] ends worrying what it’ll all turn to, after all we’ve been through and the young fellows just growing up after living in shelters and evacuation. I’m speaking for the half dozen of us women in the house that I live in –​our nerves are bad from the bombing and the raids of the last war. They’re frightened –​they’re all terribly upset and worrying what’s going to happen to their children. They’re frightened to look ahead; they’re just getting things nice and ‘straight’ and they want to live in peace and quiet –​no woman wants any more war.1

She went on to say that she did not wish to sleep in her shelter again, blaming her arthritis on spending ‘hours and hours’ in such damp conditions during the last war. Others too noted that it was ‘the women who [were] … taking it the worst’. One twenty-​ five-​ year-​ old man responded that: ‘I know my mother’s got the jitters already’, adding that ‘it’s the papers that are to blame for it’. Women’s concern that their family members might be called up was given as another possible reason. When one woman from Kilburn was asked what she thought about the US campaign in Korea so far, she said:  ‘It’s hard to tell, my husband won’t let me read about it because he says I’ll worry too much in case he has to go out there.’ Others too described their worry over husbands and sons still liable to be recalled as part of the Army Reserve. Survey responses v 30 v

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No woman wants any more war suggest that British people felt that women had borne a particularly hard burden during the last war and were more concerned, even panicking, about the prospect of another. Furthermore, although the MO surveys represent only a small sample, these comments also reveal the prevailing gender discourse surrounding citizenship and female behaviour on the ‘home front’. Lucy Noakes and Susan Grayzel have argued that citizenship remained persistently gendered in the twentieth century and split along ‘passive’ and ‘active’ lines –​‘with women and children largely as victims and men as defenders of the home’.2 Korea was not a turning point in this respect. It reproduced and solidified gendered conceptualisations of active and passive citizenship that emerged during the Second World War. However, the Korean War is the first indication of how post-​war Britain, bruised and damaged by the Second World War, regarded conflict in the 1950s. The alarm with which the war was met demonstrates that time had yet to heal the societal and emotional scars of the previous war. The earlier conflict in turn conditioned British responses to new threats in the early Cold War. Thirty years since the first aerial bombardment of British cities during the First World War, city dwellers continued to worry about sheltering from attack from above in the early months of the Korean War and these memories, together with the spectre of nuclear warfare, added to the societal unease surrounding the war. More long-​ standing worries merged with or shaped new concerns too: would Korea herald another world war, only with widespread use of nuclear weapons? Could the United States be trusted to support its wartime ally in these new uncertain times? And what threat did Communism pose to Britain and its ever-​diminishing empire? Despite the air of panic, responses indicate an overall lack of knowledge in Britain about Korea and the aims of the war. Many people did not know what the 38th Parallel was and were unclear as to why Korea was significant to world affairs. The first seeds of Korea’s subsequent omission from national memory and memorial culture lie in this lack of clarity during the first few months. This chapter first explores the utility of MO surveys and diaries to the social history of the war, before exploring responses in detail, alongside television and newspaper reports from the early months of the war.

Mass Observation, ‘ordinary’ people and the Korean War Some of the most detailed reflections on the outbreak of war are to be found in MO surveys conducted in June, July, August and October 1950, v 31 v

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The Korean War in Britain voluntary diarists’ accounts, and responses to a specific directive in January 1951. Founded in 1937 by the anthropologist Tom Harrisson and the poet Charles Madge among others, MO was designed to be the ‘observation by everyone of everyone’.3 By the time of the Korean War, MO had become a limited company, but diarists continued to send in material and specific surveys were still conducted into the 1950s. MO material is at once a blessing and a curse for the social historian. The richness and variety of material, the ability to pinpoint trends and the insights into quotidian aspects of twentieth-​century life are instantly apparent and appealing.4 Yet troublesome questions lurk beneath the surface of these sources. Historians and sociologists have debated at length the representativeness of this material, the sampling methods used by observers and historians alike and the status of interviewers as interlocutors, potentially drawing out particular narratives from participants.5 Another source of contention is whether historians can or should regard these respondents as ‘ordinary’.6 In its ordinariness such material potentially provides a clear snapshot of social life in Britain. But is ordinariness really a viable historical category? Eric Hobsbawm noted that ‘ordinary people’ are capable of initiating great social change when working ‘collectively’, thereby transcending the category of being ‘common’ to being extraordinary.7 But at the same time, the category of ordinary (if imposed by the historian) potentially aggregates, even denigrates, the experiences of historical actors into one formless mass.8 To be ordinary is to be mundane, non-​ reflexive and yet somehow more authentic. Treating MO as an uncomplicated reflection of ‘ordinary’ life is therefore highly problematic if based on these assumptions. Yet MO is continually used by social historians of the mid-​twentieth century, to analyse a wide range of themes from love to leisure.9 There are two crucial points to take into account when using these astonishing collections of memories, reflections and feelings. First, we must acknowledge MO’s sociological and intellectual origins and its long-​standing associations with the ‘everyday’. Many historians now prefer to use the term ‘everyday’ to describe the topics covered by sources like MO surveys and daily diaries, some of which respondents produced over many years. ‘Everyday’ allows historians to express the regular, familiar actions and attitudes of individuals without imposing a normative retrospective judgement on them.10 But, more importantly, it is also the term that Harrison, Madge and others used themselves. Everyday life was at the intellectual core of MO:  it was part of a broader European interest in Everyday Life studies, pioneered by Henri Lefebvre from the late 1940s.11 v 32 v

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No woman wants any more war This intention was also linked to the wider sociological agenda of the unaligned left between the 1930s and 1950s, looking at people’s ‘idiosyncratic habits’ rather than ‘articulating an a priori vision of what a socialist society should look like’.12 Sociological investigations like MO, focused on everyday life, were central to their politics. Although MO respondents and interviewers were largely middle class (James Hinton and Mike Savage even noting that the project itself was part of the emergence of technocratic middle class), MO data does still embody the aims of its founders and can provide ‘a democratic people’s history from below’.13 MO’s origins and structure as a record of ‘everyday’ life therefore makes it a useful –​if imperfect –​indicator of particular individuals’ viewpoints. Second, MO material should prompt the historian to ask how and why people tell particular stories of their lives:  the autobiographical impulse which Anthony Giddens argues underpins modern life.14 MO material includes many different types of life-​writing and reveals several different motivations for divulging information. Diary entries were voluntarily sent in to the MO team, in contrast to the observations noted by interviewers in the field. In those cases, information could even be seen as extracted from individuals in response to questions.15 MO material encompasses the range of autobiographical material available to the historian and demonstrates its frequently involuntary nature. Sociologist Dorothy Sheridan also pointed out that autobiographical writing means different things to different people:  women writing their lives do so within a genre which has been dominated by the white, male ‘memoir’.16 Feminist scholars too argued that the ‘scriptocentric’, male-​centred practice of ‘autobiography’ has often curtailed female opportunities to speak.17 This variation in MO material and the different authorial positions of its respondents are vital in understanding and using such material. One housewife in her fifties in Hampstead even refused to offer her opinion on Korea, simply stating that: ‘I’m only a housewife, so I can’t be expected to answer intelligent questions.’ It is within these life-​writing frameworks then that responses must be contextualised.

Locating Korea What then were initial responses to the war? The varied reactions in summer 1950 and early 1951 were marked by both intense fear and a creeping apathy. A  Foreign Office document, sent to Attlee in 1950, noted that Korea was ‘remote’ and the threat posed by its instability was ‘indirect and not immediate’.18 In one BBC programme aired on 26 June v 33 v

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The Korean War in Britain 1950, the presenter stated that fighting had come as a ‘very unpleasant suprize [sic]’ to Western governments.19 Even Winston Churchill famously quipped that he had ‘never heard of the bloody place till … [he] was seventy-​four’.20 Tony Shaw has stated how the British Foreign Office faced a difficult task in explaining involvement to the wider public, as most people felt that ‘Britain had no economic or strategic interest in Korea’.21 Another BBC programme (aired in September 1950)  blamed ‘uncompromising’ Communist ideology for the Korean conflict, stating that Western nations were ‘anxious to preserve the freedom to live their lives’.22 The aims of the Korean War were scrutinised by many commentators in summer 1950. The day after the invasion, one news programme stated boldly that ‘if Soviet power were to control the whole of Korea it would turn the Yellow Sea into a Soviet Lake’.23 By August, there were calls for a more nuanced approach. Edgar Lustgarten, writer and chairman of the BBC radio programme London Forum, stated that all UN forces agreed that the principal aim in Korea was ensuring that aggression was not tolerated. But he went on, saying that ‘this isn’t enough in itself ’, as they needed concrete military and political aims.24 Benjamin Welles of the New York Times added that these aims were even more complex for the soldier, arguing that ‘I think the average G.I. has no objective in mind’.25 Discussion also revolved around how Britain might use its skills in dealing with ‘satellite sites’ to good effect in Korea. In another BBC television programme from 1950, presenter Alan Bullock felt that British experience in granting independence to India, Pakistan and Burma made it well-​equipped to deal with vying political agendas in Korea.26 The initial press treatment of the Korean War also stressed Britain’s mediating power, particularly given the presence of more controversial figures in US and ROK leadership. By August, 27 Brigade had arrived in Pusan in the south-​east corner of the peninsula and was almost immediately involved in repelling an offensive of the NKPA.27 Between September and November 1950, the UN forces pushed back the initial North Korean advance still further, crossing the 38th Parallel on the order of General MacArthur. MacArthur’s reputation during the first year of the war reveals a change in British opinion on Korea. In early surveys, MacArthur is frequently described as a great military man and in the news response survey of July 1950, the majority of respondents felt that it was ‘right’ that the United States was involved in Korea, even if they feared the consequences.28 One respondent added that ‘they are not doing any more than we are doing in Malaya or Greece’, referring to Britain’s wider commitments at this time.29 Even by early 1951, when the v 34 v

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No woman wants any more war war was not going the way that the UN forces had planned, some MO respondents noted that the UN force (led by the United States) had no choice but to intervene.30 But MacArthur’s decision to cross the 38th Parallel marked a turning point in British popular opinion about the war and his leadership. By January 1951 numerous MO respondents felt this hasty action should have been avoided.31 Although some MO respondents felt that the UN’s difficulties towards the end of 1950 were only temporary, MacArthur had become less popular. In April 1951, Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison was concerned that MacArthur’s naval exercises off the coast of China, and his talk of atomic weaponry, would provoke the Chinese and would reduce the likelihood of peace talks.32 When MacArthur was dismissed later that month The Times praised Truman’s bravery in relieving the national war hero of his command.33 South Korean leader Syngman Rhee was even more unpopular than MacArthur and remained consistently so throughout the war. The methods he used to reinforce his political power were criticised by British policymakers and the British government was still more uneasy at the prospect of Rhee ruling over a reunified Korea, if the UN ousted the Communist regime in the North.34 Rhee’s reputation for brutally suppressing his opponents had pre-​ dated 1950, beginning when he returned from exile after the Second World War and made an immediate bid for power. Max Hastings has dismissed these sentiments as a result of the ‘left-​leaning’ literature on the history of the Korean War.35 Yet Rhee’s unpredictability was seen as dangerous by both politicians and the press. In March 1952, Selwyn Lloyd expressed Britain’s discomfort at the ROK’s military conduct and the martial law operating within ROK-​ occupied territory, only to be rebuffed by Rhee, who felt Western nations were trying to have too much influence over internal South Korean affairs.36 This suspicion did not go away either. Much later, in 1953, concern over Rhee would increase still further as in June he released 25,131 POWs, destabilising already fragile peace negotiations.37 His unhelpful statements during this time were criticised by a number of groups and individuals within Britain. The Trades Union Congress received numerous letters from trades unions calling for them to criticise Rhee’s ‘provocative actions’.38 Kenneth Younger said in the Commons: ‘It is very tragic that, after a truce has been held up … for some two years through the intransigence of the Communist side about relatively unimportant matters, it should now be in danger owing to the fanaticism of Syngman Rhee and his failure to understand why United Nations is in Korea at v 35 v

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The Korean War in Britain all’.39 Rhee remained unpopular in the British press throughout the war, although the Daily Mail suggested that the real driving force behind Rhee’s behaviour could be his five-​foot, ‘iron-​willed’, Austrian-​born wife, Francesca.40 But how far did the British people understand what was happening in Korea and its wider significance to the early Cold War? Knowledge about Korea’s dividing line, the 38th Parallel, was one early area of confusion. In October 1950, 39 per cent of MO respondents claimed they did not know what it was, with only 36 per cent identifying it as the border between North and South Korea, while around 4 per cent thought that it was where the UN wanted the border to be. Around 4 per cent again felt that it was an artificial or even ‘imaginary’ line in Korea. When pushed further and asked what they thought of the UN crossing the 38th Parallel, 27 per cent claimed that it was the right thing to do, with 12 per cent opposed. Like Korea itself, the 38th Parallel was far from well-​known in the early months of the war. Although this survey represents only a small sample, the confusion was replicated elsewhere:  some British veterans later even confused the 38th Parallel in Korea with the more infamous 48th Parallel in Vietnam.41 Korea itself had never before been so prominent in British culture. One BBC programme from 1953 stated that ‘very few people on that Sunday morning were quite sure exactly where Korea was’.42 Although Koreans had contributed to the Japanese military during the final years of the Second World War and some served in the campaign against the British in Burma, Britain had relatively few long-​standing cultural ties with the peninsula. In many cases, British understandings of Korea and Koreans rested on both recent and long-​standing conceptualisations and racial stereotypes of East Asian society.43 The recent experiences of Second World War FEPOWs were prominent in the British press in the 1950s, as former POWs lobbied for compensation from the Japanese for violations of the Geneva Convention.44 This high-​profile campaign highlighted the specific cruelty and ‘barbarism’ prisoners in the Far East had undergone at the hands of the Japanese, in comparison with prisoners of the Italians and Germans.45 When debating the issue in Parliament, one former FEPOW, Henry Turner MP, stated that FEPOW veterans were asking that ‘those who suffered behind bamboo at the behest of our Japanese masters, should be compensated for by the Japanese race, so that those who survive and still suffer and those dependants of the dead might also benefit’.46 Their claim was recognised by MPs in 1951, with two articles later added to the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. But far v 36 v

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No woman wants any more war older references to East Asian society were also repeated again during the war, especially the late nineteenth-​century popular stereotype of the ‘Asian horde’ or, more frequently, the ‘yellow peril’. In one 1953 article in the Political Science Quarterly, sociologist Eugene Kulischer argued that Communism in China had ‘become a banner under which her teeming masses are being united in their striving for land and bread’.47 Many British servicemen in Korea later described both the North Koreans and Chinese in mass terms, frequently calling enemy forces the ‘red flood’ or ‘human wave’.48 When imprisoned as POWs the focus changed slightly, as servicemen often referred to their Chinese or North Korean guards and interrogators as ‘little’ men.49 More general understandings of Asia were also dependent on long-​ standing ideas of imperial exoticism. Such preconceptions were evident, for instance, from the journeys of servicemen out to Korea. In 1950, it typically took up to six weeks for ships to do the Southampton–​ Gibraltar–​Suez–​Aden–​Colombo–​Singapore–​Hong Kong route, with some continuing onto Kure in Japan. Soldiers were able to post letters at the ports of call along the route and their responses to these ports are revealing in a number of ways. First, these places were often the first time that many young soldiers came into direct contact with such a wide range of nationalities. Sailing to Korea aboard the Empire Halladale, national serviceman John Gerrard, serving with the Royal Artillery, described to his family:  ‘The western-​style shops are really only a façade to the native houses behind –​I ventured in for a short while, but the smell was too much I’m afraid. There are all sorts of races –​Arabs mainly, but a lot of Indians, some Chinese and Malays too.’50 Others had expected more though. One national serviceman expressed disappointment in a letter home that Port Said in Egypt did not look ‘particularly Eastern’.51 The novelist P.J. Kavanagh articulated his dissatisfaction that, even in Singapore, he had ‘made no kind of contact with the East’.52 When in Korea, servicemen and particularly POWs stressed racial differences with the Korean population. When later describing his chances of escape from a North Korean POW camp, Sergeant Henry Tyler noted in an oral history interview: ‘the odds were completely against you in escaping … you didn’t look like an oriental, the natives were distinctly hostile. As I say the country was against you, the climate was against you’.53 This lack of knowledge of Korea and Asia in Britain in 1950 might be interpreted as part of a wider ambivalence to British involvement overseas. In his intellectual history of the British working classes, Jonathan Rose uses a survey from 1948 highlighting that only 33 per cent of those v 37 v

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The Korean War in Britain earning £4 a week or less could name one British colony and in a MO survey 17 per cent could not name any.54 Rose argues that historically poor geographical education and a failure of ‘propaganda’ events such as Empire Day had left the British unaware of the global reach of empire, aside from middle-​class schoolboys and imperial civil servants. Yet to see the lack of existing knowledge about Korea as an extension of the so-​called ‘minimal impact thesis’ is misleading. Low levels of geographical knowledge did not necessarily mean that British people were disinterested in global affairs or in Korea in the summer of 1950. For instance, a series of 318 talks across the UK in 1950 on Korean culture offered by Korean academic Dr Whang-​Kyung Koh were well-​attended and in total she visited 209 cities, towns and villages offering public lectures. Dr Koh did comment on how British people tended to view Korean affairs through the lens of their own experience (one Scottish audience member asking, for instance, if South and North Korea had a similar relationship to the Scots and the English), but that their ‘keen interest’ was evident.55 Such interest doubtless built on ideas of Eastern exoticism and remained hazy throughout the war with notable gaps in knowledge, but there was all the same a high level of initial curiosity in this distant peninsula.

Memories of total war When the war first broke out and British forces were committed to the defence of South Korea, British people understandably drew parallels with the war that had finished five years previously. One young man lamented that: ‘It’s terrible. I don’t see why we should be talking of a war so soon after the last. All these young fellows they’ve only just got back into Civvy Street –​home from the last war –​they want to settle down to a home and family –​they don’t want to be involved in another war’. In July, one woman from Fulham claimed that ‘no ordinary person wants war’ and that the situation in Korea is ‘leading right into another war’. These concerns reinforce the sense that Britain was a ‘weary titan’ in the immediate post-​war years. Although post-​war historians disagree about this image, the sense of war-​weariness is evident from many MO responses. One woman noted described her neighbours in West London: ‘I do think they’re a bit scared. It’s a reasonable reaction –​this trouble coming so soon after the war is ended –​dear me –​I mean the last war and here we are already talking about another.’ Others did not fancy the odds either: ‘It’s a 50–​50 chance of it developing into another v 38 v

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No woman wants any more war world war’, one man responded, ‘if the Yanks fail to hold their positions we shall become completely involved and be committed to come to their aid’. It has been noted elsewhere that the British were more interested in the birth of Princess Anne in the summer of 1950 than the Korean War.56 This claim is debatable. Although one respondent does indeed argue that ‘Princess Elizabeth’s baby’ was of more concern to her than a distant war, there was nevertheless also an expectation that one should talk about the war. Following the sensational theft of the Coronation Stone from Westminster Abbey by four Scottish students in December 1950, one inveterate diarist stated that: ‘husband and self have yet to meet anyone who gives one hoot who has the Coronation stone. Every time the subject comes up, folk immediately switch to Korea and point out that is what REALLY matters’.57 When war rages, even many thousands of miles away, it seems unpatriotic to speak of anything else. Fears about the war centred on another possible ‘total war’, particularly in war-​damaged London. As the woman from Victoria at the start of this chapter described, some were concerned that the war would be fought in the skies above London once more and require the total involvement and mobilisation of the civilian population. It is hard to gauge the extent to which this affected areas beyond London, as no comparable MO material exists, but headlines from local press suggest anxiety about war, although less concern about aerial attack.58 Geoff Eley has argued that, for the generation ‘coming of age’ in the 1960s, ‘official and popular cultures were bombarded by the war’s presence, via citations, evocations, stories, and commentaries, quite apart from the traces and indentations of everyday life’.59 Yet MO responses to the Korean War in London indicate just how early on the Second World War came to dominate popular memory, and how that memory ultimately skewed responses to a very different type of war. First of all, many people initially stressed the political similarities between Korea and the Second World War. Numerous respondents drew the parallel between Korea in 1950 and Poland in 1939, one civil engineer noting that the invasion of the South was ‘as wicked any invasion by Hitler’.60 The memory of appeasement is evident in many responses. One teacher noted that ‘the world has learnt a lot’ since the 1930s and would not witness aggression without doing anything again.61 In the MO survey from early July 1950, several respondents even argued that it was the Soviet Union that was invading South Korea, rather than the North Koreans. One London bus conductor stated that: v 39 v

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The Korean War in Britain Stalin is another Hitler all over again. He uses the same methods[.] … I’m not against the Russian people –​they are all held under, just like Hitler held the German people down. But there will be a revolution, you can’t always hold people under. They will break out, you mark my words –​the Russians are a race that like having revolutions[.] … There is no free speech. Over here I can say ‘Bugger the King!’ but a Russian couldn’t say that about Stalin. They would be in a concentration camp if they did. When someone liberates Russia I bet you they find dozens of concentration camps dotted all over the country. We daren’t sit still now.

The bus conductor’s answer shows that even in the early 1950s, the image of the Second World War was solidifying as a morally unimpeachable conflict, where Britain had ‘stood alone’ in 1940 and eventually conquered tyranny. The expectation that ‘someone’ would eventually invade the Soviet Union and that, in doing so, would uncover concentration camps potentially stems from the revelations in the late 1940s of the extent of the Nazi concentration and death camp system. During the late 1940s and 1950s the liberation of camps like Bergen-​Belsen fed into a national identity built around the necessity of the war and the distinct moral division between the victorious Allies and their defeated Nazi enemies.62 Korea coincided with this historical moment and it explains much of the early language used to describe the war.63 The Second World War’s growing standing as a moral victory beyond all others, where good triumphed over unquestionable evil, also influenced how respondents viewed freedom of speech and political liberties more generally. Communism, at home and abroad, was described as a menace by some MO respondents. A twenty-​five-​year-​old furniture clerk lamented in the August survey the prospect of being called up for another war as he was ‘trying to get a home together of my own’, but he felt that Communism did need to be stopped. He reflected that, ‘it seems absolutely against the British character and way of life we fought for’. Another respondent noted that he could countenance Communism if only it was not so evangelising, adding that even Catholics ‘are alright in their own way because they don’t try to convert us all’. Others noted that the British should follow the lead of the Australians and discuss outlawing Communism completely.64 Dock strikes in Portsmouth in the summer of 1950 and possible claims about Communist infiltration (as with the strikes in Bristol, Liverpool and London the previous year) added to the distaste with which Communism was held.65 One young woman from Camden Town in the July survey said that she ‘was a Labour woman, but with all this Communism about I’m beginning to change’. v 40 v

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No woman wants any more war These viewpoints are repeated throughout the MO material and certainly show the low opinion many had of Communism, the Soviet Union and its leaders. However, it is important to contextualise this within more long-​standing British ideas of freedom. In newsreel film Two Ways of Life (1958), for example, comparing Britain with the Soviet Union, Hyde Park Corner is prized (if somewhat condescendingly) as a bastion of free speech.66 As later chapters show, British citizens regarded Communism in Britain as a challenge to, but also conversely a sign of, the liberal nature of society. Early fears about Korea and Communism must be contextualised within this seemingly contradictory context. Another much-​feared dimension of total war with Korea was mass mobilisation. One housewife from Sheffield, who had been an MO diarist for ten eventful years, wrote in 1950 that: ‘It makes me shiver and shake when I think we already have thousands of young men old enough for war again.’ She noted later in the summer that ‘I am all the time haunted by the conviction that another war must come, now or later’.67 In her diaries submitted for the second half of 1950, Korea was always one of the first items mentioned, along with the weather. Such reflection was not uncommon. Many individuals regarded themselves as commentators on the world around them, rather than writing autobiography.68 Yet even if commentary on current affairs was not unusual, the summer of 1950 certainly represented a peak in concerns over the degree to which the civilian population would have to be mobilised. But how widely held was the idea, expressed at the start of this chapter, that women somehow took the prospect of a future war ‘the worst’? After all, some female respondents were seemingly unconcerned. One forty-​ five-​year-​old woman blithely stated in July, ‘I’m not worrying about this war. I feel this –​there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it –​so it’s no good worrying!’ Despite this insouciance, the Korean War nevertheless cemented gendered conceptualisations of citizenship which had taken hold during the first half of the twentieth century. The threat of aerial bombardment meant that women were far more involved in conflict than previously and were exposed to new wartime dangers. However, although increasingly ‘militarised’ by this exposure, women’s duties in civil defence were still focused on the domestic and the home, such as offering first aid or acting as air raid wardens.69 Noakes and Grayzel point out that in this way, ‘civil defence workers were organised and imagined in such a way as to preserve the gender hierarchy of military service as an absolutely male performance’.70 Women could only participate in passive, rather than active, citizenship. v 41 v

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The Korean War in Britain The Cold War cemented this discourse, rather than overturning it. In the late 1940s, various citizen organisations such as the Civil Defence Corps (CDC) were established to deal with a possible nuclear attack. Set up by the government in 1949, the CDC comprised of a group of volunteers whose task was to assist the population.71 Plans were similar to those laid down in the Second World War and emanated from the experience of evacuation and shelter policy.72 Civil defence later came to be ridiculed by the 1960s as an ineffectual response to the nuclear threat and the CDC was disbanded in 1968.73 Nevertheless, in the 1950s at least, the Korean War made civil defence concerns more pressing.74 Ominously, one group of civil defence planners in the south-​west town of Honiton even named their September 1950 planning exercise ‘Korea’.75 At the time of the Korean War, therefore, active citizenship was still predicated on very similar assumptions as during the Second World War. There were some critics who railed against this ‘militaristic conception of life’.76 In A Brave New World Revisited (1959), Aldous Huxley criticised this definition of citizenship and argued that much of the dystopic future he had imagined in his 1931 novel had been realised in the early Cold War context. He particularly lamented ‘the cost of what every nation refers to as “defence” … those endless columns of uniformed boys, white, black, brown, yellow, marching obediently towards the common grave’.77 But MO responses indicate how, despite this resistance, older notions of passive and active citizenship along gender lines persisted into the Cold War period. Korea also coincided with a period of examination that followed the Second World War. In the wake of war, as Cynthia Enloe has argued, societies are involved in a ‘fraught’ process of deciding which images of masculinity and femininity should be celebrated and remembered in future public life.78 Although women had largely been excluded from roles associated with active citizenship during the Second World War, their actions had in some cases, such as calls to be included in the Home Guard, been perceived as potentially destabilising.79 The Korean War MO surveys coincide with this post-​war period of reappraisal and show the extent to which particular images of gendered behaviour were already becoming cemented within national memory. By 1950, the image of the worrying, yet brave, wife at home, building a shelter in the garden and writing letters to her husband and sons, had become the enduring emblem of women in wartime. This is not to argue that everyone greeted the war with trepidation or started digging shelters. In July one waiter in his forties even stated v 42 v

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No woman wants any more war that: ‘I like it [the war] because you get plenty of excitement out of it! It puts an end to this dull life! That’s what we want here.’ Whilst this view was certainly not representative of the survey data as a whole, it echoes claims elsewhere by many young national servicemen that Korea would give them a chance ‘to see the world’ (explored further in the next two chapters). Conventional warfare offered opportunities of change and excitement at first, however much such opportunities failed to deliver in Korea itself.

Britain and the bomb The prospect of nuclear warfare, however, was regarded in a different way from conventional warfare. MacArthur’s apparent interest in using an atomic bomb against the advancing Chinese army prompted anxiety. One man from Fulham noted that ‘a lot of people are very touchy –​ they’re getting very scared and are afraid it might lead to the dropping of the Atom Bomb’. Others admitted that they themselves were afraid. In the same Fulham survey one woman stated that: ‘We haven’t forgotten the last war and this one will be worse still with the Atom Bomb.’ She added, ‘I don’t want to think of it –​I really don’t’. Not wanting to address the prospect of nuclear warfare was a common response in the early 1950s, a deliberate blinkering that continued later into the Cold War. As Jonathan Hogg has recently argued, British people frequently pushed the prospect of nuclear warfare from their minds. Although the nuclear threat lurked as a ‘steady, silent presence in dreams and nightmares’, many were purposefully indifferent to the prospect of nuclear war.80 Ambivalence was a common response to the looming prospect of total destruction. Such indifference was not constant, though, and MacArthur’s mooted use of nuclear weaponry was a high-​point in ‘nuclear anxiety’.81 Many respondents once again framed the threat of nuclear war in Korea in terms of the relationship between the United States and Britain. Although some praised the ‘Special Relationship’, some bemoaned US attitudes towards Britain and towards the world more generally. One fifty-​year-​old man linked this to the United States: ‘It is a disgrace: the Americans will have England blown to smithereens.’ He went on to argue that the Americans were the foremost aggressors in the world: They’re war mongers, ever since they’ve had the Atom Bomb and they’re only trying to get someone else to drop it[.] … They’re like money lenders –​ America’s taken away our money, they’ve taken away our bases and we can’t

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The Korean War in Britain say ‘NO’ –​it seems as if the people here are too complacent –​we can’t see anything coming until it’s right on top of us  –​until the first Atom Bomb drops. We’re the stooges of America.

Others echoed these sentiments. One thirty-​ five-​ year-​ old male respondent noted that ‘America has bought Europe over with her money –​ we’re just satellite countries; can’t lift our voice in protest’. Anti-​American sentiment suffused many intellectual circles in the 1950s, but this MO survey also reflects wider uncertainties about Britain’s role in decision-​ making over nuclear weaponry. Following the McMahon Act (1946) and the US pronouncement that they were not going to share nuclear technology secrets with their allies, Britain had begun to secretly develop its own nuclear programme. The existence of this programme was only revealed in 1952 prior to its testing.82 In 1950, though, it was still felt that the United States was the only one that wielded the power in using this weaponry. Some admired the United States: ‘Well’, said one respondent, ‘there’s a lot of talk about the Atom Bomb in the papers –​America will have to be brave enough to use it –​it’s a case of bluff –​if America starts, Russia may come down –​I think the way Churchill thinks, take the bull by the horns’. However, in this case Churchill, one of the engineers of the wartime ‘Special Relationship’, was himself uneasy too about US behaviour over atomic weaponry.83 Whilst the majority of respondents reflected on US action, there was also speculation about British support should the atomic bomb be used. One sixty-​year-​old Londoner even argued that two British peers in particular were fanning the flames in Britain: I take it for granted that we’ll be in with it  –​if America drops the Atom Bomb there’ll be general applications and before very long we’ll all be in it again –​fighting one another same as before. These men, Brabazon and Lord Vansittart they ought to be put in a Lunatic Asylum –​the Atom Bomb ought never to be created –​it’s the Devil’s work. America’s not much good fighting on land –​they’re good at dropping bombs.

The fact that these two peers, Lords Brabazon and Vansittart, are singled out in this extract is significant. Both were well-​known for their staunch anti-​Communism. Vansittart had espoused strong anti-​German views during the Second World War and had heavily resisted German post-​ war rearmament. He took a similarly strong stance against Communism in East Asia. Writing to The Times in January 1950, he argued that in recognising Communist China, the British government was following a similar path to 1930s appeasement and stated that, as in 1939, ‘I want v 44 v

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No woman wants any more war no friendship with evil’ and that ‘lust for world domination must mean another war’.84 He despised all forms of what he called ‘Commu-​Nazis’.85 Ever suspicious of Communist influence in British public service, Vansittart made a long and inflammatory speech in the House of Lords on 29 March 1950, where he named organisations that he felt had not sufficiently purged themselves of Communist members, including the BBC and the Festival of Britain Office.86 By the time of the invasion of South Korea in June, Vansittart was regarded as a prominent and outspoken critic of Communism and against any sort of rapprochement with either Communist China or the Soviet Union. By 1951, he put forward a motion in the Lords arguing that ‘no concessions should be made to the Communist Government of China on the basis of the cessation of hostilities in Korea only’, later withdrawing this motion in face of opposition.87 Vansittart also worked with the other peer mentioned by the MO respondent, John Moore-​Brabazon (Baron Brabazon of Tara) on the International Committee for the Study of European Affairs. One report of this Committee in March 1950 noted that Communists, operating on the orders of the Chinese government, were infiltrating areas of Hong Kong, a major point of trade and power for the British.88 Brabazon-​ Moore had been Minister of Transport during the Second World War and a leading aviator. When in 1942 he expressed the hope that the German and Russian air forces would destroy one another, it was leaked to the press and he was forced to resign.89 It is not surprising therefore that these two peers should appear in discussions about a possible future war with a Communist foe when the Korean War first began. Overall, the first few months of the Korean War were a worrying time for many Britons, as anxieties gathered around several areas: aerial attack, nuclear warfare and the mobilisation of male citizens. These concerns were fed by short-​lived panics over US and South Korean behaviour and even sabre-​rattling from within Parliament. Amid this initial dismay, however, Korea was already slipping from the front pages. Even in July 1950, MO surveys noted that there was no increase in newspaper sales, as typically happened in wartime. One newsagent in Fulham had experienced an increase in his sales, but added that:  ‘nine out of every ten aren’t worrying about this here Korea business  –​they ain’t worrying about war, but they rush to buy the midday editions to know what to back –​racing and the dogs’. The lack of knowledge about Korea and East Asia more generally, teamed with the war’s increasingly static character from mid-​1951, meant that even by 1952 Korea had become a ‘slumbering war’.90 In the novel A Hill in Korea, Private Rabin asks v 45 v

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The Korean War in Britain ‘Who cares a soddin’ hoot about Korea? It’s too far off. It’s a private kind o’ war’.91 The next chapter explores how such servicemen felt about this lack of interest in their ‘private’ war.

Notes 1 All survey material from MOA, 9–​1-​A, public opinions of the Korean War, June  –​July 1950; MOA, 9–​1-​B, news quota survey of public attitudes to Korean War, July 1950; MOA, 9–​1-​C, news quota survey of public attitudes to Korean War, August 1950; MOA, 9–​1-​D, news quota survey of public attitudes to Korean War’, October 1950. Diarist responses are referenced separately. 2 Lucy Noakes and Susan Grayzel, ‘Defending the homeland: gendering civil defence from the First World War to the “War on Terror” ’, in Ana Carden-​ Coyne (ed.), Gender and Conflict since 1914: Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New York and Basingstoke, 2012), p. 31. 3 Charles Madge and Tom Harrison, Mass-​Observation (London, 1937), p. 10. 4 Claire Langhamer, The English in Love:  The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford, 2013), pp. xvii–​xviii; Hinton, Nine Wartime Lives, p. 16. 5 Hinton, Nine Wartime Lives, p. 17. 6 Ben Highmore describes these documents as ‘the strangely ordinary documents of everyday life’, a mixture of banality and poetics, see Ben Highmore, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (London and New York, 2002), p. 75. 7 Eric Hobsbawm, Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz (London, 1998), p. viii. 8 Nick Thomas argues that Hobsbawm’s tendency to offer broad geographical and temporal surveys rendered these ‘ordinary people’ largely ‘nameless and faceless’, see Nick Thomas, ‘Review: Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz by Eric Hobsbawm’, Journal of Social History, 33:4 (2000), 973. This is not to argue that the category ‘ordinary’ has not been used by historical actors themselves for various ends. For instance, Mike Savage argues how workers in the influential sociological survey, the Affluent Worker Study (conducted by John Golthorpe and other eminent sociologists in the 1960s) used the label of ordinariness to position themselves within the British class system. See Mike Savage, ‘Working-​class identities in the 1960s: revisiting the Affluent Worker Study’, Sociology, 39:5 (2005), 938–​9. 9 Langhamer, The English in Love; Gary Cross (ed.), Worktowners at Blackpool: Mass Observation and Popular Leisure in the 1930s (Abingdon and New York, 1990); Brad Beavan, Leisure, Citizenship and Working-​Class Men in Britain (Manchester and New York, 2005), p. 214. 10 Carolyn Steedman explores the popularity of the term ‘everyday’ from the 1960s in challenging historical narratives which overlooked ‘the testimony of those who actually did the living’. See Carolyn Steedman, An Everyday Life of

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No woman wants any more war the English Working Class: Work, Self and Sociability in the Early Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2013), p. 25. 11 Nick Hubble, Mass Observation and Everyday Life: Culture, History and Theory (Basingstoke, 2010), p.  10; Henri Lefebvre (trans. John Moore), Critique of Everyday Life Vol. 1 (London, 1991). 12 Alexandre Campsie, ‘Mass Observation, left intellectuals and the politics of everyday life’, English Historical Review, 131:548 (2016), 96. 13 James Hinton, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937–​1949 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 374 and 378; Mike Savage, ‘Affluence and change in the making of technocratic middle-​class identities: Britain, 1939–​55’, Contemporary British History, 22:4 (2008), 458. 14 Giddens, Modernity and Self-​Identity, p. 76. 15 Carolyn Steedman, ‘Enforced narratives:  stories of another self ’, in Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury and Penny Summerfield (eds), Feminism and Autobiography:  Texts, Theories, Methods (London, 2000), pp. 25–​39; Grace Huxford, ‘ “Write your life!”:  British prisoners of war in the Korean War (1950–​1953) and enforced life narratives’, Life Writing, 12:1 (2015), 3–​23. 16 Dorothy Sheridan, ‘Writing to the archive:  Mass Observation as autobiography’, Sociology, 27:12 (1993), 31. 17 Sidonie Smith, Subjectivity, Identity and the Body:  Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1993), pp. 2–​3. 18 Bodleian Library, MS Attlee 103.7, Foreign Office memorandum ‘Korea’, c. July 1950. 19 BBC, S322/​85/​1, S Series (television), ‘Korean news flash’, 26 June 1950. 20 Martin Gilbert, ‘Never Despair’:  Winston Churchill 1945–​ 1965 (London, 1988), p. 861. 21 Tony Shaw, ‘The Information Research Department of the British Foreign Office and the Korean War, 1950–​53’, Journal of Contemporary History, 34:2 (1999), 265. 22 BBC, S322/​85/​1, home news and entertainment, ‘Korea in world politics’, 8 September 1950. These in-​depth programmes on Korea were largely restricted to the early months of the conflict: subsequent reports by the BBC and Pathé News largely concentrated on particular campaigns such as the infamous Battle of the Imjin River in April 1951 and the truce in 1953. 23 BBC, S322/​85/​1, S Series (television), ‘Korean news flash’, 26 June 1950. 24 BBC, B/​C GOS 6/​8/​50, scripts, London Forum, ‘What are our aims in the Korean fighting?’ (prod. Derek Holroyde), 9 July 1950. 25 Ibid. 26 BBC, S22/​85/​1, home news and entertainment, ‘Korea in world politics’, 8 September 1950. 27 MacDonald, Britain and the Korean War, p.  22; Grey, The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War, p. 68. 27 Brigade was composed of 1st Battalion the Middlesex Regiment and 1st Battalion The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

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The Korean War in Britain 28 Of 152 respondents to the news quota in July 1950, 49.34 per cent supported the US approach, 16.45 per cent felt it was not ‘right’ and the remainder did not wish to comment or were unclear. 29 Until 1947, Britain had provided aid and troops in Greece to support the Greek Government’s military campaign against Communist insurgents. The British Government announced in February 1947 that it would be withdrawing this aid and the Truman Government stepped in to provide support instead. See Michael L. Dockrill and Michael F. Hopkins, The Cold War, Second Edition (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 37–​8. 30 MOA, diarist response 4726, 15 March 1951; MOA, diarist response 4749, 22 March 1951; MOA, diarist response 4535, 22 March 1951. 31 MOA, diarist response 4889, 7 March 1951; MOA, diarist response 5075, 7 March 1951; MOA, diarist response 4957, 16 March 1951; MOA, diarist response 4580, 16 March 1951; MOA, diarist response 4749, 22 March 1951. 32 MacDonald, Britain and the Korean War, pp. 48–​50. 33 ‘General MacArthur relieved of all commands’, The Times, 12 April 1951, p. 6. 34 Peter Lowe, ‘The frustrations of the alliance: Britain, the United States and the Korean War, 1950–​1951’, in James Cotton and Ian Neary (eds), The Korean War in History (Manchester, 1989), p. 84. 35 MacDonald, Korea, 84; Millett, ‘The Korean War’, 190–​1; Max Hastings notes in his Sunday Times review of The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam that ‘[f]‌or years, western left-​wing mythology held that the south was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1950’, see Max Hastings, ‘The forgotten war’, Sunday Times, 10 August 2008. 36 Noel Monks, ‘Mr Selwyn Lloyd says: Britain is concerned’, Daily Mail, 16 June 1952, p. 5. 37 ‘N.U.R. rebuke for Syngman Rhee’, Dundee Courier, 10 July 1953, p. 2; Bernard Kaplan, ‘24,000 men disappear in Korea hills’, Daily Mail, 19 June 1953, p. 3; David Low, ‘Prisoners in Korea’, Manchester Guardian, 23 June 1953; Rees, Korea, pp. 429–​30; Foot, The Wrong War, p. 230. 38 Modern Records Centre (hereafter MRC), MSS 292/​951.9/​2, Trades Union Congress Papers, Letter from Southampton Trades Council, 3 August 1953. 39 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 518, cols 384–​515, Mr Kenneth Younger MP, 22 July 1953. 40 ‘The power behind Rhee is a woman and she is only five feet tall’, Daily Mail, 22 June 1953, p. 1; Special Correspondent, ‘U.N. dilemma of persistent S. Korean defiance’, The Times, 22 June 1953, p. 6. 41 NAM, 1990–​08–​1, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Barry Smith, c. 1990; NAM, 2004–​05–​23–​1, Papers of Patrick J. Wye, unpublished memoir, undated. 42 BBC, R19/​1233, home news and entertainment, ‘The story of the Korean War’, 1953. 43 In the case of China, Robert Bickers and Jonathan Howlett have noted there was a  lack of historical awareness within the ‘British national imaginary’

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No woman wants any more war about the extent of its relationship with China, see Robert Bickers and Jonathan J. Howlett, ‘Introduction’, in Robert Bickers and Jonathan J. Howlett (eds), Britain and China, 1840–​1970:  Empire, Finance and War (Abingdon and New York, 2016), p. 1. 44 Oliver, ‘ “What our sons went through” ’, 243. 45 Clare Makepeace, ‘For “ALL who were captured”? The evolution of national ex-​prisoner of war associations in Britain after the Second World War’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, 7:3 (2014), 258–​60. 46 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 487, cols 2219–​77, Mr Henry Turner MP, 10 May 1951. Other MPs, including Tony Benn, were hesitant about characterising the Japanese ‘race’ in this way. 47 Eugene Kulischer, ‘Teeming Asia and the West’, Political Science Quarterly, 68:4 (1953), 481–​2. 48 TNA, WO 308.89, War Office (DTI), ‘Korea: battle experience questionnaire, Major JL Bromhead’, 27 April 1952; TNA, WO 308.90, War Office (DTI), ‘Korea: battle experience questionnaire, Major CW Woods’, 31 August 1952. 49 NAM, 2006–​10–​5–​13, Transcript of oral history interview with Major Guy T. Ward, Westward Television Limited (Plymouth), 1976; IWM, Docs. 9870, Papers of J. Jacobs, Jim Jacobs, unpublished memoir, p. 2. 50 IWM, Docs. 17199, papers of John H.A. Gerrard, letter to Family, 22 December 1953. 51 IWM, Docs. 13204, papers of Lieut. R.S. Gill, letter to Miss Doreen Foote, 11 October 1950. 52 P.J. Kavanagh, The Perfect Stranger (Saint Paul, 1988), p. 83. 53 NAM, 8905–​167, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Henry Tyler, 14 April 1989. 54 Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), p. 363. 55 Koh, Korea Through British Eyes, p. 3. 56 Kynaston, Austerity Britain, p. 534. 57 MOA, diarist response 5447, 29 December 1950. 58 ‘Air raid warnings’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 22 September 1950, p. 8. 59 Eley, ‘Finding the people’s war’, 819. 60 MOA, diarist response 4791, 7 March 1951. 61 MOA, diarist response 4037, 22 March 1951. 62 Joanne Reilly, Belsen:  The Liberation of a Camp (London and New  York, 1998), p. 1. 63 Ibid., p. 2. Reilly, following the work of Tony Kushner, argues that although British culture did not associate these liberations with a Jewish Holocaust, the camps nevertheless had impact on British culture: indeed, in one rather atypical case, British POWs in Korea even included the Jews of Europe in one collection of prayers, see NAM, 1992–​03–​185–​1, Papers of Captain James Majury, Selected Prayers, 1953.

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The Korean War in Britain 64 The Australian Government of Robert Menzies later attempted to ban Communism completely in 1951. 65 MOA, diarist response 5447, 9 July 1950; Labour Reporter, ‘1,800 London dock workers on strike’, The Times, 20 April 1950, p. 6. Andrew Hammond notes how the Portsmouth strikes prompted the Attlee Government to consider legislation against Communists and, although this never came to pass, anti-​Communist sentiment was rife in 1950, see Andrew Hammond, British Fiction and the Cold War (Basingstoke, 2013), p. 23. 66 Two Ways of Life (dir. Peter Bryan, War Office, 1958). In this film eccentric dissenters (notably Communists) are described as bolstering the democratic tradition still further. 67 MOA, diarist response 5447, 27 June 1950 and 16 August 1950. 68 Sheridan, ‘Writing to the archive’, 32. 69 Noakes and Grayzel, ‘Defending the homeland’, pp. 30 and 35. 70 Ibid., p. 36. 71 Ibid., pp. 36–​7; Grant, After the Bomb, p. 34. 72 Grant, After the Bomb, pp. 34–​5. 73 Ibid., p. 74. 74 Ibid., pp. 62 and 143. 75 ‘Air raid warnings’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 22 September 1950, p. 8. 76 Don Bateman, ‘Don Bateman’s merry-​go-​round totalitarian tours’, Socialist Leader, 42:32 (1951), 5. 77 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (London, 1959), p. 8. 78 Cynthia Enloe, ‘Women after wars: puzzles and meanings’, in Kathleen Barry (ed.), Vietnam’s Women in Transition (New York, 1996), p. 313. 79 Penny Summerfield, ‘ “She wants a gun not a dishcloth!”: gender, service and citizenship in Britain in the Second World War’, in Gerard J. DeGroot and Corinna Peniston-​Bird (eds), A Soldier and a Woman: Sexual Integration in the Military (Harlow, 2000), pp. 119–​34. 80 Hogg, British Nuclear Culture, pp. 2–​3. 81 Ibid., pp. 92–​3. 82 Sabine Lee, ‘ “In no sense vital and actually not even important?” Reality and perception of Britain’s contribution to the development of nuclear weapons’, Contemporary British History, 20:1 (2006), 177. 83 Hennessey, Britain’s Korean War, p. 274. 84 Lord Vansittart, ‘Letter to the editor’, The Times, 24 January 1950, p. 5. 85 Norman Rose, ‘Robert Vansittart (1881–​1957)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004; online edition, January 2011), www.oxforddnb. com/​view/​article/​36630?docPos=8 (accessed 19 April 2016). 86 Hansard, House of Lords Debate (hereafter HL Deb), vol. 166, cols 607–​61, Lord Robert Vansittart, 29 March 1950; ‘Lord Vansittart’s speech’, The Times, 3 April 1950, p. 5. 87 Hansard, HL Deb, vol. 171, cols 618–​35, Lord Robert Vansittart, 2 May 1951.

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No woman wants any more war 88 Special Correspondent, ‘Organizing Chinese overseas’, The Times, 7 March 1950, p. 5. 89 Kenneth Rose, ‘Brabazon, John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-​(1884–​ 1964)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, January 2011), www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​ 32018?docPos=2 (accessed 19 April 2016). 90 ‘The war wakes up’, Daily Mail, 25 June 1952, p. 1. 91 Kent, A Hill in Korea, p. 129.

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You’re in Korea my son: Experiencing battle

In 1951, a soldier poet calling himself ‘Rudyard N.G. Orton’ subverted Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem ‘If ’: If you can work on trucks when spanners freeze you With a bolt … it’s agony to touch When a mug o ‘char’s the only thing to please you And news of note is never very much If you can wait in some towns for one minute While other people burn and run Yours is the stores and everything that’s in it And which is more, you’re in KOREA my son.1

This light-​hearted reimagining of Kipling’s poem lists the difficulties of living, fighting and working in the heat and dust of the Korean peninsula. But it also shows how Korea, a place where you should ‘hold your nose while all about you are holding theirs’, failed to fit with many prevailing cultural ideas of war. Soldier-​writers in the Korean War were certainly conscious of the famous generations of war writers who had preceded them:  in a letter home national serviceman Lieutenant J.  Whybrow described his Brigadier as ‘bald and red of face and short of breath’, quoting Siegfried Sassoon’s 1918 poem ‘Base Details’ almost exactly.2 But Korea was an ill-​fitting coda to this military writing and wartime culture, where ‘news of note is never very much’. As seen in the previous chapter, the discursive dominance of the Second World War encircled British responses to the Korean War. The ‘long Second World War’ profoundly shaped how Korea was understood from its very outset and laid the foundations for Korea’s obscurity within British society and culture. Constant comparisons often concealed the unique elements of the Korean War, from the unfamiliar and often v 52 v

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You’re in Korea my son inhospitable landscape to the physical and psychological demands of rapid movement up and down the peninsula and later patrolling its difficult terrain. The ‘forgetting’ of Korea was felt first  –​and most keenly –​by the servicemen sent there in the early 1950s. The next two chapters explore their first-​hand accounts of life in Korea and how, despite important differences between Korea and the Second World War, the 1939–​45 conflict was nevertheless an ever-​present and frequently referenced presence. This chapter examines the lives of those servicemen, their communications with home and the concretisation of particular strands of collective memory surrounding the Second World War. Experience of the previous war implied authority: writing in a later memoir one national serviceman, Donald Barrett, describes his initial medical inspection: Have you a scar they say? As we search around for some old scar tissue on the knees, the veteran carrying out this task pulls up his sleeve and indicates the type of scar he is looking for. It is about nine inches long, roughly sewn up and apparently caused by a German bayonet. All rather embarrassed we quickly hide our tiny skin blemishes and he enters on my card [‘]no distinguishing marks[’].3

This authority was also underpinned by gendered assumptions too, as militarised masculinity continued to define male roles in the 1950s.4 Battle hardiness shaped interactions between men. British POWs in Korea, for instance, prized themselves on their resilience in comparison to American men, who had not lived through aerial bombing, rationing and austerity in the 1940s.5 Experience of war therefore still shaped what it meant to be a man. This chapter demonstrates how, during service in Korea, soldiers developed a distinct, everyday understanding of ‘experience’ which built on these specific images of the recent past. But military authorities also analysed experience from a more intellectual perspective, exploring its significance to ‘man management’ and personnel theories which were emerging in the 1940s and 1950s. British military and civil organisations were concerned with how to bind societies and groups together during wartime and this concern continued into the early Cold War period. The British Army units in Korea were composed of a mix of different types of servicemen, with very different levels of prior military experience, age, pay and motivation. The Korean War coincided with a changing of the old guard of Second World War veterans in favour of a smaller, more professional army with a large amount of temporary conscripts. v 53 v

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The Korean War in Britain By the mid-​1950s few regulars, particularly those at lower ranks, had much experience prior to 1945.6 Some felt that understanding ‘experience’ could help unlock the secret to binding this new Cold War military together. Life-​writing again sits at the core of this chapter. Some of this life-​ writing was used primarily for communication. Letters were often the full extent of a relationship during war.7 In 1945 psychologist Kenneth Howard advised wives that ‘[n]‌o scrap of news, of domestic detail, of friends and of local events is too trivial to be interesting. These things make him feel that he belongs, that he is still there and in touch with all that is going on’.8 For many, the letter was a microcosm of an entire relationship. Mabel Baker wrote to her husband in Korea about the disputes and allegiances of other wives on the British Army base, a sale of cosmetics at the NAAFI and, in line with Howard’s advice, ended every letter by stating how he was greatly missed and needed.9 It took between seven and ten days for letters from home to travel over 5,000 miles to Korea, so that meaningful, sequential correspondence could take place comparatively easy.10 In November 1950, Lieutenant Robert Gill’s first letter to his girlfriend from Korea stated: ‘Let’s have this war with Russia and get it over with, otherwise we’ll be trembling for the rest of our life[.] … We’ll win through Darling and have the world safe again. I  know that was said in 1914 and 1939 but here we are again.’11 But by 3 May 1951, Gill wrote asking: ‘Are we going to have a war or aren’t we?’ stating that, ‘I  wish somebody would get a grip somewhere and give us a foreign policy and a course of action. I’ve no time for these procrastinating wavering nincompoops!’12 Letters and diaries also reveal more about the context in which they were written in: the rapid movement of troops up and down the peninsula in the first year of war afforded little time for writing, but later when patrolling Korea’s hills became the most common activities for infantry troops, letter-​and diary-​writing was more routine.13 Letter-​ and diary-​writing was far from uncontroversial though. Field Marshall Lord Wavell wrote in 1948 that ‘the average fighting soldier has a natural suspicion of cleverness either of the tongue or of the pen, and is inclined to condemn it’.14 Some soldiers gained notoriety from their writing and were seen by the military as outsiders, who had not fully taken on a military outlook.15 Diaries were in fact prohibited to soldiers in the ranks for much of the twentieth century.16 But life-​writing has a deeper significance too in post-​war history. In modern times, soldiers have repeatedly been asked to provide accounts of their lives, from recruitment processes to battle reports, letters home v 54 v

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You’re in Korea my son or POW repatriation interviews.17 To describe one’s life was not, as Marshall Lord Wavell felt, unsoldierly: it was an integral part of soldierly life and the ‘soldier’s tale’ was one of the most well-​established stories in Western literature.18 The second half of this chapter uses a rather unglamorous body of life-​writing material, ‘battle experience questionnaires’, to uncover just one of many instances where soldiers were required to tell their stories. These simple forms were completed by all officers after their return to Britain and, despite their administrative purpose, they in fact reveal in great detail how servicemen viewed their time –​and their ‘experience’ –​on the Korean peninsula. Far less studied than diaries and letters, this chapter argues that these functional pro forma can actually be analysed as another form of life-​writing and another conduit into both selfhood and experience in Cold War Britain.

Experience in mid-​twentieth-​century Britain Typically social historians tend to associate experience with the ‘history from below’ movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as an antidote to state-​or elite-​focused, empirical history.19 Experience proved a vitally important concept for historians seeking to provide a history for groups frequently overlooked by the mainstream historical narrative, exemplified by E.P. Thompson’s oft-​quoted quest ‘to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper … from the enormous condescension of posterity’.20 Experience has also galvanised subsequent generations of historians and the ‘experiential turn’ has become a mainstay of both social history and the social history of warfare.21 However, the term had been the subject of energetic debate in the decade before Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class. Moreover, in 1950s these debates were intermingled with discussion of both citizenship and selfhood. Thompson himself exemplified this intellectual fascination with experience. Between 1948 and 1965, Thompson taught history and literature at the Extra-​Mural Studies Department at Leeds University, shaping his thinking on class, experience and culture. Teaching working adults, Thompson was, even in the 1950s, beginning to formulate his later published ideas on the relationship between experience and education. He wrote in 1950 that the tutor must be ‘prepared to have hitherto accepted academic judgements corrected in the light of the student’s experience’.22 In 1968 he noted that ‘experience modifies … the entire educational process’.23 Thompson was keenly aware of the use and challenges of experience in an adult educational setting, but also of v 55 v

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The Korean War in Britain the relationship between experience and belonging to a particular group or class. He noted in The Making of the English Working Class that ‘class-​ consciousness is the way in which … experiences are handled in cultural terms:  embodied in traditions, value-​systems, ideas and institutional forms’.24 The ‘experience’ of occupying a specific social context, rather than the historical situation itself, made one part of a particular group –​ with a particular ‘consciousness’. In Thompson’s eyes, experience was a vital part in bringing a group or class together. Others too were dissecting the deeper meaning and implications of experience: the Royal Army Educational Corps (RAEC), like Thompson, was wrestling with the relevance of experience to teaching and to belonging to a social group. Professor T.E. Jessop, writing in 1949 in the RAEC journal, worried about the generation of men now joining the service, particularly national servicemen: Ideas that are familiar to us are altogether strange to them, either because [they were] never put into them, or because of the lack of the relevant ‘apperceptive background’[.] … They lack a whole range of emotional and intellectual experience that has come naturally to those of us who are old enough to have been given, at home as well as school, the rich mental and spiritual legacy of our nation’s past. There is a fine challenge here to those who have to educate them.25

Jessop was Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Hull between 1928 and 1961 and, like Thompson, also taught literature in the Department of Adult Education at his university.26 He drew attention to the importance of experience and how ‘emotional and intellectual experience’ conferred authority. For Jessop, as for some civil commentators, group discussion was also vital to bringing people together. Since the early 1940s and the establishment of the ABCA, army officials had argued that group discussion was the best way to inculcate a shared sense of purpose and citizenship.27 The ideological rivalry of the Cold War convinced many that group discussion was vital to the survival of democracy. As an article in the RAEC journal noted:  ‘Today, more than at any other period in world history, [the] aims and ideals of civilization [sic] are the concern and topic of discussion among all types of citizens.’28 However, the value placed on both shared experience and group discussion posed a problem for military and political authorities as, even by the 1950s, not everyone could discuss shared experiences of the Second World War. Vinen observes that for the men born between 1928 and 1939, civilian experiences, not military ones, bound them together.29 v 56 v

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You’re in Korea my son The Korean War generation thus presented military commentators with a unique conundrum:  if shared military experience could not create a cohesive group or society in post-​war Britain, then what could?

Men and boys Whilst authorities considered this question, servicemen made use of their own everyday understandings of experience. Sociologist (and former national serviceman) David Morgan argued that authority was conferred on individuals due to ‘life-​experience’, rather than just to age. This life-​experience was sometimes broadly equated with sexual experience (the importance of having ‘got some in’), but not completely, as contact with the enemy was also an important component.30 The conferral of such authority was made all the more important because of the comparatively young age of the Cold War army as a whole. Masculinity also  underpinned this everyday understanding of experience  –​life, sexual or otherwise. Typically we have viewed the 1940s and 1950s as the era of the domestic man, when social commentators praised men’s role in both companionate marriage and the home.31 Laura King has argued that men were more engaged with fatherhood from the 1950s, even if there was a discrepancy between the domestic labour of men and women. Alongside the well-​documented post-​war literature on motherhood, fatherhood was also promoted by social commentators. ‘Family-​orientated’ masculinity became a much more important part of male identity and selfhood in this period.32 Even war films from this era promoted the domestic ideal, with many ending with a promised or actual return home.33 However, Martin Francis highlights how these seemingly happy endings were actually far more unsettling and indicate a ‘significant male restlessness and a yearning for the all-​male camaraderie of service life’ in the post-​war period.34 Fantasies of adventure and male companionship abound in films in the 1950s. In the year of the outbreak of the Korean War, The Wooden Horse marked the start of a post-​war veneration of the bravery, charm and daring of the British POW.35 But The Wooden Horse, much like The Captive Heart (1946), again showed the instability surrounding the male subject in the late 1940s and 1950s. Rather than stories of plucky escape, these early POW films instead showed men accepting their confinement and even engaging in potentially feminising activities, such as domestic chores about the camp.36 It was only with The Colditz Story (1955) that the British POW’s story was cemented in film v 57 v

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The Korean War in Britain as a narrative of British perseverance and, most importantly, escape. The POW thus retained his sense of himself as a British soldier and man. This flattening of the war film genre ran parallel to the Korean War. Wendy Webster argues that during the 1950s, as the Second World War became more significant to national identity through films, ‘the old imperial hero’ became a focal point for British identity in ‘the war film’, celebrating a particular representation of white, British masculinity.37 Although the empire’s political significance receded at this time, its images had found a new significance in war films and cultural representations of the Second World War. By the outbreak of Korea, British culture had thus elevated and idealised the past military experience of the Second World War generation. But were such fantasies limited to the cinema screen? Did past tales of adventure actually influence both Korean War servicemen and those at home? Although far from definitive, letters and diaries written by and to servicemen in the Korean War offer revealing answers to these questions. The first letters written home were typically those written on the way to Korea. Soldiers’ stories have, since at least the nineteenth century, featured detailed and emotive descriptions of their journey to war.38 Servicemen bound for Korea remember leaving city ports with relatives wishing them well and regimental bands playing.39 The majority of soldiers made the trip to Korea aboard one of Britain’s Empire transport ships: Fowey, Halladale, Orwell, Pride, Windrush, the Asturias and the Dilwara.40 These troopships encapsulated the last age of imperial sea travel as well as wider social and political change. HMT Empire Windrush, for example, had formerly been a German troopship, was renamed and re-​launched in 1947 after the British had seized it and made potentially its most well-​known journey in 1948 when it brought Caribbean migrants to Tilbury docks.41 Many servicemen expressed excitement at the journey on board these ships. For some, the voyage to Korea represented their first brush with ‘adventure’ before entering the theatre of operations in Korea. For the small number of women going to Korea, foreign travel was regarded in a slightly different way. Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC) Nurse Betty Smith, who served aboard the Empire Fowey during the Korean War, stated that she too wanted ‘adventure’, although she also reflected that simply not being at home was for her an adventure, as her family felt her primary duty lay at home.42 Servicemen also made frequent reference to being on a ‘Cook’s Tour’ and associated their exotic travels with this famous tour company.43 John Gerrard even read The Thomas Cook Story during his period of service, which v 58 v

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You’re in Korea my son brought ‘a lot of local colour’ to his experiences.44 Despite their lack of choice in going to Korea, many national servicemen also described their journey as the chance for them to seek out adventure. Henry Tyler said that he saw Korea as ‘high adventure and the opportunity to travel. I  mean at that time, it’s fair to say that my horizons had been, quite limited really’.45 The Empire Route also brought with it the expectation of the exotic. Private Sam Mercer remembered in a later oral history interview that they were not even allowed to go ashore in Port Said, as the Royal Ulster Rifles (RUR) had ‘painted the town a bit of a lurid colour’ on a previous visit.46 Typically, references to these ‘lurid’ topics were restricted to diaries, rather than letters. For example, Private C.B.L. Barr wrote in his diary in 1954: Most of our time was spent travelling between one camp and the other, and being lectured on one single solitary lonesome subject time and time again until we were fed up to the teeth with hearing about VD –​and it all did no good at all to the people at whom it was aimed. Last year 30 per cent of the British troops returning home from the Korean theatre were suffering from it, and the figure is still going up. The trouble is that the Kure [Japan] area especially has the highest proportion of prostitutes and VD in the world, and very little can be done to control it while so many troops are stationed in the district or passing through.47

Many servicemen arrived into Kure in Japan, the large seaport where many Allied bases and hospitals were located. Others went there on their ‘R&R’ periods, hence Barr’s claim about the prevalence of venereal disease. Excitement was tempered with unease. As the ships neared Korea many expressed dissatisfaction at their preparedness. Despite restrictions in space, officers and non-​ commissioned officers (NCOs) did lead soldiers in physical training (PT) sessions. PT occupied a significant place in the history of the British Army and had enduring memory among the soldiers themselves.48 Training aboard ship also included rifle drill and ranges when out in open water. But in one of many letters home, Lieutenant Julian Potter complained about the on-​board training ‘because there is hardly any space to train in[.] … The men like this farcical training even less than they like doing nothing’.49 Potter was not alone in his exasperation. Looking back on this training, Corporal Milbery of the Royal Fusiliers (RF) noted that ‘that was the only real time that I felt we ought to have been told a bit more[.] … I don’t know, perhaps it would have been bad for discipline or something!’50 Soldiers, and particularly v 59 v

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The Korean War in Britain conscripts, felt that this journey was their last preparation for war and that they ought to be prepared fully for their future roles. Upon arrival in Korea, depending on their regiment, servicemen occupied a range of forward, reserve or support positions in the hilly terrain of Korea. Particularly in the final two years of the war, where action was mostly concentrated around the 38th Parallel, soldiers occupied trenches, dugouts and tents in the forward areas. Numerous letter-​ writers apologise for not writing while in frontline positions. On 26 March 1951, Lieutenant Potter wrote to his parents that: ‘I am sorry this letter is a day late, but yesterday (Easter Sunday) I  did not get a spare moment. Ever since I  joined this troop it has been on the hop trying to keep up with the 45 Field Regt. who themselves have been trying to keep the Chinese in range.’51 Nurse Georgina Johnstone found her brief period in Korea contrasted with her nursing in Kure, as there was ‘no routine like you have in hospital[.] … That wasn’t easy … because you didn’t know often what’s going to be there’.52 This not to say that writing was only restricted by lack of time amid frontline action. One sergeant wrote to another that ‘I’m late in writing, but as usual with me I have no excuse. Except maybe laziness’.53 However, on the whole, servicemen felt that they must write regularly and it was an expectation that worked both ways.  Private Barr wrote to his family when aboard the Empire Orwell that: ‘I am looking forward to hearing something from you by every post, so please try to write something every few days so that I do not have to attend too many post queues in vain.’54 There were also periods away from the line and many servicemen wrote home during ‘R&R’ periods in Japan, with some writing home about visits to Tokyo and war-​damaged Nagasaki and Hiroshima.55 Diary-​writing too had a special significance for troops in Korea. As a pay clerk in the Royal Army Pay Corps (RAPC) from 1947, Private Anthony John Baker travelled extensively around the reserve areas in Korea, even noting that:  ‘I have only to see Jock Turner then I’ve seen all the Pay Corps in Korea.’56 Baker’s diary was filled with long, but irregular entries, according to the time he had to write. It ended with a despondent entry in August 1951: ‘The events of spring have gone, the summer has come with its … mugginess, torrential rains, making rivers out of streams … huge insects, sweat, dirt and general unpleasantness, the peace talks go on, so does the war and the … futility of it becomes more & more apparent every day.’57 Futility has been a common feature of much modern war-​writing, but Baker’s abrupt end to his diary suggests that he felt that the ‘real’ events of the war were over by 1951.58 From then on the v 60 v

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You’re in Korea my son messy peace negotiations did not correspond with his idea of war. Others’ actions fitted more neatly with the conventional ideas of battle experience: Second Lieutenant Reed (Middlesex) kept a diary between October 1950 and May 1951, which was filled with small entries brimming with military activities and occasional comments on the weather.59 Experience and memories of past conflict also affected the responses of those at home. Using military slang and abbreviations, Private Baker’s father made a direct enquiry about an officer he knew in ‘his’ war, as well as the quality of the food in both: It is funny how we have different grouses in our wars, in mine it was all tinned jam and bully, yours seem to be chicken and fruit, still it all goes down in the same old way and we still grouse. I was wondering if you have met the Gloucesters yet and spoken to the R.S.M. Hobbs. Major E.D. Harding is also there if you get a chance to say to him[:]‌‘My father asks me to tell you that a good officer always has a crate of beer in the back of his P.O.,’ he is bound to ask who your father is and you can tell him, also tell him I only drink at weekends now unless somebody takes me out, I am too broke.60

Elsewhere, Robin Bruford-​Davies, taken as a POW during the Korean War, mentioned how his father, who had been a soldier before him, insisted on buying him gloves and warm clothes.61 Given the intense cold of the winter of 1950–​51 and the short supply of many items of clothing, this advice was doubtless welcomed. On 7 December 1950, Lieutenant Julian Potter wrote three letters home to his father, mother and brother: his letters to his mother and brother dwell on the food and the political situation surrounding the war, whereas the letter to his father was a detailed description of the ground and tactical exercises.62 This was replicated with many other soldier letters, with mothers typically told about practical arrangements and asked to send items out to Korea.63 It is unclear whether these letters corroborate Francis’ argument, that by the 1950s the Second World War generation longed for adventure and a return to the homosocial world of the military. Descriptions of ‘their’ war could simply be providing helpful information or amusing anecdotes for the younger generation. But at the same time, the battles in which the previous generation had fought were already becoming legendary.64 National serviceman Keith Taylor spoke of the reservists in his own battalion: ‘psychologically there was undoubtedly a feeling that the reservists had seen it all before, many of them had had very distinguished careers in the Second World War and one acknowledged their great experience.’65 Experience in this case was again marker of authority, whether v 61 v

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The Korean War in Britain from a letter-​writer from home or from the other men in the unit. The shared military experiences across the generations did not necessarily lead to a complete abandonment of tact in letter-​writing though. Reservist Lieutenant Malcolm Cubiss wrote to his parents of a serious injury he sustained, but couched it in light-​hearted terms, so as not to alarm them: Thank you very much for the two cables, which you so kindly sent, and for the letter, which I received this afternoon. I am sorry for not writing before but I have not had a pen. I am quite all right and there is no need for worry. I have however been knocked about a bit worse than last time and I’m afraid that I have lost my right hand[.]‌However the Brigadier and C.O. are finding out from the War Office what difference, if any, it will make to my Regular Commission. The medical people say that it probably will not make any difference. Anyhow, shall have to close now as the man wants his typewriter back. Love Malcolm.66

Cubiss was right not to worry his parents about his post-​ Korea prospects: he later went on to get his commission and eventually became a Brigadier, although he did take to wearing a hook after being told off for not saluting properly.67

Battle experience Everyday conceptualisations of military experience are also evident in more functional documents. Although seemingly less immediate than a letter or diary, ‘battle experience questionnaires’ reveal a great deal about selfhood and experience in mid-​twentieth-​century Britain. The mundane but pervasive exercise of filling out battle experience forms, themselves a relic from the Second World War, reinforced the centrality of military experience, but also posed other important questions: was frontline experience the ultimate evidence of active citizenship and manly duty? Or was there space for other variants of wartime experience? As these forms demonstrate, this distinction was an ever-​present issue for officers describing their ‘battle experience’. Typically, forms like these are dismissed as simply one of many mechanisms by which branches of the modern state gathers information.68 As many post-​war historians argue, the modern state’s ability to observe, quantify and shape its subjects altered radically in the second half of the twentieth century and the post-​war state was created and bolstered through its information-​gathering capabilities. Some historians v 62 v

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You’re in Korea my son have even showed how modern citizens came to internalise the categories presented to them through these processes.69 Through prevailing upon its citizens to give information about themselves to the state, people came to feel part of one particular group or nation.70 As Mary Poovey argues, these new ‘knowledge practices’ came to underpin particular institutions and ways of thinking.71 The Cold War and military experience have featured little in these interpretations, but, as Richard Aldrich argues, it was during the Cold War that ‘the hidden hand’ of the British government began to truly extend its reach.72 Wartime registration projects gave way to even more complex information-​gathering systems and domestic intelligence and surveillance grew. The growing bureaucratic apparatus of the post-​war welfare state and the Cold War ‘secret state’ together thus generated vast amounts of information on British citizens. In very practical terms this meant that, by 1950, the simple form was a common, if not the most common, life-​narrative document in modern Western society. But such forms were not just tools of the state. Often eloquent and frequently disgruntled, the battle experience forms from Korea are a powerful example of people writing to, or even against, the information-​gathering mechanisms of the modern state and prevailing assumptions about what war really was. Just over two hundred battle experience forms remain from 1951–​52, two years with contrasting events in war. For British forces, 1951 began with a small Chinese offensive which pushed UN forces out of Seoul, but it was recaptured by the Eighth United States Army Korea (EUSAK) as they moved northwards in March. It was with the massive Chinese Spring Offensive in late April that the UN retreated more extensively. By contrast, 1952 was comparatively quiet, as attention focused on POWs and halting peace negotiations began. Fighting was more static by this stage. The Directorate of Tactical Investigation (DTI) (Questionnaire and War Diary Section) at the War Office produced a standard form of ten questions, most of which concerned tactics. It was extended in the second half of 1952 with an eleventh question: ‘give a couple of tips which you think would help an officer of your rank when he is posted to Korea’ (see Appendix for full form).73 Of the respondents, 7 per cent were Second Lieutenants, 32 per cent Lieutenants, 36 per cent Captains and 21 per cent Majors, with the remainder Lieutenant Colonel or above, and one stray Sergeant Major. Lieutenant R. Spittle (REME) served the longest time in Korea (twenty-​two months), but all officers were given the same form in which to respond to their ‘battle experience’ regardless of service length. v 63 v

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The Korean War in Britain Responses were mostly handwritten and completed within four months of their return from Korea (with a few exceptions), when the forms were sent to the War Office for analysis by Major Philip Hugh Godsal.74 Godsal even replied to respondents, sometimes with detailed letters assuring officers that their opinions would be taken into account when considering future provision in Korea.75 Some historians have analysed these forms for the empirical information they can yield. Robert Engen’s Second World War history, Canadians under Fire, acknowledges the ‘multiplicity of subjective experiences’ in these forms, but is still dissatisfied with the lack of reliable information on ‘specific actions’ or battles in the questionnaires.76 In his recent study of the British Army in the Cold War, David French used a selection of battle experience forms from the Korean War to sketch the equipment shortages of the British Army, including the lack of available four-​wheel-​ drive vehicles and automatic weaponry needed to withstand Chinese assault.77 In terms of equipment, one might add to French’s assessment that equipment complaints changed over time. Major A.E. Younger (Corps of Royal Engineers (RE)) noted in 1951 that ‘[a]‌part from ammunition, almost every item was in short supply’, including winter clothing, tents and suitable boots. But by 1952, Captain G.R. Hill felt so well-​ provisioned that he noted that: ‘I would say that 1 Commwel Div is by far the best equipped Division ever known in the annals of our history.’ However, although useful to consider when reading the questionnaires from the War Office’s perspective, the forms go beyond simply stating material shortages. Rather than reading these questionnaires for empirical data alone and the general trends they reveal (which Engen noted was the War Office’s aim), historians can also use battle experience questionnaires as a source of life-​narrative, as the aim of the form, in Godsal’s words, was to get ‘individual as opposed to official opinions’.78 Officers were encouraged to attach addenda or personal notes and just over 10 per cent of British recipients from Korea did so.79 These addenda are the first indication of the difficulties officers faced in committing their battle experience to paper. Some used extra paper to describe the effect of a particular enemy weapon or tactic in detail, to give details on their own unit, or to list shortages (which for some officers were too numerous to fit in the standard answer space provided). These even included diagrams in some instances. However, others used addenda to express their dissatisfaction with the questionnaire’s format and its rigid questions. Captain J.W. Wheatley (RE) attached a letter to his near-​empty form, noting that ‘owing to my service in Korea being only in a Works Services capacity, v 64 v

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You’re in Korea my son it is only possible for me to report on such’ and then provides a detailed description of the provision of hutting (including Nissen and Romney huts) in Korea. Godsal even wrote to one respondent that he ‘realise[d]‌ that the proforma is not applicable in every case; it is part of the system[,] however; to make sure that the people who really have got something to say get a copy, it has to go to everybody’.80 The regimental distribution of forms is significant here, simply because not all of those who were sent the form had necessarily been near the frontline in Korea, due to the regiment in which they served and its function. Regiment was an important factor in military identity, not an empty label: regimental commitment was deeply felt by many individuals. In a radio programme entitled ‘Korean Campaign: As the Soldier Sees It’, Lieutenant Colonel Digby Grist noted that the regiment and the brigade were ‘those big things in our lives’, a sentiment which was widely-​ felt.81 But it also affected the experience a serviceman would have. For example, almost 10 per cent of respondents of the sample available from Korea were in the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC), which provided a variety of support functions in all areas of Korea and Kure, Japan. Military engineers from the Royal Engineers (RE), technical specialists from the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) and clerks from the RAPC were sent forms too.82 Some officers responded ‘N.K’ (not known)  to questions, whilst Lieutenant C.R. Hunter (RE) for instance commented that the ‘only information of battle experience that I  can supply is consequently second hand’. The term ‘battle experience’ simply did not match up with their own experience in Korea. Training featured yet again  in these forms. When asked:  ‘In action, did you experience any shortcomings in the training you received prior to going into battle?’ the majority of officers felt that they had no deficiencies in their training, particularly those filling in the form in 1952. These officers had in many cases benefited from training in Hong Kong prior to arrival or in one of the British Army’s other overseas bases. Lieutenant Marshall (RSF) noted that he had participated in four large-​ scale exercises as part of the British Army of the Rhine and Captain C.W. Woods (RE) wrote that his regiment had embarked straight from Cyrenaica (in present-​day Libya) where they had had space to train prior to leaving for Korea. However, a significant minority of complaints about lack of training demonstrate areas where officers felt the British Army was lacking and reflect some of the worries we have already seen in the letter-​writing of British servicemen on the way to Korea. Some called for more specific training to be given, such as night training, mine v 65 v

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The Korean War in Britain laying, general living in the field and for more information on the other branches of the military. There were also calls for more integration with UN Allies. Captain P.R. Hadden (RASC) stated that ‘more information about other armies … [was] necessary when operating as an integrated force in Korea’ and Lieutenant Colonel A.W. Vickers of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) argued that all young officers needed a thorough grounding in US Army organisation, so important were they to the Korean theatre. Nevertheless, some noted that, ‘most tasks were peculiar to Korea’ and thus had to be ‘learnt the hard way’, by doing the job itself. This attitude is another indication of British officers’ understanding of the term experience in Korea. Experience was something which had to be gained in order to do a job proficiently; experience was a marker of a soldier. Lieutenant E. Watkins (Royal Regiment of Artillery (RA)), for example, stated that his training had a few deficiencies, but ‘only in constructing dug outs, shelters and gun pits’ and they ‘soon learnt by experience the best ways of doing this’. Similarly, Lieutenant E.C. Waterhouse (RA) noted that his job was a relatively new one in 29 Brigade, so ‘had to be learnt by experience’, but he ‘felt no serious lack of training’. There are important variations to take into account when analysing responses to training in battle experience forms. As noted in the above discussion of letter-​writing, national servicemen often felt particularly lacking in military experience when sent to Korea. Second Lieutenant J. Stirling of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (A&SH) wrote that ‘[t]‌here was no “battle inoculation” and I  had no idea how near a bullet was or what it sounded like’. National servicemen were not the only ones to feel this way. Major C.H. Mitchell argued that reservists ‘only had one month to pick up the threads after four years of civil life’. One reservist, who used the form to give full details of being recalled to the army and sailing to Korea, wrote that: ‘I feel that the nine days training I had at Stanford Training Area were insufficient to adapt me from two years of civilian life to an active unit command especially as there were several new weapons to be mastered and new theories to be put into practice.’ However, the gulf between civilian and military was not necessarily felt by all and some reservists noted that it did not take them long to adapt to their new circumstances. Others were more confident in asserting their knowledge and once again the Second World War was frequently referenced. Sir C.J. Nixon noted that he was familiar with the enemy’s tactics, as he ‘served in Far East Theatre in 39–​45 war but quite a large number of the men were surprised at the Chinese night warfare and their methods of infiltration and at “Noises Off ”, v 66 v

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You’re in Korea my son trumpets, whistles, slogans etc.’. Major Eastwood (RASC) also described his experience in Burma and noted that ‘war in Korea is like war in Burma and not Europe’. Officers pointed out the parallels in Chinese and Japanese tactics and hypothesised about an ‘Asian’ method of waging war. The majority of questions on the battle experience form concerned the efficacy of these enemy tactics. Four questions focused on enemy tactics; those which surprised respondents the most, their general tactics, weapons to which ‘we had no answer’ and which weapon had the greatest effect on morale. The overwhelming majority of responses to these questions highlighted the ‘mass’ tactics of the Chinese, termed by some as the ‘red flood’ or ‘human wave’. Lieutenant Benson of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI) summed up the comments of many officers: ‘It would appear as if a Wembley football crowd was bearing down on one.’ As in Britain itself, the Chinese were depicted as a homogenous mass of people. Some describe this difference between the mass tactics of the Chinese enemy and the army of British individuals in more hyperbolic terms. Lieutenant L.C. Sharpe (Middlesex) wrote that ‘[t]‌hey appeared to have no concern for their own lives, and many appeared to be drugged’ and Lieutenant I.G. Minto (Buffs) claimed that ‘the Communist troops appear to be well[-​] endowed with an almost animal cunning in hiding his movements’. A further sub-​question on general tactics  –​‘Were they orthodox by our teaching?’  –​brought forth, in some cases, statements about racial differences between the two armies. Some respondents saw Chinese methods as totally alien to British methods, particularly the use of large numbers of troops in offensives, and saw this as unorthodox, where ‘men appear to be expendable a greater rate than equipment’. These assessments of the Chinese method of fighting appeared to epitomise ‘Oriental’ societies’ lack of value on individual life, an assumption that emanated from the last war and long-standing stereotypes.83 Once again racialised assumptions were easily mapped onto the new Cold War enemy. The Chinese were not the only group whose actions were viewed with surprise and incredulity though. Officers reflected on fluctuating relations with the United States. On a question about enemy tactics, Captain G.W. Carew (Warwickshire) instead reflected on the withdrawal of US troops down the peninsula in the autumn of 1950: ‘At that time our “Allies” moral[e] was bad and lorries were tearing past us marked “Non-​stop to Pusan –​You’ve had it!” My respect for them sank while my appreciation of the British went up sky high.’ Memories of the EUSAK retreat down the peninsula in the face of the Chinese Spring Offensive were particularly vivid. Some did, however, note the usefulness of US ‘C’ ration packs and their readiness to trade supplies for whisky. v 67 v

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The Korean War in Britain The final question on tips to fellow officers often elicited quite personal and revealing responses. Captain J.W. Donaldson (RA) heeded fellow officers ‘not to be ashamed of taking a nap when opportunity offers’, whilst several officers state the importance of checking your men have dry feet in the winter or (reflecting the social class of many writers) of bringing a shotgun, as there were plenty of pheasants in the rear areas. One irritated officer simply wrote, ‘don’t trust all the bloody porters’. However, as Engen points out, the DTI at the War Office were not keen on distributing the information provided in battle experience forms and typically used them to produce documents on tactics or provisions for consultation by high-​ level military authorities. These tips were most likely used to inform policy, not to provide their fellows with handy hints on living in Korea. Overall, servicemen in Korea made use of overlapping conceptions of experience, war and masculinity. Korea coincided with a period when definitions of masculinity were not necessarily clear-​cut, but a particular military experience was steadily becoming regarded as a definitive, binding and enduring emblem of masculine endeavour. Michael Roper warns us that when analysing wartime experience we should not assume that masculinity can only be defined by either change or continuity: both often sit alongside one another or indeed ‘one on another’.84 Korea exemplifies this complex intersection of old and new ideas about masculinity and experience. Citizenship too percolated these debates, as commentators examined not just how to bind groups together but how to instil a sense of ‘citizenship’ in Cold War Britain. As the next chapter shows, one group was under particular scrutiny and demonstrated again the influence of both Second World War memories and the new demands of the Cold War world –​national service conscripts.

Notes 1 NAM, 1990–​12–​34/​18, papers of Anthony John Baker, Rudyard N.G. Norton, ‘Korea: a lament on a looted typewriter’, c. 1951. The author was potentially Lieutenant Geoffrey Norton, Middlesex Regiment. 2 IWM, Docs. 12723, papers of J.  Whybrow, unpublished memoir; letter to parents, 17 August 1952; Siegfried Sassoon, ‘Base details’, in Siegfried Sassoon, Counter Attack and Other Poems (New York, 1918), p. 25. 3 NAM, 2000–​88–​55, papers of D.F. Barrett, unpublished autobiography, vol. I, 2000. 4 Grace Huxford, ‘ “Men of the world” or “uniformed boys”? Hegemonic masculinity and the British Army in the era of the Korean War’, in Phillip Muehlenbeck (ed.), Gender, Sexuality and the Cold War: A Global Perspective (Nashville, 2017), pp. 251–​69.

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You’re in Korea my son 5 IWM, Docs. 8156, papers of F.E. Carter, unpublished memoir, c. 1987; IWM, 10982, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Edward Beckerley, 8 November 1987; NAM, 1989–​05–​163, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Robin Bruford-​Davies, 10 February 1989. 6 Richard Vinen, National Service: Conscription in Britain 1945–​1963 (London, 2014), p. 253. 7 Liz Stanley, ‘The epistolarium:  on theorising letters and correspondences’, Auto/​Biography, 12 (2004), 208. 8 Kenneth Howard, Sex Problems of the Returning Soldier (Manchester, c. 1945), p. 59. 9 NAM, 1990–​12–​34, papers of Anthony John Baker, letters from Mrs Mabel Baker to Anthony John Baker, 17 November and 28 November 1950. NAAFI stood for Navy, Army and Air Forces Institutes and most commonly referred to military canteens, bars and small supplies outlets (as well as welfare facilities). 10 Ashley Cunningham-​Boothe and Peter Farrar (eds), British Forces in the Korean War (Leamington Spa, 1988), p. 13. 11 IWM, Docs. 13204, papers of R.S. Gill, letter to Miss Doreen Foote, 8 November 1950. 12 IWM, Docs. 13204, papers of R.S. Gill, letter to Miss Doreen Foote, 3 May 1951. 13 John Ogden, On Fire: A Novel of the 1950s (Brighton, 2007), p. 136; David Rose, Off the Record: The Life and letters of a Black Watch Officer (Staplehurst, 1996), p.  101; Harold Davis (with Paul Smith), Tougher than Bullets:  The Heroic Tale of a Black Watch Survivor of the Korean War (Edinburgh and London, 2012), p. 43. 14 Wavell, ‘Minerva’s owl’, 12–​13. 15 Samuel Hynes, ‘Personal narratives and commemoration’, in Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan (eds), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1999), p.  213. Rachel Woodward also notes that:  ‘To ponder extensively on the reasons for joining up is simply unsoldierly’, see Rachel Woodward, ‘ “Not for Queen and country or any of that shit”:  reflections on citizenship and military participation in contemporary British soldier narratives’, in Deborah Cowen and Emily Gilbert (eds), War, Citizenship, Territory (New York and Abingdon, 2008), p. 374. 16 Hellbeck, Revolution on my Mind, p. 86. 17 Huxford, ‘ “Write your life!” ’, 3–​23. 18 Carolyn Steedman, The Radical Soldier’s Tale:  John Pearman, 1819–​1908 (London and New York, 1988), p. 39. 19 Joan Scott, ‘The evidence of experience’, Critical Inquiry, 17:4 (1991), 776. 20 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1965;1991 edn), p. 12. 21 Dominick LaCapra, History in Transit:  Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (New York, 2004), pp. 3 and 38; Leonard V. Smith, The Embattled Self: French Soldiers’ Testimony of the Great War (Ithaca and London, 2007).

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The Korean War in Britain 22 Peter Searby, John Rule and Robert Malcolmson, ‘Edward Thompson as a teacher: Yorkshire and Warwick’, in John Rule and Robert Malcolmson (eds), Protest and Survival: The Historical Experience (London, 1993), p. 6. 23 E.P. Thompson, Education and Experience (Leeds, 1968), p. 1. 24 Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 9. 25 T.E. Jessop, ‘Religion in army education’, Army Education: The Journal of the Army Educational Corps, 23:1 (1949), 12. 26 Hull History Centre, UDJP/​2/​4/​39, T.E. Jessop papers, Anonymous, ‘A brief history of the Adult Education Department, 1928–​1960, Hull University’, c. 1960, p. 7. 27 Ford, The Bureau of Current Affairs, p. 24. 28 Brimble, ‘Science and society’, 56. 29 Vinen, National Service, p. xxxiii. 30 David Morgan, ‘It Will Make a Man of You’:  Notes on National Service, Masculinity and Autobiography (Manchester, 1987), pp. 67–​8. 31 Martin Francis, ‘A flight from commitment? Domesticity, adventure and the masculine imaginary in Britain after the Second World War’, Gender and History, 19:1 (2007), 164. 32 Laura King, ‘ “Now you see a great many men pushing their pram proudly”: family-​orientated masculinity represented and experienced in mid-​twentieth-​ century Britain’, Cultural and Social History, 10:4 (2015), 611. 33 Francis, ‘A flight from commitment?’, 169. 34 Ibid., 164. 35 The Wooden Horse (dir. Jack Lee, Wessex Film/​British Lion/​London Film, 1950). 36 Gill Plain, ‘Before the Colditz myth: telling POW stories in post-​war British cinema’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, 7:3 (2014), 278. 37 Wendy Webster, ‘Reconstructing boundaries:  gender, war and empire in British cinema, 1945–​1950’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 23:1 (2003), 56. 38 Steedman, The Radical Soldier’s Tale, p. 112. 39 NAM, 8905–​167, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Henry Tyler, 14 April 1989; NAM, 2006–​10–​5–​13, transcript of interviews with members of the Gloucestershire Regiment who survived the Battle of Imjin (Westward Television Limited), 1976; IWM, Docs. 8156, papers of F.E. Carter, unpublished memoir, c. 1987. 40 National Army Museum, Project Korea, p. 9. 41 Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-​Racial Britain (London, 1999), pp. 53–​72; Kings Own Royal Regiment Museum, Lancaster, ‘HMT Empire Windrush’, undated, www.kingsownmuseum.plus. com/​galleryship021.htm (accessed 25 September 2015). 42 IWM, 18526, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Betty Smith, 29 September 1998.

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You’re in Korea my son 43 NAM, 8905–​261, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Sebastian ‘Sam’ Mercer, 18 July 1988; NAM, 1989–​05–​259, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with D.R. Milbery, c. 1989. 44 IWM, Docs. 17199, papers of John H.A. Gerrard, letter to family, 19 July 1954. 45 NAM, 8905–​167, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer, Henry Tyler, 14 April 1989. 46 NAM, 8905–​261, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Sebastian ‘Sam’ Mercer, 18 July 1988. 47 IWM, Docs. 7178, papers of C.B.L. Barr, diary, 11 May 1954. 48 J.D. Campbell, ‘ “Training for sport is training for war”: sport and the transformation of the British Army, 1860–​1914’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 17:4 (2000), 36; Grace Huxford, ‘The “finest spectacle in P.O.W. history”: the 1952 “inter-​camp Olympics” and British prisoners of war in the Korean War (1950–​1953)’, in D. Day (ed.), Sport and Leisure Histories (Crewe, 2013), p. 60. 49 IWM, Docs. 6882, papers of Julian J. Potter, letter to family, October 1950. 50 NAM, 1989–​05–​259, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with D.R. Milbery, c. 1989. 51 IWM, Docs. 6882, papers of Julian J. Potter, letter to parents, 26 March 1951. 52 NAM, 2010–​01–​54, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Georgina Johnstone, c. 2010. 53 NAM, 1989–​02–​196, papers of John Whitehouse, letter from Sgt H.D. Bunyan to Sgt John Whitehouse, 9 June 1952. 54 IWM, Docs. 7178, papers of CBL Barr, letter to parents, 20 April 1954. 55 NAM, 2004–​05–​23–​1, papers of Patrick J. Wye, unpublished memoir, undated; NAM, 1996–​07–​100, papers of Lt. Georgina Johnstone; NAM, 1989–​05–​216, typescript diary of Major W. Bull, c. November 1952, p. 52. 56 NAM, 1990–​08–​15, papers of Anthony John Baker, diary entry, 12 December 1950. 57 Ibid., diary entry, 8 August 1951. 58 Diary theorist Philippe Lejeune argues that this is one of the main motivations for giving up on a diary, see Philippe Lejeune (eds Jeremy D. Popkin and Julie Rak; trans. Katherine Durning), On Diary (Honolulu, 2009), pp. 189 and 197. 59 NAM, 11994–​04–​495, diary of B. St. G.A. Reed M.C., 14 October 1950–​May 1951. 60 NAM, 1990–​ 12–​ 34, papers of Anthony John Baker, letter from father, 3 December 1950; ‘grouse’ in this instance means complaint. 61 NAM, 1989–​ 05–​ 163, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Robin Bruford-​Davies, 10 February 1989. 62 IWM, Docs. 6882, papers of Julian J.  Potter, letters to mother, father and brother, 7 December 1950. 63 IWM, Docs. 17199, papers of John H.A. Gerrard, letters to family, 24 January and 14 March 1954. 64 NAM, 1989–​05–​160, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Jarlath Donnellan, 4 August 1988.

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The Korean War in Britain 65 NAM, 8905–​257–​1, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Keith Taylor, 1 September 1988. 66 Lt. J.M. Malcolm Cubiss to his Parents, June 1951, in Perrins, ‘A Pretty Rough Do Altogether’, pp. 162–​3. 67 ‘Brigadier Malcolm Cubiss’, The Times, 8 August 2013, p. 49. 68 Edward Higgs, The Information State in England:  The Central Collection of Information on Citizens since 1500 (Basingstoke and New York, 2004), pp. 2–​8. 69 Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind:  Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (New Jersey and Oxford, 2001), p. 5. 70 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:  Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (rev. edn, London, 1991), pp. 40–​1; Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780:  Programme, Myth, Reality (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1994), p. 100. 71 Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact:  Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (Chicago and London, 1998), p. xvi. 72 Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (Woodstock and New York, 2002), p. 5. 73 Robert Engen, Canadians under Fire:  Infantry Effectiveness in the Second World War (Montreal, 2009), p. 29. 74 Godsal was formerly of the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry and was well-​known for escaping from a German prisoner of war camp in 1917, see TNA, FO 383/​ 266, report ‘Treatment of British Prisoners of War in Germany’ by Captain P.H. Godsal, 30 April 1917. 75 All responses quoted below are from TNA, War Office (DTI), WO 308.89–​90, Korea: battle experience questionnaires, 1951–​2. 76 Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography:  A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis, 2010), p. 36. 77 David French, Army, Empire and Cold War:  The British Army and Military Policy, 1945–​1971 (Oxford, 2012), p. 139. 78 TNA, WO 308.89, War Office (DTI), Korea: battle experience questionnaire, loose minute, 30 November 1951. 79 Engen, Canadians under Fire, p. 29. 80 TNA, WO 308.89, War Office (DTI), Korea: battle experience questionnaire, letter from P.H. Godsal to Lt Col C.L. Thomas OBE, 21 April 1952. 81 BBC, CMHS 23/​1/​52, Scripts (radio), ‘Korean campaign as a soldier sees it’, 29 February 1952. 82 Engen argues that there was a pre-​screening of forms –​a CFA 276 form –​sent to servicemen in the Second World War, but that largely did not happen in the Korean War. 83 Jones, After Hiroshima, p. 81. 84 Michael Roper, ‘Between manliness and masculinity:  the “war generation” and the psychology of fear in Britain, 1914–​1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44:2 (2005), 360.

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Citizen soldiers: National servicemen in the Korean War

Compulsory peacetime military service –​national service –​left a mark on an entire generation of young British men. Some loved it: called up in April 1948, Ron Laver argued that ‘those years were the best of our lives’.1 Others loathed it: Patrick Wye, a Private in the Royal Army Service Corps, described it in his unpublished autobiography as ‘a great cloud on the horizon of our youth’ and Barry Smith talked of getting it ‘over with’ when he was called up on 15 March 1951.2 For some, its importance only emerged as they grew older and witnessed subsequent generations of young men growing up without serving in the military. To its supporters, national service instilled both discipline and duty and, since its abolition in 1960, political commentators have lamented its decline or toyed with ideas for its regeneration, largely unsuccessfully. During the Cold War national service also fed into evolving definitions of citizenship. In a lecture in 1948 Field Marshall Wavell stated that ‘the Army of to-​day is a National Army’. He argued that ‘the training of men as citizens has to be considered as well as their training as soldiers’, adding that ‘during peace, training for the responsibilities of citizenship must receive equal attention’.3 The Cold War, as a time of militarised peace, necessitated a refinement of citizenship training and the sense of citizenship epitomised by national service was presented as a stark contrast to compulsion and terror under Communist regimes. Wavell was speaking in the wake of the National Service Act (1947), later revised in 1948, which established peacetime conscription for the first time in Britain.4 But it was war in Korea that put these rather diffuse notions about citizenship and the efficacy of national service under the spotlight. First, national servicemen made a sizeable contribution to the war: Trevor Royle estimates that up to 60 per cent of particular units were composed of these young conscripts. They were v 73 v

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The Korean War in Britain heavily involved in three of the main actions of the war: the Battle of the Imjin River (and defence of ‘Gloucester Hill’ at Solma-​Ri on 23 April 1951), the evacuation of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) from the Maryang-​San Ridge in October 1951 and the Battle of the Hook at the end of May 1953.5 In 1954, the lavishly illustrated children’s book The  Wonder Book of the Army set out the role of national servicemen in the Gloucestershire Regiment’s actions at the Imjin River: At that time there were many people who said that the young national servicemen were not as good as their brothers or their fathers or grandfathers had been. But if there is one thing that that will make the British soldier grumble more than any other it is to be told that ‘the old timers’ were better than he is. And it makes him fight too … especially if he is Gloucester!6

National service also had a deeper cultural significance during the Korean War. Its defenders heralded it as a continuation of wartime ideals of duty and universal service. It also partially chimed with the growing image Britain had of its wartime past, as a resilient yet powerful underdog. Yet some politicians argued that national service was a costly, ineffective and even immoral way of policing Britain’s post-​war empire.7 Throughout its short history, the institution of national service was never fully able to shake off criticisms that it was a waste of time for both recruits and the staff that oversaw them. National service experience in Korea also coincided with broader shifts in how the individual was understood in British society. As Colin Flint has argued, wars have been used to ‘create particular forms of the democratic subject’.8 A  heightened emphasis on individual volition within Western democracy ran parallel to (or as Mike Savage argues intermingled with) new systems of testing, categorising and quantifying individuals.9 As this chapter shows, from the moment of recruitment, national service conscripts in Korea were processed by systems which classified individuals in a new way, but which utilised older ideas of citizenship too. The soldier-​citizen of the post-​war era saw the collision of new ‘psy’ definitions of the individual and the ‘group’, alongside refined conceptions of soldierly duty. This chapter examines how citizenship and selfhood were subtly recalibrated during the period of national service in Korea, connecting with broader changes in how the individual was understood and categorised at this time in Britain. It begins with a discussion of military citizenship in the era of the Korean War, before turning to specific moments in national service life. Starting with recruitment (a recurring feature in most memoirs of national service), it explores the v 74 v

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Citizen soldiers significance of masculinity, age, class and humour for the young men who were sent to Korea during their two years’ service. Together with the previous chapter, it sets out again the importance of experience to the social history of the Korean War in Britain. Whilst this chapter is not an authoritative history of national service itself, it takes several key themes surrounding national service in Korea and considers how these further informed the British views of the Korean War. For many in Britain, conscription was not characterised by the heroic deeds of national servicemen on the hills around the Imjin River, but by servicemen marching (‘square-​bashing’) around far-​flung British army bases, endless guard duties or even painting barrack-​room toilets. The uncertain legacy of national service and an overall dissatisfaction with this sort of military experience, seemingly so far removed from the exploits of those serving in the Second World War, contributed to the under-​emphasis of national service and, in turn, the Korean War, in British social life. Like Korea, national service fitted uneasily within the narratives of post-​war British society and culture: obligatory, unglamorous and potentially of limited overall purpose.

National service and citizenship in the 1950s Conscription and citizenship have a long, interconnected history. During the French revolutionary wars, politicians regarded conscripted service as a powerful emblem of citizenship and republicanism.10 Egalitarian selection and fighting alongside one’s fellow nationals was the height of citizenly duty. The ‘citizen-​soldier’ was used in the nineteenth century to describe civilians taking up arms in a time of crisis, embodying ‘military service and civic participation’.11 The association of citizenship and active military service persisted into the twentieth century, sometimes exploited by enlistment propaganda or popular militaristic sentiment.12 The British government introduced wartime conscription in 1916 during the First World War, a move that was met with anxiety by some in a country historically opposed to standing armies.13 Did this compulsory service represent the ultimate citizenly act? Since the 1960s, much of First World War historical literature has devalued the concept of citizenly duty, arguing it was yet another casualty of mechanised warfare. But Helen McCartney characterises the First World War as a new period of the ‘citizen-​soldier’, as many soldiers used of their civilian skills to great effect during the war.14 The concept of citizenship was far from moribund when conscription was reintroduced during the v 75 v

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The Korean War in Britain Second World War. By the 1940s, the ‘citizen-​soldier’ also had other connotations. Although this quite ambiguous term was used to denote many different outlooks and characteristics, it often referred to a soldier who understood his social context and motivation. This was illustrated by the first series of British Way and Purpose (known as BWP), a widely distributed pamphlet issued to soldiers as part of citizenship education.15 In 1943, the British geographer C.B. Fawcett wrote a short piece in BWP, claiming that:  ‘Geography and history are foundation studies for the citizen[.] … Intelligent citizenship must rest on appreciation of both our natural resources and our heritage.’16 For Fawcett, citizenship relied on a shared knowledge of geography and history, particularly for the solider. Citizenship therefore involved a degree of self-​improvement and education. But the ‘citizen-​soldier’ had ramifications for civilian populations too. Lucy Noakes and Susan Grayzel argue that in the Second World War British citizens were encouraged to take an active role in the defence of the democratic system: defence became an agreement between individual and state, which stressed the duties rather than rights of the citizen and which was ratified by the participation of citizens in work such as Air Raid Precaution (ARP).17 As one historian has put it, the twentieth​century history of conscription and citizen service led to the ‘militarisation of a generation’.18 To some extent, the introduction of compulsory military service in peacetime between 1947 and 1948 extended the tradition of active and informed citizenship. Despite having vehemently opposed peacetime conscription in 1939, the Labour government introduced the National Service Act (1947), later amended with the Revised National Service Act (1948). All men between eighteen and twenty-​six were compelled to service in the armed forces for ‘two terms of service’: one period of ‘whole-​time service in the regular forces’ (the period frequently referred to as national service) and afterwards a ‘term of part-​time service in an auxiliary force’.19 When first introduced, whole-​time service was set at twelve months, owing partially to opposition from the ‘Keep Left’ section of the Labour Party who rejected eighteen-​month service.20 Despite this opposition, it was eventually extended to eighteen months in December 1948 and, largely due to Korea, was extended again in October 1950 to two years.21 The government maintained that national service was predicated on foreign policy needs rather than as a domestic or social measure.22 Initially national service was intended to provide an army that could be mobilised immediately should another major war break out.23 The 1949 Statement v 76 v

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Citizen soldiers on Defence widened this focus and Minister of Defence A.V. Alexander wrote that ‘the Army has met many calls placed upon it over the world’ from the city of Berlin, to bases in North-​Rhine Westphalia, and further afield in the Middle East, West Africa and Hong Kong, as well as Malta and Greece.24 In order to complete this work, support Western allies and reconstruct and refine a new long-​term plan for the peace time military from the ‘residue of our wartime forces’, compulsory national service was essential. But from the start, national service did have other, more domestic, motivations and implications. Ernest Bevin argued compulsion was particularly necessary as conditions of full employment meant that the usual levels of military recruitment from amongst the unemployed could not be maintained.25 From as early as 1948, some called this new force another ‘citizen army’ and stressed its links to older traditions of military service.26 An early area where the tensions behind this vision of military citizenship were revealed was the education of young national service recruits. Some commentators argued that national service was a form of education in itself. Former MP and colonial administrator Sir George Schuster wrote to The Times in 1954 that national service was a ‘wonderful opportunity … for education in the best and widest sense’.27 The soldier also needed a certain level of education, as the underpinning principle of BWP and organisations like the ABCA was that the soldier-​citizen ought to be able to engage in lively discussion of the issues of the day. Yet national service conscription presented the military authorities with a serious problem which emanated from the social disruption of the Second World War –​illiteracy. Due to evacuation and dislocation between 1939 and 1945, many of the young men recruited under national service could not attain the necessary Third Class in the Army Certificate of Education. Lieutenant Colonel Archibald White of the RAEC estimated that more than 20 per cent of recruits were ‘nearly illiterate’ and 2 per cent ‘wholly so’.28 A report cited by The Times in 1953 corroborated that one in five conscripts were ‘educationally backward’.29 These figures presented a serious problem for those seeking to revitalise the image of an educated citizen-​soldier. In response, the British Army set up Preliminary Education Centres (later amalgamated into one centre at Tidworth in 1955) to teach basic literacy. They also ran ABCA-​style discussion forums, maintaining that group discussion based on reading was a vital way in which to develop citizenship. It is true that this move was motivated by practical necessity (as national service conscripts needed to understand written v 77 v

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The Korean War in Britain instructions), but the poor literacy of the immediate post-​war generation presented a more ideological issue too:  civilian and military attitudes at the time held that the ‘thinking soldier’ needed to understand British democracy and its underlying values. The Preliminary Education Centres equipped soldiers to be involved in this venture by teaching them to engage with written texts and political debates through newspapers and pamphlets. One recruit even reputedly called his centre a ‘dream factory’.30 There were other newer inflections to post-​war compulsory military service too by the time of the Korean War. Colin Flint has argued that the Cold War turns the phrase ‘citizen-​soldier’ on its head. Soldiers needed to be citizens, rather than the other way round: soldiers were ‘mobilised in a fight to defend values and institutions, or, more vaguely, a “way of life” ’.31 This paradigm partially maps onto the British experience in the Cold War and the Korean War. In March 1953, the Labour MP for Birmingham West and First World War veteran Charles Simmons told Parliament that:  ‘We shall not win the war of ideals by hauling down our “brave tattered banners” and emulating the action of our totalitarian opponents; we shall win it by proving by actions that our way of life is the better way of life.’32 The war’s legitimacy was framed in terms of defeating a wider Communist threat to state and society. The Korean War was one of the earliest instances where a war, fought by soldiers many thousands of miles away, was seen as defending the British ‘way of life’. National service was not seen as a necessity by all though. Throughout 1948, the Daily Mail consistently criticised national service, decrying the waste of ‘vast sums in building up a semi-​conscript and semi-​regular army’, where regulars and national servicemen alike were mostly occupied with training the next round of conscripts.33 Although the newspaper much later extolled the societal benefits of national service, stating how regular habits, improved health and broadened horizons meant that the ‘advantages of national service far outweigh the disadvantages’, an editorial in 1953 nevertheless noted that ‘the idea of conscription has never been popular in this country, nor is it now’.34 Exemption or delay was possible: apprentices and students could defer their period of service to come after their period of study/​training, as could coal miners, fishermen and merchant seamen.35 Clergymen or those with severe medical problems were exempt from service, as were men in Northern Ireland or those from the Republic of Ireland who had lived on the mainland for less than two years. Conscientious objectors from a variety of backgrounds also resisted conscription, although Richard Vinen noted that less than 0.03 per cent v 78 v

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Citizen soldiers of those who passed before tribunals between 1949 and 1960 were given an unconditional discharge.36 But how did national servicemen themselves view the early Cold War and the Korean War? For Peter Holmes, a national serviceman in the Royal Leicestershire Regiment and later chairman of Shell, one of the best things about being sent to Korea was ‘being away from the meaningless “bull” and small thinking of peacetime soldiery that would have been my lot had I been sent almost anywhere else’.37 ‘Bull’ became a metaphor for all pointless, thankless tasks and permeated both contemporary commentary on national service and subsequent memoirs.38 Others reflected more directly on their duty to battle against Communism. Lieutenant Julian Potter wrote home that:  ‘Among the books I  have been reading was “I Chose Freedom”, which I  have read to pep up my lagging anti-​ Communist zeal. My purpose was surprisingly well accomplished. Perhaps I  should hasten to read a book by Zilliacus or someone?’39 This rather irreverent note about Labour politician and socialist Konni Zilliacus (1894–​1967) showed Potter’s awareness of the oft-​mentioned relationship between reading democratic citizenship and the British mission in Korea, even if he mocked the suggestion that every national serviceman in Korea should be aware of the pitfalls of Communism. Vinen has described Korea as ‘the national service war’ and argues that it ‘punctured’ the ideas of bull or wasting time.40 Only national servicemen aged nineteen or over were permitted to be sent to Korea, compared with eighteen years and three months for the Malayan theatre and eighteen years for European postings.41 From October 1950, all national servicemen, regardless of their posting, had to serve two years instead of eighteen months. Although the press speculated that this change was to keep other NATO allies satisfied, the Cabinet denied that this was the prime motivation, arguing that there were severe recruitment problems in the services and ‘without larger numbers of national servicemen we should be unable to carry out essential training in the Army or deal with another emergency similar to that which has arisen in Korea’.42 Korea had also increased fears of a ‘general war’. In August 1950 the Chiefs of Staff felt that the ‘devices’ used by the military to gather the men needed for service in Korea had shown the ‘parlous position’ of the army, boding ill for any future engagements.43 Another contributory reason was the complaint that eighteen months was insufficient to train and send out troops to Korea for a meaningful length of time.44 Either way, Korea was from then on heavily associated with the increase of national service to two years. v 79 v

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The Korean War in Britain Although described as the national service war, estimates about their actual contributions vary according to different regiment and different historical source. Jason Fensome estimates that 20,000 national servicemen served in Korea during the war itself and, as noted at the start of this chapter, Royle estimated up to 60 per cent of certain units were composed of national servicemen.45 By contrast, in an oral history interview, the official historian Sir Anthony Farrar-​Hockley argued that there were no national servicemen at the Battle of the Imjin River, where he was adjutant of the 1st Battalion the Gloucestershire Regiment. He claimed that there were not many ‘pure’ national servicemen in the regiment as Parliament had yet to extend the period of service to two years, although this had been introduced from October the previous year.46 For some, then, the national service contribution was either less obvious or less significant. General Sir Michael West, Commander of the 1st Commonwealth Division between 1952 and 1953, noted shortly after the war on the BBC programme Press Conference that ‘the Army depends on its regulars not on its national servicemen’.47 This tension never fully went away, despite the contribution of national servicemen to the fighting in Korea.

Turning into soldiers: recruitment and training To trace the military experiences of these national servicemen, we must go back not just to their first experiences of Korea but to their introduction to the services in general, as recruitment occupies such a central position in the clear majority of national service memoirs. Recruitment techniques also shed light on the selection methods, categories and even the values circulating in society at large. As Rose and Savage have argued, it was through processes such as these, across different sectors of post-​ war Britain, that the ‘psy’ disciplines came to shape self-​perception so much during the later twentieth century.48 At the time, it was felt that in order for recruitment procedures to work, they need to be ‘socially tolerated’ and to reflect the values of society.49 Assumptions about selfhood and citizenship thus percolated even these procedures. In this way, the new recruitment practices ushered in by the Korean War and national service functioned as ‘subjectivising techniques’ in post-​1945 Britain.50 The ability of recruitment to shape selfhood is evident from the very first test  –​a medical examination. Russell Fred Edwards, a national serviceman with the 1st Battalion The Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), said that ‘it was just like a conveyer belt, you went from one v 80 v

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Citizen soldiers doctor with a stethoscope for chest with breathing –​then lower regions, then feet and ankles  –​mouth teeth, ears and eyesight, when you were done it was clothes on and off you go. Not knowing if you had passed or failed’.51 The medical assessment was under the Pulheems system, an invention of the late Second World War but which was fully put into practice with the influx of young national service conscripts in the post-​war period. Pulheems was a mnemonic system denoting seven key parameters for general military fitness: physique (P), upper and lower limbs (U) (L), hearing (H), ears and eyes (EE), mental (M) and stability (S). Each faculty was given a ranking of one to eight (one being the highest). This complex system meant that there were potentially thousands of different combinations of ranking recruits could possess.52 The Pulheems system was officially adopted by the Army on 1 April 1948 and by the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, and the Ministry of Labour and National Service on 1 June 1948 and it was described as an attempt to both rationalise and unify medical entry tests. In this way, it was heralded as the ‘first time … of expressing on paper in a concise and easily recognizable form the physical and mental capacities of an individual’.53 However, there was far from universal agreement on the faculties that might preclude an individual from military recruitment. For example, referring to the most ambiguous of categories, stability (S), one preliminary British Army report noted that ‘it is difficult to say what degree of instability is allowable in an officer. If we were to take out all the unstable, we might lose many geniuses and potential V.C.s [Victoria Cross winners]’.54 Military authorities speculated on the qualities that the officer would need in the post-​1945 world and if these new models disrupted older categories for judging military calibre. All conscripts underwent this medical examination and, if passed, this was followed by allocation to one of the services, with the vast majority serving in the Army. After allocation came six weeks’ basic training, followed by four weeks’ training for infantry soldiers, making a total of ten weeks’ overall training for the majority of national servicemen. Edwards described how he became ‘22581469 Private Edwards, R., what a mouthful! … The training and discipline with the physical training and the assault course, it soon began to take its toll, and apart from the Corporal still shouting and bawling, or the Sergeant having a go, we were slowly turning into soldiers’.55 Others, such as Ronald Larby, found this experience humiliating, noting that in basic training ‘nothing you ever did was right, doesn’t matter what it was’, although he claimed it did him good in the long run.56 Specific trades might involve further v 81 v

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The Korean War in Britain training after these initial weeks. Basic training became more controversial during the Korean War and the Malayan emergency, as some politicians argued that it was not enough to train them sufficiently.57 In actuality, before being sent to Korea, each serviceman had to have six months’ service, be aged nineteen or over and must have had sixteen weeks’ training, of which ten weeks were carried out in the UK (with the final six usually in Japan or Hong Kong).58 The restrictions were the same for Malaya, although only eighteen weeks’ service were deemed to be needed in 1950, something much debated given the severity of jungle combat in Malaya.59 During basic training, national servicemen would discover if they were to be put up for a commission  –​a definitive moment in many national service memoirs. Officer candidates were assessed in line with the War Office Selection Board (WOSB) model used in the regular army and introduced in 1941. WOSBs or ‘wosbees’ were, as one proponent put it, designed to ‘ensure that no potential officer material shall slip through the net’.60 The massive increase in recruitment during the Second World War, which drew upon a far wider array of social classes than before, meant that previous (heavily class-​based) indicators were no longer suitable ‘signposts to leadership’ that could be used to judge the calibre of a candidate.61 In a piece written shortly before the outbreak of the Korean War, Ben Morris, a member of WOSB psychological research staff, told the British Psychoanalytical Society that it was ‘scarcely surprising’ recruiters had difficulty in ascertaining whether individuals merited commissions early in the war, as their previous indicators had rested on the candidate’s former (public) school and positions of responsibility held there.62 The new army needed other ways to test potential officers and WOSB was established to fill this gap. WOSBs were composed of several stages: spanning two or three days, candidates were put through a number of outdoor tests resembling military situations, designed to demonstrate leadership potential. Rejecting the premise that ‘traits [act] as constant qualities of a person independent of context’, candidates were asked to perform various tasks as a team under different conditions, which were designed to test for particular skills, such as leadership, cooperation and discipline.63 The candidate was also asked to fill out a biographical questionnaire and to partake in group discussion.64 Yet even with this nominally meritocratic system, Vinen notes that a public school education remained the most important fact in securing a commission and that when it came to choosing a regiment, family connections still mattered significantly.65 v 82 v

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Citizen soldiers Officer candidates were sent to Eaton Hall Officer Cadet Training Unit (OCTU) in Cheshire for training in infantry leadership or to Mons OCTU in Aldershot to form part of the artillery, engineers or intelligence corps.66 Holmes describes his training at Eaton Hall: We were told ‘not to seek popularity or relax discipline, to be efficient ourselves, to give our men a sense of unity, to put their interests before our own, to explain things too them, to do things with them, to share their hardships, to be their champion but also their chief critic, to know their names and use them, to set a good example ALL the time[.] … In summary to strike a mean between the severity of Frederick the Great and the subtle approach of Lawrence of Arabia.’ On the whole I felt it would be easier just to get to know them as well as I could.67

These ideas were tested in Korea, where such officers like Holmes were put in charge of both other national servicemen and regulars –​a daunting task for many young men. At the end of their training, national servicemen were told if their unit was bound for Korea then they too would make the journey along the ‘Empire Route’ to join the fighting.

Conscripts in Korea National service was often associated with boredom for many, but Korea was different. In a letter to his parents, national serviceman Lieutenant Gary Smith expressed his excitement at leaving the base in Yorkshire to travel to Korea: ‘It is a wonderful opportunity to travel which I probably wouldn’t have had otherwise. It means my demob [demobilisation] being deferred for about eight months or more, though I  expect everything will be over by the time I get there except policing.’68 The harsh climate and fierce fighting certainly contrasted starkly with scrubbing floors in Aldershot or white-​washing paths in Catterick. Although national servicemen were involved in the rapid troop movements of the first year of the war, the frequent patrolling that followed was a recurrent memory among many former conscripts: it is no coincidence that the two major British Korean War novels are based around patrols composed largely of national servicemen.69 These ‘action-​adventure’ stories also built upon specific notions of masculinity.70 As Graham Dawson argued, narratives about ‘soldier heroes’ are deeply saturated with constructed, idealised notions of what it means to be a soldier and to be a man.71 But in the new Cold War era, where the empire was being dismantled, the place of national servicemen as a new generation of soldier heroes was far from clear. Lynne Segal described the v 83 v

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The Korean War in Britain national service generation as ‘trained for military action, fed on a Cold War diet of spying and betrayals, they were the first generation to live in a post-​imperial Britain and observe the Old Empire dismantled’.72 As seen in the previous chapter, many servicemen passing through Aden or Suez searched in vain for exotic vestiges of an imagined imperial past on their way to Korea. Specific ideas of masculinity did, however, underpin experience of national servicemen in Korea. Although women served in the NAAFI, as Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) volunteers or as part of the QARANC, training and service in Korea were largely an all-​male experience. In the novel A Hill in Korea, the repulsive national servicemen Corporal Ryker represents an unpleasant side of male sociability. When urinating, we are told that ‘men –​among men –​lost their inhibitions naturally; but it was instinctive to most at such moments to avert their backs. Not Ryker. He faced the men coldly, exposing himself, like a horse raising a puddle; and they looked at him coldly, then turned away’.73 Throughout the novel the Korean landscape is characterised as female (the hills frequently representing women’s breasts), which is ultimately conquered by the group of national servicemen at the core of the book. David Morgan describes how pervasive sexuality was in the national service, with sexual discussion acting as a leveller between ages and class.74 For some, national service was also associated with ‘becoming a man’. Jarlath Donnellan of 1st Royal Tank Regiment stated that his senses became ‘more aware’ in the Army and ‘everything that was dormant in you in Civvy Street is working overtime’.75 Once again, the memory of the Second World War contributed to this. As seen with regulars in the previous chapter, fathers often had specific advice for their sons about military service and Royle states how one of his interviewees noted that the older generation felt their ‘their sons [would] “go away boys and come back men” ’.76 Within the military itself, Vinen notes how the small number of older servicemen were considered to be ‘glamorous’ figures.77 This glamour did not surround all regulars, nor was it always about age. Morgan describes how many university-​bound middle-​class national servicemen felt that regulars were ‘thick’.78 But the regulars did not  regard them in high esteem either, referring to them as ‘national service kiddies’.79 Corporal Milbery felt that regular servicemen resented them to some extent, ‘as I think some of the older NCOs thought they were just wasting their time because they knew in two years most of them would be gone’.80 A report on the conduct of the King’s Royal Irish Hussars in captivity even stated that national servicemen were particularly prey to the Communist ideas spread by the Chinese and even their fellow prisoners.81 v 84 v

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Citizen soldiers National servicemen in officer positions sometimes found the contrast in ages and experience more pronounced. In November 1950, Lieutenant Robert Gill wrote home from Korea to his girlfriend that: ‘The majority of the men in the platoon are reservists, their average age is thirty and quite a large number have children. One man is forty and he has a daughter aged eighteen. I’ll bet he thinks I am a young whipper-​snapper!!’82 Lieutenant J. Whybrow wrote about the men under his command in a letter to his parents: ‘One of the chief sources of amusement is the general attitude of the British Tommy. They say that to grumble is his privilege, and by Jove he makes the most of it. You can never please the British soldier!’83 In his diary, he privately displayed more worry about managing men: ‘Hardship is easy enough to suffer as an individual, but to get your men to do the same sometimes seems terribly difficult.’84 However, not all national servicemen saw themselves as inexperienced ‘kiddies’. Keith Taylor who did his national service with the Coldstream Guards claimed that in Korea ‘the youth and enthusiasm of the national servicemen mixed well with the experience and wisdom of the reservists’.85 Donnellan describes his upbringing in the 1940s: ‘Being six years old at the outbreak of World War Two, being, well, you were tailor-​made for the Korean War, especially by the end of it being entrenched and high explosive and blasting and all that. Well you’d had all of that as a child, didn’t you, in the Blitz of London[.] … The ideal people to have out on the Korean front at that time.’86 Elsewhere, Ashley Cunningham-​Boothe, a regular of a similar age to Donnellan, who lived through the bombing of Coventry on 14 November 1940, wrote that ‘it seemed that there had been nothing but violence through my young years’.87 This young generation of servicemen might not have fought in the Second World War, but for many the wartime violence in their childhood made them, as Donnellan notes, ‘the ideal people to have out on the Korean front’. Although this generation had not fought in the Second World War and were sometimes overlooked as a result, they were not untouched by war and had grown up understanding its social impact. As in the letters, diaries and battle experience forms, national servicemen prized not just experience, but their regiment too. Despite the wealth of scholarly attention devoted to war-​writing and the construction and control of modern subjects, the relationship between the regiment, corps or service and the individual remains under-​theorised. Frequently descriptions of regimental loyalties are only found in empirical, small-​ scale studies of regiments, often put together painstakingly by veterans of that group.88 Even histories of the most well-​known regiments take for v 85 v

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The Korean War in Britain granted the connection between individual and regiment.89 Yet national service memoirs, despite their relatively short association with the regiment, display the importance of regiment to identity in Korea. Many veterans later noted their attachment to their regiment and even how their ‘characters’ were moulded by that group: they further situate their own ‘exploits’ within the broader history of the regiment.90 Donnellan noted that his regiment, 1st Royal Tank Regiment, were ‘on the side’ of the Gloucesters, whom he felt had been betrayed by the Americans at the Battle of the Imjin in April 1951.91 Regimental and even inter-​regimental loyalty could therefore even provide alternate markers of identity that occasionally countered official standpoints, as in Donnellan’s case, where he used it to question the depth of Anglo-​American co-​operation. The regiment also contributed to a particular type of institutional humour that characterised national service in Korea. The famed lack of enthusiasm for national service, but also for military service more widely, was in fact parodied by men themselves at the time. Commando Fred Hayhurst described Dave Brady, a renowned joker in 41 Independent Commando, Royal Marines, on his departure for Korea from London Heathrow Airport. He stated that Brady shouted to the assembled journalists, ‘I’m not going, I’m too young to die’. After a shocked pause, he stated that he was joking and cheerfully clambered onto the plane.92 Brady’s embarkation for Korea was in fact a direct allusion to Spike Milligan’s description of his recruitment into the Royal Artillery during the Second World War.93 Repeating such stories was part of the institutional humour of national service. As Morgan notes, humour in the national service was built on stories that had not necessarily happened to you –​‘things that happened to a friend of a friend, things that everyone knew’.94 Segal has argued that humour among men has often functioned as a way to discipline or denigrate women and, whilst the typical swearwords were predictably based on female genitalia, humour actually had another far more complex function.95 Humorous anecdotes like Brady’s subverted the idea that the soldier is a willing participant in war, but they also simultaneously stressed the recruit’s lack of individual volition. Their lack of choice, as psychologist Nigel Hunt argues, was often used as a coping mechanism at the time and subsequently.96 This was particularly important for the national service conscript, who had so little power over their service life. Humour was also deeply imbued with a sense of class. Much of the comic relief in the novel A Hill in Korea comes from Private Rabin, a working-​class cockney whose commentary is intended to provide comic v 86 v

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Citizen soldiers relief to the isolated troop and the reader. In one of the darkest moments of the novel, he notes that ‘I only got two hobbies, one’s livin’ and the other’s girls, and the army’s jeopardised my chances o’ the first and deprived me of the second’.97 His national service platoon commander, Lieutenant Jeff Butler, later thinks about Rabin’s abilities, musing that:  ‘The old, blind democratic army, … it has to have everyone. It scoops in the conscripts indiscriminately, saying: you, you, you. Come and fight like a descendant of Wellington’s veterans!’98 For Butler, as with Whybrow’s confrontation with the intransigence of the ‘British Tommy’, national service puts middle-​class men into contact with those with whom they might never otherwise have met.99 Fred Edwards marvelled at the friendships formed by men of different backgrounds, stating that ‘we came from all walks of life, and all types of families, yet here we were, quite a competent group of soldiers’.100 The importance of class did not mean it was a frequently cited topic. Morgan argues that ‘pulling class’ was considered even more distasteful than ‘pulling rank’.101 But national servicemen certainly recognised class distinctions during their time in uniform and in Korea.

Memories of national service Enforced military experience was the norm for the generation who had come of age in the first half of the twentieth century. It was perhaps unsurprising then that young national service conscripts like Ron Larby described military service as ‘just another phase of life, like leaving school, your first job, your first girlfriend’.102 Korea was equally definitive. In the immediate term, Ronald Larby describes returning to his civilian job and finding it not available, only a junior position, despite assurances (set out in 1947)  that he could return.103 Jim Jacobs concluded that ‘life would never be the same again’ as ‘two action packed years away from home had disorientated me, changing my outlook, on life forever. Just a few days at home and already I missed the vibrant, colourful places’.104 However, Vinen argues that most felt that it was a ‘uniquely unattractive posting’.105 This contrast encapsulates the contradictory attitudes to national service  –​it was intensely dull and something to be endured, but it was also an unmissable adventure with the chance to carry out real soldiering. Despite these contradictory reactions, Korea was regarded as one of the few instances where national service became real warfare for these servicemen. The way national service has been remembered also connects with the cultural memory of Korea. Towards the end of the twentieth century, national service was often used as a way to comment on young men v 87 v

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The Korean War in Britain in British society. National service memoirs criticised young people in the 1990s and 2000s, especially older teenagers (the age at which these veterans began their military service). Some echoed the (largely journalistic) claim that national service would ‘sort out’ today’s youth.106 In a letter accompanying the deposit of his 2003 unpublished memoir in the National Army Museum, former national serviceman Ron Laver stated that: ‘I agree it is a pity that some of national service is not now in force –​ today’s youngsters are the losers[.] … I have always believed –​I am better man for having been given the opportunity to play a very small part in the history of the British Army.’107 It is important not to use these memoirs to paint a wholly positive picture of the national service in Korea. The emphasis on democracy and citizenship was tempered with apathy and disapproval, presenting historians with a complicated image of compulsory military service in the era of the Cold War. On a more practical level, the burden of national service was keenly felt by many, its distasteful, tedious or ambiguous elements contributing to its limited remembrance within British society. Dogged by criticism until its abolition in 1960 and compounded by its inability to match up to the military experience of the previous generation, national service mirrored the wider forgetting of Korea. Its representation in post-​ war culture was rather muted. National servicemen did certainly feature in published writing in the 1960s:  David Lodge’s novel Ginger, You’re Barmy (1962) and P.J. Kavanagh’s memoir The Perfect Stranger (1966) placed the national serviceman at the centre of their plots.108 Alan Sillitoe reflected on masculinity and national service in his novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), where main protagonist Arthur Seaton has just finished his two years’ service and was set on having a good time.109 But beyond the 1960s national service, like Korea, suffered from a lack of historical or popular coverage. Why was that so and might this have contributed to the Korean War’s obscurity too? First, national service was unglamorous at best. David Green, a national serviceman who volunteered to serve in Korea, argued that through ‘bull’ tasks he came ‘to learn the meaning of unquestioning obedience to orders’.110 Other veterans were not so complimentary. In an edited collection entitled All Bull (1973) twenty-​four veterans (including Sillitoe and artist David Hockney) reflected on the range of seemingly pointless tasks they were asked to fulfil during basic training, including polishing the barrack-​ room bucket and cleaning toilets.111 Former national serviceman Neville Williams described the ‘nut case’ NCO who took him in basic training, adding that he ‘had a face like chilled iron v 88 v

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Citizen soldiers and an army rule book for a brain’.112 Nor was it just national servicemen who complained about ‘bull’ or their apparent lack of actual military training or purpose: according to a random poll carried out by the Daily Mail in 1953, ‘remarkably few’ men understood the point of national service and eight out of ten recruits did not realise the importance of a working knowledge of fieldcraft to the fighting of an eventual war.113 Although such a poll was a rather vague assessment of national service awareness, others also commented on the wastefulness of many tasks carried out during their ‘whole-​time’ service. Conservative MP David Maxwell Fyfe drew attention to the ‘serious wastage of time’ in national service as early as September 1950 and by the end of national service the time-​wasting ability of national service recruits or their superiors had become legendary, with one recruit in 1960 reportedly being asked to catch falling leaves.114 Second, most national servicemen were involved in peacekeeping, rather than active service. For many, Aldershot or Germany were the extent of their travels. Morgan described the excitement that went through the camp during the Suez Crisis in 1956: ‘It was a moment, a relatively brief moment as it turned out, when history broke through the routine boredom and farce of national service.’115 Korea and Malaya likewise shine out as momentary flashes of action in the otherwise repetitious and drab history of national service. In Kavanagh’s case, he and his friend Patrick Sarsfield volunteered to go to Korea, seeking the camaraderie of true battalion life (‘real soldiering!’) instead of ‘the Boy Scout business of leaning on a stick while the stream of bewildered recruits washed past you through the camp’.116 Finally, national service was temporary, both for its participants who returned home after two years and for the country. It provided no backdrop to future military engagements and was only periodically cited during the rest of the twentieth century as a possible way to knock Britain’s troubled male youth into shape.117 These intermittent calls to bring back national service were nevertheless based on the belief that military service could instil civic duty and that, in turn, that duty could have a positive effect on the individual themselves. This assumption –​and the connection between selfhood and citizenship  –​had its origins in the Second World War, but was cemented by the early Cold War. The demands of the Korean War added a pressing relevance to the issue of democratic citizenship, if only for a time. But national service was not the only area where citizenship and selfhood collided. As the following chapter shows, one particular scare managed v 89 v

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The Korean War in Britain to dispel briefly the growing level of antipathy and forgetting surrounding the Korean War. For some in Britain, Korea exposed that militaries and governments did not just to have the power to enforce military service, but that they could potentially control the minds of their subjects –​they could even ‘brainwash’ their soldiers and citizens.

Notes 1 NAM, 2005–​04–​19, memoir by Ron Laver, c. 2003. 2 NAM, 2004–​05–​23–​1, memoir by Private Patrick J Wye, Royal Army Service Corps; NAM, 1990–​08–​1, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Barry Smith, c. 1990. 3 Wavell, ‘Minerva’s owl’, 9. 4 Allport, Demobbed, p. 47; L.V. Scott, Conscription and the Attlee Governments: The Politics and Policy of National Service, 1945–​1951 (Oxford, 1993), p. 46. 5 Trevor Royle, The Best Years of their Lives:  The National Service Experience 1945–​63 (London, 1986), pp. 186–​7. 6 The Wonder Book of the Army (London, 1954), p. 15. 7 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 550, cols. 2440–​8, Mr Victor Yates MP, 29 March 1956; Hansard, HC Deb, vols. 484, cols 408–​550, Lieut.-​Colonel Bromley Davenport MP, 14 February 1951. 8 Colin Flint, ‘Mobilizing civil society for the hegemonic state:  the Korean War and the construction of soldiercitizens in the United States’, in Deborah Cowen and Emily Gilbert (eds), War, Citizenship, Territory (New  York and Abingdon, 2008), p. 348. 9 Savage, Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940, p. 68. 10 Kevin Morgan, ‘Militarism and anti-​militarism: socialists, Communists and conscription in France, 1900–​1940’, Past & Present, 202 (2009), 209. 11 R. Claire Snyder, Citizen-​Soldiers and Manly Warriors: Military Service and Gender in the Civic Republican Tradition (Maryland and Oxford, 1999). 12 Nicoletta Gullace, ‘White feathers and wounded men: female patriotism and the memory of the Great War’, Journal of British Studies, 36:2 (1997), 183. 13 Roger Broad, Conscription in Britain 1939–​1964:  The Militarisation of a Generation (London and New York, 2006), pp. 1–​2; Royle, The Best Years of their Lives, p. 1. 14 Helen B. McCartney, Citizen Soldiers:  The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War (Cambridge, 2005), p. 7. 15 Directorate of Army Education, The British Way and Purpose: Consolidated Version (London, 1944), pp. 13–​44. 16 C.B. Fawcett, ‘The setting’ (April 1943), in Directorate of Army Education (ed.), The British Way and Purpose, Consolidated Version (London, 1944), p. 186; history teaching was a key part of the Army Educational Corps’ discussions at the time, see Jessop, ‘Religion in army education’, 17.

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Citizen soldiers 17 Noakes and Grayzel, ‘Defending the homeland’, pp. 30–​1. 18 Broad, Conscription in Britain, p. 110. 19 National Service Act (1948), CH. 64, p. 1. 20 ‘Defence of Britain’, Daily Mail, 22 November 1948, p. 1. 21 Parliamentary Correspondent, ‘Period of national service’, The Times, 24 November 1948, p. 2; Military Correspondent, ‘Sharp rise in re-​enlistments by national servicemen’, The Times, 1 May 1956, p. 6. 22 Scott, Conscription and the Attlee Government, p. 271. 23 Ibid., p. 87. 24 TNA, CAB 129/​ 32/​ 21, A.V. Alexander, Statement on Defence 1949, 8 February 1949. 25 Ibid. 26 Wavell, ‘Minerva’s owl’, 10–​11. 27 George Schuster, ‘Letter: men on national service’, The Times, 8 October 1954, p. 9. 28 A.C.T. White, The Story of Army Education 1643–​1963 (London, 1963), p. 181; A.E. Cummins, ‘An historical survey of illiteracy in the army’, Army Education:  The Journal of the Army Educational Corps, 26:2 (1952), 80–​6; Adjutant General’s Corps Archive (AGC), Army Educational Corps Papers, Report 11. ‘Curriculum Study, A.B.T.Us’, 1950; AGC, Army Educational Corps Papers, ‘Preliminary Education Centres: A Report by the Inspectorate of Army Education’, 1955. 29 ‘Backwardness in the Army’, The Times, 29 April 1953, p. 3. 30 Leslie Wayper, Mars and Minerva: A History of Army Education (Winchester, 2004), p. 241. 31 Flint, ‘Mobilizing civil society for the hegemonic state’, p. 349. 32 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 512, cols 844–​ 910, Mr Charles Simmons MP, 9 March 1953. 33 Giffard Martel, ‘The army we need for the atom age’, Daily Mail, 19 April 1948, p. 2; Comment, ‘Soldiers’, Daily Mail, 9 December 1948, p. 1. 34 Editorial, ‘The boy and the army’, Daily Mail, 17 November 1953, p. 1. 35 Vinen, National Service, p. 121. 36 Ibid., pp. 111–​13. 37 IWM, Docs. 12515, papers of Sir Peter Holmes MC, ‘Korean Diary 1951–​1952’, p. 42. 38 Literary scholar and veteran Paul Fussell explained the American parallel of ‘bull’, ‘chickenshit’, describing it as ‘behaviour that makes military life worse than it need be … and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances’, see Fussell, Wartime, p. 80. 39 Konni Zilliacus (1894–​1967) was a Labour politician and socialist; IWM, Docs. 6882, papers of Julian J.  Potter, letter to parents, 28 January 1951. I  Chose Freedom, originally published in 1946, was the best-​selling memoir of Soviet defector Victor Kravenchko.

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The Korean War in Britain 40 Vinen, National Service, p. 286. 41 Hansard, House of Commons Written Answer (hereafter HC Written), vol.  482, col. 235W, Mr Evelyn Strachey MP, 15 December 1950; Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 486, cols 2143–​54, 19 April 1951. 42 TNA, CAB 128/​18/​14, Cabinet Conclusion 54, 16 August 1950. 43 TNA, CAB 128/​18/​13, Conclusion 53, 11 August 1950. 44 IWM, 20270, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Anthony Farrar-​ Hockley, 2 April 2000. 45 Jason Timothy Fensome, ‘The administrative history of national service in Britain, 1950–​1963’ (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2001), p. 15; Royle, The Best Years of their Lives, pp. 186–​7. 46 IWM, 20270, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Anthony Farrar-​ Hockley, 2 April 2000. 47 IWM, Docs. 11300, papers of General Sir Michael West, BBC programme transcript ‘Press Conference’, 1 January 1954. 48 Smith, The Norton History of the Human Sciences, p. 579; Savage, Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940, p. 68; Rose, Governing the Soul, pp. xviii–​ix. 49 Wellcome Trust Collection, PP/​BOW/​C/​5/​3/​8, Ben S. Morris, ‘Officer selection in the British Army 1942–​1945: a short communication on the results of the follow-​up and experimental studies of the work of the War Office Selection Boards’, c. 1949. 50 Hellbeck, ‘Working, struggling, becoming’, 343. 51 IWM, Docs. 19562, papers of Russell Frederick Edwards, unpublished memoir, 2008, p. 15. 52 Wellcome Trust Collection, RAMC/​ 833, Sidney Rosenbaum, report ‘Statistical studies of the health and physique of young soldiers during the period of national service’, 1959. 53 Roy T. Fletcher, ‘Pulheems:  a new system of medical classification’, British Medical Journal, 1:4593 (1949), 83; later dropped by the RAF, see M.D. Warren, ‘The use of Pulheems system of medical classification in civilian practice’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 13:3 (1956), 205. 54 TNA, WO 32/​9681, memo ‘War Office Selection Boards (Officer Cadets Training Units)’, 1941. 55 IWM, Docs. 19562, papers of Russell Frederick Edwards, unpublished memoir, 2008, pp. 16 and 19. 56 IWM, 18199, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Ronald Larby, 1999. 57 Hansard, HC Written, vol. 510, col. 184W, Mr James Murray MP, 3 February 1953; Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 548, cols 737–​40, 31 January 1956; Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 485, cols 222–​8, 6 March 1951. 58 Hansard, HC Written, vol. 522, cols 146–​7W, Mr William Proctor MP, 19 January 1954. 59 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 475, cols 1816–​7, Mr Michael Maitland Stewart MP, 23 May 1950.

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Citizen soldiers 60 TNA, WO 32/​ 12134, War Office, Enquiry into War Office Selection Board, 1946. 61 Hugh Murray, ‘The transformation of selection procedures:  the War Office Selection Boards’, in E.L. Trist and Hugh Murray (eds), The Social Engagement of Social Science, vol. I:  The Socio-​Psychological Perspective (Philadelphia, 1990), p. 46. 62 Wellcome Trust Collection, PP/​BOW/​C/​5/​3/​8, Ben S. Morris, ‘Officer selection in the British Army 1942–​1945: a short communication on the results of the follow-​up and experimental studies of the work of the War Office Selection Boards’, c. 1949. 63 Scott Highhouse, ‘Assessing the candidate as a whole:  a historical and critical analysis of individual psychological assessment for personnel decision making’, Personnel Psychology, 55 (2002), 367–​8. 64 Charles A. Oakley, Men at Work (London, 1945), p. 66. 65 Vinen, National Service, pp. 208 and 217. 66 W.K.B. Major, ‘Training the national service army officer at Eaton Hall’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, 96 (1951), 134–​8. 67 IWM, Docs. 12515, papers of Sir Peter Holmes MC, ‘Korean Diary, 1951–​1952’, p. 2. 68 IWM, Docs. 3368, papers of L.G.G. Smith, letter to parents, 7 July 1951. Interestingly, conscripts used the appeal of adventure to justify their ‘joining’ the military, even though they actually had little choice. In this way, their stories mirror some of the narrative patterns that regular soldiers describe their war stories. 69 Kent, A Hill in Korea; D.J. Hollands, The Dead, the Dying and the Damned (London, 1956). 70 Woodward, ‘ “Not for Queen and country or any of that shit” ’, p. 372. 71 Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London and New York, 1994), p. 1. 72 Lynne Segal, ‘Look back in anger: men in the 50s’, in Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford (eds), Male Order:  Unwrapping Masculinity (London, 1988), p. 86. 73 Kent, A Hill in Korea, p. 18. 74 Morgan, ‘It Will Make a Man of You’, pp. 51 and 67–​8. 75 NAM, 1989–​05–​160, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Jarlath Donnellan, 4 August 1988. 76 Royle, The Best Years of their Lives, p. 58. 77 Vinen, National Service, p. 252. 78 Morgan, ‘It Will Make a Man of You’, p. 32. 79 NAM, 2006–​ 10–​ 5–​ 13, transcript of interviews with members of the Gloucestershire Regiment who survived the Battle of Imjin (Westward Television Limited), 1976. 80 NAM, 1989–​05–​259, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with D.R. Milbery, c. 1989.

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The Korean War in Britain 81 NAM, 1980–​ 09–​ 79/​ 98, papers of J.G. Meade, report ‘The conduct of prisoners of war of the VIII KRI Hussars captured in Korea 1951–​1953’, c. 1953. 82 IWM, Docs. 13204, papers of R.S. Gill, letter to Doreen Foote, 12 November 1950. 83 IWM, Docs. 12723, papers of J. Whybrow, letter to parents, 12 July 1951. 84 IWM, Docs. 12723, papers of J. Whybrow, diary 1951, 27 August 1951. 85 NAM, 8905–​257, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Keith Taylor, 1 September 1988. 86 NAM, 1989–​05–​160, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Jarlath Donnellan, 4 August 1988. 87 Ashley Cunningham-​Boothe, One Man’s Look at Arthritis (Leamington Spa, 1993), p. 25. 88 Examples for the Korean War include: David R. Orr and David Truesdale, A New Battlefield: The Royal Ulster Rifles in Korea 1950–​51 (Solihull, 2011); George Cooper, Fight, Dig and Live: The Royal Engineers in the Korean War (Barnsley, 2011); John R.P. Landsdown, With the Carriers in Korea:  Fleet Air Arm Story, 1950–​1953 (Worcester, 1992); Harry Moses, Durhams in Korea: The 1st Battalion DLI in the Korean War, 1952–​53 (Durham, 2002). 89 Michael Asher, The Regiment:  The Real Story of the SAS (London, 2008), p. 520. 90 NAM, 8905–​257, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Keith Taylor, 1 September 1988; NAM, 1989–​05–​259, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer, D.R. Milbery, c.  1989; IWM, Docs. 3018, papers of Thomas Nowell, unpublished memoir, p. 97. 91 NAM, 1989–​05–​160, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Jarlath Donnellan, 4 August 1988. 92 Fred Hayhurst, Green Berets in Korea: The Story of 41 Independent Commando Royal Marines (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 26–​7. 93 Spike Milligan, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (London, 1971), p. 26. 94 Morgan, ‘It Will Make a Man of You’, p. 26. 95 Segal, ‘Look back in anger’, p. 89; Vinen, National Service, pp. 184–​5. 96 Nigel C. Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma (Cambridge and New York, 2010), pp. 149–​50. 97 Kent, A Hill in Korea, p. 138. 98 Ibid., pp. 164–​5. 99 Vinen, National Service, pp. 300–​1. 100 IWM, Docs. 19562, papers of Russell Frederick Edwards, unpublished memoir, 2008, p. 19. 101 Morgan, ‘It Will Make a Man of You’, p. 66. 102 Ron Larby, Signals to the Right, Armoured Corps to the Left (Leamington Spa, 1993), p. 3. 103 IWM, 18199, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Ronald Larby, 1999.

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Citizen soldiers 104 IWM, Docs. 9870, papers of Jim Jacobs, unpublished memoir, c.  2001, p. 190. 105 Vinen, National Service, p. 291. 106 Davis, Tougher than Bullets, p. 22. 107 NAM, 2005–​ 04–​ 19/​ 1, papers of Ron Laver, letter from Ron Laver to Mr Miller, 31 August 2003. 108 David Lodge, Ginger, You’re Barmy (London, 1962); Kavanagh, The Perfect Stranger. 109 Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (London, 1958; 2008 edn). 110 Green, Captured at the Imjin River, p. 7. 111 Michael Bakewell in B.S. Johnson (ed.), All Bull:  The National Servicemen (London, 1973), p.  198; John Arden in B.S. Johnson (ed.), All Bull:  The National Servicemen (London, 1973), p. 233. 112 Neville Williams, A Conscript in Korea (Barnsley, 2009), p. 9. 113 John Hall, ‘Mother isn’t the best friend of the army’, Daily Mail, 29 July 1953, p. 4. 114 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 478, cols 1410–​92, Mr David Maxwell Fyfe MP, 15 September 1950; Kenneth Allsop, ‘When the army made Private Baxter catch falling leaves’, Daily Mail, 12 February 1960, p. 8. 115 Morgan, ‘It Will Make a Man of You’, p. 9. 116 Kavanagh, The Perfect Stranger, p. 78. 117 Recent calls for national service from wider British society include:  Anil Dawar, ‘Bring back national service to cure yobs’, Daily Telegraph, 10 July 2006, p. 10; Jack Doyle, ‘Blunkett: my volunteer scheme to put respect back in Britain’, Daily Mail, 31 August 2011, p. 14.

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Brainwashing in Britain: Korean War prisoners of war

Brainwashing is an iconic twentieth-​ century term:  over-​ used and under-​analysed, its evolving usage since 1950 encapsulates many of the century’s anxieties, prejudices and lay understandings of human behaviour. It has been frequently used as a pejorative term to describe the unwitting, external manipulation of individuals and their view on the world. In modern Britain, it has been applied to topics as far-​ranging as political outlooks, religious fundamentalism, history teaching and fluoridisation.1 Even historians have blithely used the term.2 In many of these applications, brainwashing has been used as a rather lazy shorthand to convey a sudden switch or dogmatic adherence to a new set of beliefs as a result of external propaganda: as biologist Kathleen Taylor sums up, ‘we invoke [brainwashing] when we have no other explanation or are not motivated to look for one’.3 Yet brainwashing has a specific, detailed history, one that is profoundly linked to the Korean War. Originally a Chinese term (hsi-​nao), it was first introduced to American readers by journalist Edward Hunter in 1950 to describe Chinese re-​education processes.4 Hunter argued that it became popular because, although the world was aware of such mind-​ control mechanisms, there was a ‘vacuum of language’ in the English-​ speaking world.5 By 1953 it was used to explain why one Briton and twenty-​one American servicemen opted to stay in China after the end of the war. Its rapid inclusion in popular discourse ever since is perhaps one of the most important cultural consequences of the Korean War in the Anglo-​American world, but the concept remains under-​theorised in modern British history. Why? Its reputation as uncritical rhetoric or as an unhelpful cul-​de-​sac in an argument has perhaps inhibited detailed analysis, as has its murky scientific credentials. Using one term to analyse society can also be problematic: can tracing one word over time ever v 96 v

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Brainwashing in Britain tell us any more than just the changes in the use of that term? Insights from the field of the history of emotions illuminate one way to untangle brainwashing’s turbulent history. For instance, Joanna Bourke’s cultural history of fear examines a variety of texts to understand not just individual fear, but also societal unease.6 Bourke identifies both ‘representative fears’ felt by individuals across British and American society, as well as fears that most people experience (such as death or pain). As Bourke notes, the history of fear testifies to the ‘bruising encounter between individual subjectivity and social norms’.7 Brainwashing is certainly a sub-​field of this wider history of fear, where this convergence between self and society is even more apparent. The Cold War context deepened this connection too. Matthew Dunne has argued, for instance, that in American culture brainwashing was a receptacle of worries about Communist psychological warfare and modern worries about the limits of ‘personal autonomy’. Susan Carruthers also notes that Americans feared brainwashing (or ‘menticide’) as much as the ‘atomic destruction of bodies’ during the Cold War.8 But Dunne also shows that brainwashing was more than just a reflection of anxieties, as the language of brainwashing was remoulded and redeployed in the United States to criticise and control particular American citizens. American women, for example, were blamed for US defection and soldiers’ apparent weakness of character in POW camps in Korea, due to their ‘excessive mothering’.9 As in Britain, understandings of brainwashing were also contingent on social scientific ideas about what was beneficial to the group and what behaviour could be harmful. Brainwashing was thus not just a receptacle of general Cold War anxiety, but a focal point for debates about individual identity, social control and group cohesion in the ideological setting of the Cold War. Anglo-​ American differences also simmer beneath the history of brainwashing. The first articles tackling brainwashing in the British press were keen to stress that the term was American in origin and, as with other aspects of American culture, some were resistant to its use in Britain. But brainwashing cannot simply be interpreted as an American import, for it raised specific questions in 1950s Britain and within a British democratic tradition. British philosopher Olaf Stapledon explained how mind manipulation was not seen as very Western: ‘In the West the individual is generally regarded as concrete, and society as the abstract form of individual relationships. In the Communist East, society is concrete, and the individual’s vaunted individuality is a relatively abstract factor within the total concrete society. The individual’s whole character is an expression of society.’10 However, Stapledon’s statement glosses over the v 97 v

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The Korean War in Britain particular attention paid to the individual in 1950s Britain. As we have seen, it was not only Communist states who attempted to shape individuals fit for their societies and brainwashing touches on this uneasy relationship between individual and society in Cold War Britain. At the core of brainwashing were assumptions about the power of voluntary service and commitment to a military cause: the soldier only confessed or defected because of external manipulation. But there were doubts too about how far to inculcate citizens, particularly soldier-​citizens, in democratic values so as to make them resist such external influence. As anti-​Communist writer Rebecca West later wrote, social control in democracies meant ‘walking on a tightrope’ between the need to maintain ‘security’ and allowing individual liberties –​the very liberties for which the Cold War was being fought.11 The two words –​brain and washing –​also had specific resonances in Cold War Britain. The early usage of brainwashing in Britain coincided with shifts in how people understood the brain and its relationship to the ‘psy’ disciplines. As seen in the previous chapter, since the early 1940s the British military had employed psychological testing in recruitment and the full use of the Pulheems system by the time of the Korean War led some to question whether soldiers themselves were ‘brainwashed’. The brain itself certainly features in servicemen’s testimony: the captured commanding officer of the Gloucestershire Regiment, Colonel James Carne, referred to his brain as a ‘sponge’ after psychological and chemical abuse, whereas Corporal Don Griffin later recollected that he was in no danger as ‘you’ve got to have a brain to wash haven’t you!’12 Washing too had special significance in 1950s Britain: not only was this the era where owning an electric washing machine became commonplace for many British middle-​class families, but the domestic sphere and the kitchen especially were important arena in Cold War politics. Although brainwashing was new to Britain before the Korean War, its etymological components were well-​known terms, with specific connotations. The cultural history of brainwashing in Cold War Britain reveals another aspect of the relationship between selfhood and citizenship amid the ideological battlefields of the Cold War. Through examining the shifting meaning of brainwashing in 1950s and 1960s Britain, we can see that Korea was a deeply destabilising moment in the history of modern Britain and laid the foundations for ongoing concerns about mind control, both by external enemies and within the modern state. Through analysing brainwashing, this chapter demonstrates how the Cold War was once again met in Britain with a mixture of short-​lived frenzies and v 98 v

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Brainwashing in Britain scandals, intrigue and remarkable apathy. This chapter starts by examining the experiences and treatment of British POWs in Korea before exploring how they were regarded by British society upon their return. It does not aim to provide an empirical account of those experiences or a geopolitical assessment of POWs in the international history of the Korean War. Rather this chapter traces the broader cultural implications of Korean War captivity in Britain, emphasising the lived experience of imprisonment for British POWs, before examining how the term brainwashing emerged from rumours and half-​truths about Korean War captivity.13

Captivity in Korea It is fitting that the unsettling history of brainwashing should be so intimately connected with the POW. The POW has frequently been cast as a liminal figure throughout history, caught between home and war fronts, between victory and defeat.14 Rather than anecdotal side-​action to the main events of war, the capture or surrender of POWs poses questions about loyalty, citizenship and clarity of purpose in domestic societies too.15 Insights from the new sub-​field of prisoner of war studies underscore the uneasy position of POWs, who are neither part of war action nor home societies. For instance, both the historian Iris Rachamimov and music specialist Donato Somma have investigated the meaning of female impersonation and performing masculinity and femininity in Second World War POW camps and Heather Jones has analysed racial preconceptions and violence in First World War camps.16 In their interactions with one another, POWs draw on pre-​existing ideas from their home societies, but at the same time the encounter between different peoples in the POW camp or the identities assumed by POWs produce unique communities. No longer fighting on the frontline, prisoners come to assume different functions and roles in these new societies, such as carrying out domestic tasks typically associated with the feminine ‘home’ setting. Rachamimov, for example, argues that First World War POWs trod a fine line between permissible masculine ideals and behaviour that challenged prevailing gender norms, a fine line that many men actually found liberating.17 As POW historians have shown, the break-​up of these temporary communities and the return of POWs led to anxieties within home societies about their actions and experiences as military captives. Since the nineteenth century, European societies have treated the returning soldier as a troubled  –​and troublemaking  –​individual.18 Korean War POWs, v 99 v

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The Korean War in Britain although praised for their bravery and resolve, were similarly regarded with caution. To understand this situation further, it is important to understand several key moments of POW captivity, starting with capture itself. Capture features prominently in the majority of POW narratives. Harry O’Kane, who was captured by the Chinese after the Battle of the Imjin River, later referred to his capture in a foreboding way, describing it as ‘that fateful day in April’.19 Another prisoner, Derek Kinne, recounted the moment with even more drama:  ‘[t]‌he house and barn behind us, the road crossed, we ascended the slope on the far side. It was St. George’s Day.’20 Not all captures were so portentous. Andrew Condron, the Royal Marine who subsequently refused to return to Britain, recalled in an oral history interview many years later that he had collided with an American soldier who shouted, ‘ “Hey buddy … you better throw that rifle down, we’ve surrendered!” Well, no one had told me[.] … And that’s how I became a prisoner of war’.21 The majority of British POWs were captured at one of four key moments in British Army action on the peninsula. Twenty-​five Royal Marines were captured in November 1950 at Chosin and eighty officers and other ranks (most Royal Ulster Rifles) were taken in the first Chinese Offensive in January 1951. The largest number of British troops captured took place during the Chinese Spring Offensive in April 1951, with 527 officers and men of the Gloucester Regiment taken at Imjin River, and small numbers of others were taken in minor engagements in November 1951.22 In total, there were 1,060 British prisoners, the majority of whom were held for over a year until the cessation of hostilities in July 1953.23 The large increase in prisoners from the early months of 1951 necessitated a more rigorous infrastructure and during this year the CPV assumed responsibility for all prisoners from the NKPA. CPV-​run camps were located in a network of abandoned villages and camps along the Yalu River in the north, so upon capture the majority of prisoners were marched four hundred miles north on the infamous ‘Long March’. Some did not arrive until three months after their initial capture and many testified to the small amounts of food, poor care for the wounded and hiding from periodic air attack from the United States Air Force (USAF).24 Officers and senior NCOs were separated from other ranks after the initial march north, in an attempt to undermine the organisation and support of military structures. Conditions varied, although malnutrition, poor housing and hygiene problems were present across all camps. POW camps were numbered, with nine camps or sub-​camps along the Yalu River. One of v 100 v

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Brainwashing in Britain the most-​well known of these camps was Camp Five at Pyoktong, near the Suiho Reservoir, as it was seen by British authorities as the site of the most collaboration with the enemy.25 A small number of prisoners were held further south, such as at ‘Bean Camp’ (a name deriving from its monotonous menu) as well as ‘The Caves’ and ‘Pak’s Death House’ (run by camp commandant Major Pak of the NKPA). Servicemen were not the only captives taken in Korea during the war. Several other high-​profile captives included Bishop Cecil Cooper (1882–​1964), who had lived in Korea as a missionary Anglican priest since 1908 and became Bishop in Korea in 1931. He was taken prisoner shortly after the invasion of South Korea and was marched, like the captured servicemen, northwards. His fellow Anglican missionaries, Father Charles Hunt and Sister Mary Clare, both died at the end of this march.26 Imprisoned until the end of the war, he was repatriated alongside the British diplomat and Minister in Seoul Vyvyan Holt (1896–​ 1960), Commissioner Herbert Lord (Salvation Army) and the Irish priest Father Thomas Quinlan, also on missionary activity in Korea.27 Also in this group was Vice-​Consul and intelligence officer George Blake. It was later revealed that Blake became a ‘double agent’ during his captivity and, as we shall see, his case played a significant role in heightening fears about the trustworthiness of Korean War prisoners.28 But it was not initially the setting or individual captives that fuelled brainwashing worries but the unique political education POWs received. The CPV claimed they operated a ‘Lenient Policy’ towards prisoners, at least in the first year of captivity (1951–​52).29 This policy was based on the  Chinese view that British POWs were captured war criminals, as they had taken part in a war of American imperialism. However, as they had been duped by their governments, the Chinese would adopt a ‘lenient’ approach by educating soldiers, telling them the damage they had caused and encouraging them to lobby their governments to end the violence.30 Many soldiers later remembered this policy and the education classes they received:  for George Richards, the classes revealed that this was ‘a political type of war’ and Anthony Farrar-​Hockley remembers nine-​and-​a-​half hours a day of ‘compulsory study’, although by 1952 this had been reduced to four.31 Lectures offering a Chinese Communist chronology of history were followed by group discussions, where ‘monitors’ had to report back to Head Quarters on the salient points made by each squad. Edward George Beckerley noted that as nobody in his squad ever discussed the lecture afterwards, he came up with suitable answers and in the process became quite well-​versed in v 101 v

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The Korean War in Britain Communist ideology.32 Discussion groups were not unfamiliar to soldiers, particularly to reservists and regulars who had served in the Second World War and had attended ABCA discussion sessions.33 Political education could take place outside of the formal lecture setting too, particularly when the lecture system was replaced in 1952 with an emphasis on independent study. Those deemed receptive to be to Communist ideas or to the political education classes were labelled ‘progressive’ and those who resisted the ideas ‘reactionary’. Running alongside these education classes, POWs were encouraged to reflect upon their own past actions. This followed a well-​established tradition of self-​criticism in the Chinese military.34 Officers were targeted primarily, as their accounts could yield important military information, as well as break down their sense of purpose and influence over other ranks. Dennis Lankford, a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve captured on 28 November 1951 during a mission to an island off the west coast of Korea, remembered that he had to produce an autobiography no fewer than seventeen times during his twenty-​three-​month solitary confinement.35 In December 1951, British POWs organised a committee to decide how they should respond to questionnaires the CPV were also distributing, but were discovered. Colonel Carne, the commanding officer of the Gloucestershire Regiment, was then arrested, forced to write a confession on his activities for this ‘anti-​Chinese committee’ and was imprisoned in solitary confinement, initially for a period of six months.36 He was forced to read out his confession to other prisoners on the parade ground.37 Then followed a gruelling programme of written interrogation where he was expected to write for eleven-​and-​a-​half hours a day, including a full history of the British Army. Whilst far from comfortable, Carne did note that such questioning at least broke the monotony of captivity and ‘one strung it out as much as one could, like all things’.38 Whilst confessions were typically made by those who had apparently transgressed the Chinese rules under the ‘Lenient Policy’, interrogations were far more common. Based on his psychiatric interviews with former US prisoners soon after their release in 1953, psychiatrist Edgar Schein notes that ‘almost all’ were interrogated to some degree.39 Upon capture British prisoners were first asked to fill out autobiographical forms. This presented a dilemma as standard British Army guidance dictated that servicemen should only give their name, rank, date of birth and number.40 Although hard to gauge, military authorities thought it likely that the majority of soldiers went beyond these three markers of identity in the course of their incarceration.41 The Chinese questionnaire v 102 v

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Brainwashing in Britain typically included questions on financial position, familial status, social relationships, life before joining the forces, military career, social activities, political affiliations and impressions whilst in captivity.42 In describing these forms, ex-​prisoners stressed that whilst some answered all the questions, others only answered the personal questions or gave cautious and even flippant responses.43 These questionnaires were later followed in some camps with specially-​made diaries for prisoners to fill out during their captivity. Some even contained rousing messages for the writer, such as ‘This war is senseless, get together to stop it’ and ‘British soldiers! Don’t risk your lives for the Yankee bosses’.44 Alongside producing these confessions, interrogation and autobiographies, POWs were also permitted to read a small selection of books, such as the works of Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens and playwright Sean O’Casey.45 The Communist newspaper the Daily Worker was also permitted and, indeed, servicemen would have been able to read about themselves in the paper: as seen in the next chapter, Daily Worker journalist Alan Winnington reported extensively on POW conditions.46 With all these measures, the CPV maintained that it was teaching UN soldiers to think and to question their role in the Korean War. Shortly after the war, in 1955, Andrew Condron and two American defectors contributed to the book Thinking Soldiers and argued that ‘the soldier today can no longer be viewed as a robot’.47 They argued that it was through their POW education that they came to be ‘thinking soldiers’ and that ‘talks in our company library were a very important factor’ in developing political enlightenment.48 Published by the CPV, Thinking Soldiers expressed an idealised vision of educated and class-​conscious soldiers lobbying for peace. The attitudes of fellow soldiers to these ‘progressives’ is unclear: some of these progressives were well-​known to their fellow prisoners, whereas others surreptitiously passed information on to the CPV about secret prisoner committees or the few escape plans.49 Many servicemen (particularly ‘reactionary’ prisoners) detested progressives, as they maintained that it was the duty of the POW to continue fighting.50 S.P. Mackenzie even identified several instances of progressives being ‘victimised’ on their way back to Britain and how officers had to intervene to prevent some being thrown overboard.51 On the other hand, progressive status did not always mean isolation from fellow prisoners:  one known progressive Ronald Cocks was described as good-​natured and cheerfully painting scenery for theatrical performances in the prison camp. Condron was also known to massage his fellow soldiers’ feet on the march northwards.52 Others v 103 v

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The Korean War in Britain viewed the situation more pragmatically, arguing that these men paid special attention in lectures or gave information to the CPV so as to get extra food, rather than out of any special identification with the values of Communism. Their fellow soldiers simply took care not to divulge sensitive information to those people who suspected of speaking to the CPV.53 Short-​term gain rather than long-​term commitment explained their actions.54 Condron was the only British serviceman to refuse repatriation in 1953 and chose to go to China instead. He claimed that he had always been a ‘bit of an individualist’ and that he wanted to see what a Marxist society looked.55 He was concerned about how his family would take the news, but stated firmly in a later interview that he ‘wasn’t a deserter’, that he had ‘never deserted from anything in my life, but that was the only classification they could put down.’56 However, to begin with at least, little was known about these education classes or ambiguous political allegiances beyond official circles. The British public’s worries about POWs in fact largely concerned those in UN hands. When the infamous Koje-​do POW island was established in 1951, some 150,000 Korean and Chinese POWs were moved there.57 Owing to larger numbers and a smaller administrative infrastructure, UN prisoners had had far less supervision than British and American prisoners. Guards were outnumbered at a ratio of one to thirty-​three.58 As a result, powerful Communist and anti-​ Communist groups had developed in UN-​run POW camps. These POWs were a crucial part of peace negotiations. Throughout the war, the progress of peace talks had been hampered by protracted wrangling over POWs:  the Chinese favoured immediate, complete and forced repatriation of all POWs, whereas the Americans did not wish to force NKPA or CPV prisoners (many of whom had been forced to join those armies in the first place) to return.59 Callum MacDonald notes the irony of these respective stances as the Chinese accused the United States of going against Article 118 of the 1949 Geneva Convention, despite being a non-​signatory. The United States, by contrast, called for greater flexibility in this Article, which called for all prisoners to be repatriated, but which, it argued, was built on the assumption that all prisoners would want to return.60 Many of the prisoners in UN hands had expressed their wish not to return to Communist China or North Korea: one census estimated that only 53 per cent wished to be repatriated.61 Returning anti-​Communist prisoners to North Korea and China was, US authorities maintained, highly dangerous for the individuals involved. As Thomas Hennessey has shown, Britain reticently supported the United States in these debates:  Selwyn Lloyd, v 104 v

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Brainwashing in Britain Minister of State at the Foreign Office, stressed that the 1949 Convention stated that prisoners should be released as well as repatriated, something that could not be achieved if they were imprisoned upon their return.62 Such concerns came to a head with major disturbances at Koje-​do in early 1952. On 18 February, seventy-​five prisoners were killed when prisoners rioted at proposed screening procedures and on 7 May, to widespread shock and disbelief, Communist prisoners on the island captured the commander of the camp, General Francis T.  Dodd.63 The Koje-​do disturbances were front-​page news. Dodd was released after several days when General Charles Colson signed a compromising agreement with the Communist prisoners on Koje-​do, implying that prisoners were widely ill-​treated. A  Daily Mail editorial reported that ‘Red propagandists in Britain … are squeezing this juicy plum to the last drop’, but reporter Noel Monks implied that conditions rivalled those of Belsen and Buchenwald and even alleged that the skins of murdered prisoners were being used for drums in the prison compounds.64 Koje-​do was evoked as a modern-​day Alsatia, a place where ‘honest men dared not go’.65 However exaggerated such reports were, conditions were undoubtedly poor and Koje-​do raised important questions for Britain. Lord Alexander, Minister of Defence, visited Koje in June 1952 as part of a trip the Korean battlefront and a detailed report of disturbances was produced.66 Journalist Andrew Roth felt that the island represented: Britain’s growing anxiety to reduce commitments in Korea … In public the British government is full of praise for everything the U.S. does in Korea. But in the privacy of diplomacy Britain actively tries to ‘restrain’ the Americans wherever it is thought necessary … Disagreement in Britain over the ‘screening’ process used to see if prisoners would refuse repatriation, but agreement that those who were in genuine danger if they returned home should not be repatriated. The right of political asylum is deeply ingrained in the fabric of British life, as Karl Marx and many others have found.67

Not everyone agreed with this point of view. A  woman named Enid Aswell, in a letter sent to Churchill, Attlee, Bevan and the Trades Union Congress in November 1952 urged the UN Forces to return POWs, as they were the ‘only stumbling block to the end of the war in Korea’. She urged that they return home, as unless people ‘go and live on Mars or any other quarter of the universe’, they were bound to disagree with their governments at some point.68 Debates about UN prisoners rumbled on into 1953. In June, Rhee deliberately released 25,131 non-​ repatriated prisoners without any v 105 v

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The Korean War in Britain authorisation, a move that was widely criticised in the British media.69 Despite this potentially incendiary move, an agreement was reached in July which stated that non-​repatriates should be handed over to the Neutral Nations Supervisory Committee in the interim. Qiang Zhai has argued that the Chinese had been keen to come to a compromise earlier, tiring of an expensive foreign war, but that it was only with the death of Stalin that they were able to lessen their insistence on repatriating all prisoners.70 The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed at Panmunjom on 27 July 1953, leading to the cessation of hostilities. 14,235 Chinese and 32,500 North Koreans opted not to return, compared with 325 South Korean, 22 American and one Briton (Condron) opting to stay in Communist countries.71 Charles S. Young has explored why these ostensibly positive statistics were never used by the United States in Cold War propaganda. As prisoner defection was never stated as an American war aim the comparative success in convincing prisoners not to return to their Communist homeland was not publicly celebrated.72 Furthermore, the charged context of repatriation of US POWs back home eclipsed the other side of the exchange, although non-​repatriates from Korea and China were more numerically significant. The majority of prisoners were exchanged between July and September 1953 under ‘Operation Big Switch’: United Nations Command returned 75,823 prisoners (5,640 CPV and 70,183 NKPA) in exchange for 12,773 prisoners of their own (7,862 ROK, 3,597 American, 946 British, 229 Turkish and 139 other UN personnel). However, a small number of sick, wounded and progressive POWs had been repatriated earlier in 1953 under ‘Operation Little Switch’, a campaign organised by the Chinese. In ‘Operation Little Switch’, between 20 April and 3 May 1953, the United Nations Command returned 6,570 POWs (5,194 NKPA, 1,030 CPV and 446 civilians) in exchange for 684 sick or wounded United Nations POWs (471 ROK, 149 American, 32 British, 15 Turkish and 17  other).73 Sebastian Mercer remembered the Chinese inexplicably reading out names to them when they were close to Panmunjom (location of ‘Operation Little Switch’). He noted that:  ‘All this was to keep you absolutely keyed up –​are they going to repatriate me, aren’t they?’74 Prisoners were then taken by truck to either Panmunjom or Kaesong where they were then handed over to United Nations authorities and then to British authorities. Some prisoners were given a triumphant welcome. US forces at Kaesong erected a tent for repatriated prisoners adorned with the banner ‘Welcome Gate to Freedom’ (Figure 1) in the ‘Freedom Village’. v 106 v

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Figure 1  ‘Welcome Gate to Freedom’, Kaesong, 1953 The slightly incredulous reaction from British servicemen to this reception suggests that such a welcome was incongruous with their own reactions to returning home.75 Others in Britain too were concerned that such a reception might be ill-​judged. As early as 1951, politicians and commentators worried about the potential hardships POWs might have undergone and some who had been prisoners of the Japanese during the Second World War felt that the Korean guards had been far the most brutal.76 The experience of Far East captivity made some wary about the mental state British prisoners would be in upon their return home. Gradually, both the press and the public began to sense that Korean War prisoners’ experiences had been different:  not only were their physical conditions largely dissimilar, but their unique ideological treatment posed different questions for military authorities. Prisoners were met upon their return home with in-​depth military interrogations, something that the press quickly highlighted. On 1 May 1953, BBC features producer Marjorie Banks and husband Edward Ward, the BBC’s Finland correspondent during the Second World War, went to RAF Lyneham to greet men returned home under Operation Little Switch. They made arrangements to interview eight POWs that day, but completely v 107 v

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The Korean War in Britain unexpectedly to the journalists, the men were immediately interviewed by intelligence officers for an over an hour. Coming on top of a two-​week journey and repeated media questioning, by the time Banks and Ward were able to speak to them, they only offered ‘a very simple, straightforward story from each of them of capture, of a long march and fairly reasonable treatment and food, and of the usual prisoner-​of-​war camp activities’, but nothing ‘which would bring it [the story] alive’.77 They were too tired from their interrogations to give any more salacious details. These in-​depth interrogations were not necessarily unusual, as it was standard practice to question returning POWs on their conditions, treatment and possible wrongdoing. However, the interrogations of Korean War prisoners would go on to have significant consequences, which would in turn feed into popular ideas of ‘brainwashing’.

Official responses to ‘brainwashing’ The British military authorities arranged interrogations for all men who returned from Korea, many of which were conducted by psychologist Cyril Cunningham. In early 1953, Cunningham, a Cambridge law graduate and occupational psychologist in the Air Ministry, was seconded to AI9 to investigate the Communist treatment of POWs. AI9 itself was a reactivated POW intelligence unit (formerly MI9), brought under the auspices of the Air Ministry and disbanded shortly after the end of the Korean War. Cunningham was instrumental in writing AI9’s key reports, including its initial report in August 1955 and the ‘blue book’, Treatment of British POWs in Korea, published by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) later that year. He conducted interviews with Holt, Carne and leading ‘progressives’ of Camps One and Five.78 Cunningham was joined by John Young and A.N. West-​ Watson, who had been head of Intelligence School 9 which had been responsible for Allied POWs escape, evasion and morale during the Second World War. This small team was tasked with interviewing British POWs upon their return, understanding the conditions of their captivity and ascertaining the success of the political indoctrination to which they had been subjected. Although disparaging about brainwashing as a scientific technique, the official response to the phenomenon nevertheless revealed deeper uncertainities. Cunningham later claimed that brainwashing had yet to be invented as a term while he was conducting these interviews, but he did state at the time that he worried the US and British press had conflated brainwashing with interrogation and that servicemen would thus presume they had ‘brainwashed’, as many underwent short interrogations v 108 v

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Brainwashing in Britain during their captivity.79 Although Cunningham felt that the Communists had superior knowledge of techniques like sleep deprivation, he and others on the team were keen to stress that interrogation was not the same and was a familiar occurrence for captured military personnel. Cunningham’s repudiation of the term brainwashing owes much to the chequered reception of the term in the Anglo-​American world since Hunter’s first use of term in 1950.80 Dunne argues that Hunter made the term far more sinister than the original Chinese word, which was largely used metaphorically rather than referring to an actual technique.81 Hunter’s 1956 book Brainwashing:  The Story of the Men Who Defied It outlined re-​ education techniques along ‘eastern’, Pavolvian lines.82 Other early US research by psychologists Robert Jay Lifton and Edgar Schein argued that the Chinese method was distinct from the Soviet one and that acts of confession were not necessarily ideologically motivated. Schein stated that most US soldiers gave inaccurate autobiographical information under confession.83 The term had limited success within medical circles: Joost Meerloo, formerly chief psychologist for the Netherlands Forces in the Second World War based in the UK, preferred the term ‘menticide’ to describe the situation in Korea and framed it in terms of a strong or weak ego.84 American psychologist Albert Biderman, who was interested in Communist techniques of mind control, nevertheless argued that: ‘Almost without exception the writings in books by scientists have been anxious alarms about the threat to human values posed by “brainwashing” rather than undertakings with a truly scientific purpose.’85 Even in its earliest iterations, then, brainwashing was a social term, wedded to popular anxieties, rather than a medical term. This context explains Cunningham’s reticence and frustration over the term and the effect it might have on his interviewees. When British POWs first returned home, they were interviewed by an AI9 interrogator. Cunningham used psychoanalytic techniques in his investigation, such as ‘projection’, asking the interviewee what he expected from their meeting before they began.86 Questions in these interrogations covered military matters, but there were also queries to ascertain the political stance and mental state of the returned POW.87 Colonel Carne’s records are some of the very few interview transcripts open to historians and contain a detailed examination of his treatment, including nineteen months of solitary confinement. Carne describes his beatings after his repeated attempts to escape, poor food provision and developing partial blindness. He also disclosed in the interview that he thought he might have been drugged during his captivity.88 v 109 v

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The Korean War in Britain A further element of Carne’s interrogation troubled British authorities, one that brought to the surface concerns about certain elements of the ‘Special Relationship’ with the United States. Following his release, Carne and his adjutant Farrar-​Hockley visited the British ambassador to Japan, Sir Elser Dening (1897–​1977), where they recounted how the drugs had made Carne’s brain ‘as he put it, like a sponge capable of absorbing anything’. Whilst in this condition, Carne claimed that the Chinese had put ‘thoughts into his mind’ which he thought they wanted him to relay back to the British government. These ‘thoughts’ included the joint policing of a buffer zone in divided Korea by British and Chinese police and a proposal for Britain to be actively involved in the reconstruction of both North and South Korea.89 Although very confused by the process, Carne felt that he might have been used as a channel of communication between the Chinese and British governments. Equally perplexed, Dening wrote to Dennis Allen at the Foreign Office: You will see from the record that Carne’s story does not by any means make sense, but the Communists never do anything without purpose, and there must have been some purpose in what they did to Carne[.] … The main purpose might be that, if we fell for any suggestions of this kind and did not tell the Americans, a widening rift might be created between us which, after all, must be one of the main aims of Communist strategy.90

Dening speculated that the Chinese did not want the Soviet Union to play ‘too large a part in bringing about a Korean peace settlement’, noting that the propositions were ‘a tempting thought, and may have been designed to tempt us’.91 Dening was uncertain as to how to proceed and how much store to put on Carne’s testimony. Although sceptical of brainwashing, seeing it as ‘improbable’, he did note the ‘fearful mental strain’ which Carne was under and how this might have influenced his account. Either way Carne’s testimony, which was never widely circulated, was a perplexing episode in official responses to Chinese interrogative methods.92 Amid this confusion about the long-​term implications of interrogation, British military authorities nevertheless drew some conclusions about Korean War POWs. Cunningham used his interviews to set out what he felt were eight key factors influencing the individual’s ability to keep going and the ‘efficiency of his unit’:  fighting efficiency, initiative, his prior expectations, esprit de corps, sense of discipline, belief in cause, knowledge of Communism and religion. The first five attributes linked the individual’s capacity to survive to his position in a military v 110 v

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Brainwashing in Britain unit and a group more generally. The soldier must display ‘toughness and stamina’ and a lack of attachment to the ‘material benefits which modern civilisation can provide’. This view was widely held: the common complaint British servicemen made about their American counterparts was that the latter had been ‘living off the fat of the land’ in the United States or stationed in Japan. British servicemen, by contrast, had grown up with the privations of wartime living and post-​war austerity, which had equipped them for further hardships.93 Using their material deficiencies, the British in Korea thus constructed themselves the image of battle-​ hardened veterans accustomed to ‘living hard’ using their resourcefulness and wit. Cunningham did acknowledge that these skills varied among reservists, regulars and national servicemen, suggesting these needed to be developed more during their training.94 Elsewhere, reports suggested that the Commonwealth Forces in Korea had received no general briefing on what to expect in the event of capture.95 Cunningham also maintained that discipline and esprit de corps must be inculcated into the conscript, as both would ‘encourage him to continue to regard his captors as his enemy’. These attempts to understand how and why POWs might ‘break’ were also indebted to the increasing sophistication of psychological and behavioural testing. The term ‘personality’, although used since the 1920s, was used in particular to understand the ‘progressive’ prisoners. AI9’s advisory report noted that ‘almost every man has his breaking point. This point varies individually and depends on basic personality’.96 But Cunningham’s stress on the importance of the group and its function also link to concerns about citizenship. Cunningham argued that: ‘It was clear from the evidence in relation to Korea that, where an individual did not feel “part of the main group” he became “an island unto himself ” and rapidly succumbed to illness and often died.’97 Once again, the soldier-​citizen’s sense of himself as part of a group was crucial to his overall outlook and ability to function in wider British society. Brainwashing meant erring away from a well-​established set of norms and a firm group identity. Its potential presence as a weapon of war, whether actual or not, prompted British authorities to question once more how binding the ideals of Cold War Britain were. In general, British official responses were not as strong as those in the United States. According to D.F. Barrett, unlike their American counterparts, the British did not try their suspected ‘collaborators’ owing to an infrastructure less inclined to deal with POWs in this way but also due to ‘a more tolerant attitude to Communism [in a country] where it was not a banned party’.98 However, although no major investigation took place v 111 v

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The Korean War in Britain and even Condron faced no punishment when he returned to the UK in 1962, smaller measures enacted after the Korean War did have an impact on the lives of former prisoners and their families, such as the publication of Treatment of British Prisoners of War in 1955.99 This official report into POW treatment stated that 12 per cent co-​operated politically or militarily, 17 per cent did so to a minor degree, 63 per cent neither co-​operated nor resisted and the remaining 8 per cent ‘resisted in all possible ways’. There had been calls for the pamphlet to be published earlier in the year, as some felt that it was of national significance and that a full explanation could help to dispel growing rumours about POW treatment.100 Similarly, there was public interest in a small group of intriguing British civilian visitors who had been granted access to camps during the war, such as Daily Worker journalist Alan Winnington and town planner Monica Felton. Prior to its publication the Attorney-​ General, Reginald Manningham-​ Buller, expressed his concerns that the report contained ‘highly defamatory’ material on visitors to the camps. One particularly striking passage from the original draft concerned Daily Worker journalist Michael Shapiro and alleged that he had seemed ‘amused to see prisoners dying fast of malnutrition and neglect’.101 This reference was removed from the later published version and although Manningham-​Buller noted that such statements were ‘well merited’, only those which could be grounded firmly in evidence should be included. The CPGB still condemned the publication for damaging the reputations of named individuals like Winnington and Felton, but right-​wing MPs also criticised the report for not going far enough.102 British POWs became a problematic issue once again in 1961. In May 1961, the government appointed Lord Radcliffe to review security procedures and practices in public service following recent convictions under the Official Secrets Act, including that of George Blake, the intelligence officer imprisoned during the war. Blake had seemingly been busy since his imprisonment. He had been working for the British intelligence services when it was discovered he had been passing secrets to the KGB and he was arrested in April 1961. The Radcliffe Committee report was submitted in November 1961 and in March 1962 the Committee agreed that its recommendations could be published, with significant omissions for security purposes.103 Overall, the report noted that the realities of the Cold War meant that people paid less heed to the wartime dictum that ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’.104 Altering public service posting and promotion was seen as a way to counter this. Although individuals could be ‘purged’ from public service during the late 1940s, it was not until 1956 that the government publicly stated that ‘character defects’, including v 112 v

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Brainwashing in Britain Communist sympathies, might affect a public servant’s posting or promotion. From 1952, those appointed to certain areas of government had also required ‘positive vetting’ or ‘special overt enquiries’ about their character and interests.105 The Radcliffe Committee made a new suggestion in light of breaches of the Official Secrets Act: that no public servant who has been held captive or interned in ‘Communist hands’ for three or more months should be given any post which would require positive vetting. Blake’s case was mentioned and the committee stated that ‘we think there must be a risk involved in employing anyone who has been through such an experience on secret work’.106 The Macmillan government approved all recommendations. Blake meanwhile staged a dramatic escape from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966, using a ladder made of knitting-​needles, and travelled to East Germany and then to the Soviet Union. On the surface, the practical consequences of the Radcliffe report for former British POWs were limited, as the government reported that only twenty-​five officers from the British Army were still serving in September 1962.107 However, only ‘a few unimportant posts’ were open to those without positive vetting, so in theory the potential posts under debate included the vast majority of senior jobs in the British Army. It was only after three years of close scrutiny by a senior officer that the former captive could progress, having shown the ‘qualifications and personal character which were likely to lead to a high rank’.108 The rule did not stop the rise of Carne’s adjutant, Farrar-​Hockley, who by his retirement in 1982 at the rank of Lieutenant-​General was Commander-​in-​Chief of NATO’s Northern Region. However, Farrar-​ Hockley’s illustrious post-​ Korea career was perhaps the exception, rather than the rule, as shown by the case of Major A.F. Blundell. An officer of the Gloucestershire Regiment, Blundell had been a POW for two-​and-​a-​half years in Korea. In 1967, when the Army offered him voluntary redundancy, he decided to take it and to apply for a career in the Diplomatic Service. He was accepted by the Civil Service, but was informed much later that he had failed the Diplomatic Service application, owing to the Radcliffe Recommendation. In the meantime, the Army had accepted his application to leave. Whilst pondering what to do next and still living in his married Army quarters, Blundell was given an eviction notice and court summons by a ‘cheerful bailiff ’ to appear at Andover Court on 26 June 1968. His MP Michael Hamilton raised the issue in Parliament, directly questioning the wisdom of the Radcliffe Recommendation, as Blundell had been very young when imprisoned and had been ‘loyal’ for the intervening seventeen years.109 The impact of the Korean War on British public servants was debated v 113 v

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The Korean War in Britain at length. Commonwealth Affairs Under-​Secretary William Whitlock responded that he felt sorry for Blundell and understood he had been a ‘faithful servant’, but that: Blake, in his time, gave the same impression. He, too, to all outward appearances, was a faithful servant of the Crown who fell into Communist hands through no fault of his own. He, too, ostensibly behaved in an exemplary fashion during his captivity and indeed for eight years after it. But the effects of his treachery are still with us today. The Diplomatic Service simply cannot ignore this lesson.110

Blundell’s case was reported in the press and the Admiralty stated that the incident had caused other former POWs to be very worried about their future.111 It demonstrated the small, but significant implications of Korean War captivity on British life. The Radcliffe Recommendation never used the term ‘brainwashing’ to describe the effect of captivity: by 1962, this terminology had long since been discounted by professionals. However, this did not mean that brainwashing had been absent from wider British culture. Although military and medical professionals abandoned brainwashing with alacrity, the underpinning concept and the term itself had a much longer impact on British culture.

Brainwashing in popular culture, 1950–​60 Brainwashing was one of the most significant and lasting cultural responses to the Korean War in the Western world, unimpeded by its lack of medical credentials. However, whilst cultural analyses of brainwashing in the United States and even global histories have unveiled important moments in this history, few have considered whether there was a particular response to the idea of brainwashing within Britain. Were any of these concerns particularly unique to Britain or was it a variant of the social unease felt in the United States? Such a question goes to the core of whether Britain had a distinct Cold War culture of its own. In 1950, the British press used it in the context of Communist aggression and were keen to stress that it was an American term.112 British prisoners themselves also felt they were particularly resistant to Communist influence. Beckerley noted that the Americans ‘didn’t stand up very well at all’ and described them as ‘passive’, ‘listless’ and only ‘eating and sleeping really’. On food, Beckerley, who was labelled later a relatively ‘progressive’ prisoner, felt that the American servicemen had a particular aversion to the bland food they were offered such as millet, maize and sorghum. He v 114 v

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Brainwashing in Britain estimated that at one point fifteen or twenty American prisoners died a day in his camp due to not eating or not sharing food. To Beckerley, a resourceful British serviceman would never be so dejected by his material circumstances that he would give up so completely or turn to Communism. The American origins and Communist connotations of term continued to be emphasised later in the 1950s. Following the war, there was a flurry of publications about the twenty-​one US servicemen who ‘chose China’.113 In 1961, brainwashing was even used to describe an American evangelical preacher, Dr Billy Graham, who was visiting the UK.114 Brainwashing also reached British audiences via American films. Many historians have shown how American films were deeply imbued with Cold War concerns, exemplified by films such as The Rack (1956) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962).115 Brainwashing featured heavily in these films, particularly in The Manchurian Candidate, where American Major Marco (played by Frank Sinatra) uncovers how one of his sergeants was ‘turned’ during Korea and has subsequently been ruthlessly used for political ends by his secretly Communist mother (played by Angela Lansbury). British films such as the Ipcress File (1965), starring Michael Caine, built on these representations of brainwashing, in this case with the catchy concept of ‘Induction of Psycho-​Neuroses by Conditioned Reflex under Stress’.116 But it is important to remember that these films were not the only popular film genre to depict POWs at this time. Since The Captive Heart (1946), Second World War POW experience was a staple of British cinema and continued to be so in the 1950s and 1960s with The Colditz Story (1955) and popular US film The Great Escape (1963).117 Daring escape and British pluck, rather than dejection and defection, were still the main staples of POW films in Britain in the early Cold War. Despite evident fascination with brainwashing in the British film industry, the majority of POW films continued to focus on Second World War experience. In the 1950s Britain had its own ‘captivity narrative’, which differed from that circulating in the United States.118 Once again, the Second World War shaped the cultural world in which the Korean War was understood. But what would the term brainwashing have meant in 1950s Britain? The psychological sciences certainly framed these debates. Stefan Schwarzkopf argues that British society in the 1950s was obsessed with psychology and the science of mind control, not just from Communist others, but by advertisers seeking to sell these new goods.119 Vance Packard’s Hidden Persuaders (1957) criticised the research methods employed by advertisers and the use of ‘subliminal advertising’.120 v 115 v

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The Korean War in Britain MO founders Tom Harrison and Charles Madge noted how advertising agencies, based ‘their work on the assumption that the human mind is suggestible and they aim their suggestions at the part of the human mind in which the superstitious elements predominate’.121 This outcry deepened anxieties about brainwashing and extended its popularity as a term. But although historians have tended to focus, understandably, on the growing lay knowledge of the brain through the expansion of the ‘psy’ disciplines, the less glamorous history of washing has been overlooked. Washing is not an arbitrary or insignificant term in 1950s Britain. The introduction of electric washing machines in the 1950s profoundly changed one of the central elements of British life and revolutionised female domestic labour, which had previously included back-​breaking tasks such as scrubbing and wringing.122 The growing ownership of automatic or semi-​automatic machines among the middle classes was a significant cultural change in the way people interacted with washing, but it also had a deeper Cold War significance. Many Cold War statesmen emphasised the role of domestic appliances in cementing the ‘social contract between citizens and the state’.123 The modern kitchen and consumer goods posed questions about female activity and even citizenship. Commentators asked if women could be liberated by more efficient domestic appliances or by leaving the kitchen behind all together.124 Kitchens thus became symbolic arena for debates about women and consumerism, but they were also places where the changing relationship between people as ‘users’ and new technological systems became evident.125 In short, the brainwashing scandals ran parallel to enormous technological change in washing practices and coincided with broader debates about consumer goods and citizenship in the Cold War world. These areas overlapped frequently. Schwarzkopf highlights the growing psychological tone of advertising, replacing advertisements which had previously emphasised efficiency and value for money. During the 1950s detergent advertisements also began to stress the social and cultural implications of washing and clean clothes.126 In 1961, one advertisement for the Keymatic dual-​action washing machine even highlighted that it had its own ‘electronic brain’.127 Several overlapping cultural frameworks therefore shape the meaning of the term brainwashing in Cold War Britain: technological changes, Cold War politics and shifting concepts of gendered citizenship and selfhood collided in 1950s Britain and it was this unique context which influenced understandings of brainwashing. Brainwashing and mind control continued to be debated into the 1960s, culminating in a scandal of the Intelligence Corps depot v 116 v

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Brainwashing in Britain at Maresfield, Sussex. The Daily Mail headline of 9 March 1960 ran ‘Brainwashing Shocks: War Office Admits Grilling Tests on Elite Troops’ and described the use of various gruelling (and possibly illegal) physical tests ‘designed to “case-​harden” elite Service units against Communist-​ type interrogation’.128 Macmillan was forced to publicly deny such allegations in Parliament.129 Yet this was not isolated incident; earlier in the year an article in the Observer was similarly captivated by Soviet interrogation methods and their possible transposition into a British context. Alexander Kennedy, Professor of Psychological Medicine at Edinburgh University, argued that ‘brainwashing’ techniques used against POWs in the ‘last war’, such as personal-​history taking and the effect of isolation visits, could perhaps be used to help mitigate the effects of senility and delinquency. As was noted, ‘psychological swords were now being turned into ploughshares’.130 Whilst Kennedy’s interpretation was by no means unquestioned, the language of brainwashing and psychological warfare had again clearly spread beyond the military sphere by 1960. What then was the overall significance of ‘brainwashing’ in early Cold War Britain? First, it was an expression of a deep uncertainty over the individual in the early 1950s: people were seen malleable, susceptible to influence through psychological and even chemical manipulation. The Cold War heightened these concerns, as some suspected that the Communists had special expertise in these techniques, either through their educative policies or scientific advances. But as Marcia Holmes comments, it is incorrect to assume that ‘brainwashing ever had a specific, widely accepted definition’.131 Second, the various scandals over brainwashing charted in this chapter substantiate the point made by Rose and Savage that selfhood was increasingly defined in line with the ‘psy’ disciplines. From POW interrogations to washing detergent advertisements, British people were more aware of psychological language than at any previous point. The British Army’s relationship with these psychological techniques was controversial too. Although Alexander Kennedy’s accusations were seen as rather inflammatory at the time, the British Army had undoubtedly embraced the ‘psy’ sciences by the time of the Korean War. The work of psychoanalysts such as Wilfred Bion, John Rickman and Tom Main at institutions like the Northfield Military Hospital during the Second World War had set the agenda for both post-​war psychology and the position of the individual in the military. Kennedy’s view that military training had become, through the work of these psychologists, a form v 117 v

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The Korean War in Britain of brainwashing in itself was criticised but was surprisingly tenacious. Corporal Don Griffin noted when interviewed in 1976 that he’d been ‘brainwashed from an early age’ through his training and would go wherever he was told.132 Condron’s Thinking Soldiers supported this idea too, although he personally wanted to rebel against such orders. Brainwashing marks the close relationship between the military and psy disciplines and shows the widening use of psychological language in Britain at large, but also testifies to the particular challenge of imposing orders in an era in which psychological foul play was fiercely debated. Brainwashing thus emerged at a crucial juncture in the development of ‘modernity’ and subjectivity. By 1962 psychologist Albert Biderman concluded that at the core of the idea of brainwashing were very ‘human concerns’: politics, philosophical values, a dramatic contest of wills and ‘the fundamental human concern with autonomy and dependency’.133 Brainwashing, however disputed or discredited a term, nevertheless sharpened discussions about the ability of external others or the modern state to control and to mould its subjects. There are also elements of the history of brainwashing as a term that are unique to Britain. Although American representations of brainwashing were well-​known, Britain had its own ‘captivity narrative’ in the 1950s too, as well as its own background of technological changes in everyday life. British authorities and society engaged with the idea of mind control in multiple ways, as marked by the Blundell and Maresfield scandals. These instances did not just highlight the connections between the Korean War and brainwashing, they also raised questions about loyalty and treason in the Cold War. As the next chapter shows, Korea forced British people to consider what constituted disloyalty in this new era and how to permit critical opposition without colluding with the enemy.

Notes 1 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 74, cols 195–​250, Mr Keith Best MP, 26 February 1985; Patrick Coburn, ‘War with ISIS: the brides brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers’, Independent, 16 May 2015, p.  1; Jay Akbar, ‘The killer kids of the “caliphate” ’, Mail Online, 18 June 2015 www.dailymail.co.uk/​ news/​article-​3 125080/​The-​k iller-​k ids-​c aliphate-​Shockingly-​young-​b oys-​ brainwashed-​generation-​martyrs-​ISIS-​camp.html (accessed 10 November 2016). 2 Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down:  Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (London, 1975), pp. 324–​5.

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Brainwashing in Britain 3 Kathleen Taylor, Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control (Oxford, 2004), p. 9. 4 Carruthers, Cold War Captives, p. 245. The term appears as hsi-​nao in contemporary material, although the modern pinyin transliteration is xi’nao. 5 Edward Hunter, Brainwashing: The Story of the Men Who Defied It (New York, 1956), p. 3. 6 Bourke, Fear, p. 7. 7 Ibid., pp. 8–​9. 8 Susan L. Carruthers, ‘Redeeming the captives:  Hollywood and the brainwashing of America’s prisoners of war in Korea’, Film History, 10:3 (1998), 275. 9 Matthew W. Dunne, A Cold War State of Mind: Brainwashing and Post-​War American Society (Amherst and Boston, 2013), p. 145. 10 Olaf Stapledon, ‘The bridge between’, in National Peace Council, Two Worlds in Focus: Studies of the Cold War (London, 1950), p. 55. 11 Rebecca West, The New Meaning of Treason (New York, 1964), p. 370. 12 TNA, AIR 40/​2644, Air Ministry, statement by Lieutenant Colonel J.P. Carne, British Embassy Tokyo, 7 September 1953; NAM, 2006–​10–​5–​13, transcript of oral history interview with Corporal Donald Griffin, Westward Television Limited (Plymouth), 1976. 13 S.P. Mackenzie, British Prisoners of the Korean War (Oxford, 2012). 14 Pat Reid and Maurice Michael, Prisoner of War (London, 1984), p. 13. 15 Robert C. Doyle, Voices from Captivity:  Interpreting the American POW Narrative (Lawrence, 1994), pp. 281–​2. 16 Iris Rachamimov, ‘Camp domesticity:  shifting gender boundaries in WWI internment camps’, in Gilly Carr and Harold Mytum (eds), Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War: Creativity Behind Barbed Wire (New York and London, 2012), pp. 291–​305; Donato Somma, ‘Madonnas and prima donnas:  the representation of women in an Italian prisoner of war camp in South Africa’, in Gilly Carr and Harold Mytum (eds), Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War: Creativity behind Barbed Wire (New York and London, 2012), pp. 261–​74. Heather Jones, ‘A missing paradigm? Military captivity and the prisoner of war, 1914–​18’, Immigrants and Minorities, 26:1 (2008), 19–​48; Heather Jones, Violence against Prisoners of War in the First World War: Britain, France and Germany, 1914–​1920 (Cambridge, 2011). 17 Rachamimov, ‘Camp domesticity’, p. 299. 18 Joany Hichberger, ‘Old soldiers’, in Raphael Samuel (ed.), Patriotism:  The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, vol. III (New  York and London, 1989), pp. 50–​63. 19 Henry O’Kane, O’Kane’s Korea: A Soldier’s Tale of Three Years of Combat and Captivity in Korea 1950–​53 (Kenilworth, 1988), p. 62. 20 Derek Kinne, The Wooden Boxes (London, 1955), p. 20. 21 IWM, 9693, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Andrew Condron, 1 February 1987.

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The Korean War in Britain 22 TNA, AIR 8/​2473, MOD, ‘Report of the advisory panel of prisoner of war conduct after capture’, August 1955, p. 29. 23 Farrar-​Hockley, The British Part in the Korean War, Volume II, p. 486. 24 TNA, AIR 8/​2473, MOD, ‘Report of the advisory panel of prisoner of war conduct after capture’, August 1955, p.  29; IWM, Docs. 12388, papers of R.W.  Maguire, unpublished memoir, p.  5; IWM, Docs. 8156, papers of F.E. Carter, unpublished memoir, c. 1987, p. 40. 25 Major A.N. West-​Watson, Commander of the British Repatriated Prisoners of War Interrogation Unit, concluded that this conglomeration of ‘progressives’ in Camp Five was largely coincidental. See TNA, WO 32/​20495, MOD, ‘Report on the success of Communist indoctrination among British PW in North Korea’, October 1953; Ministry of Defence, Treatment of British Prisoners of War in Korea (London, 1955), p. 16; Mackenzie, British Prisoners of the Korean War, p. 55. 26 Birmingham Cadbury Special Collections, DA 24/​6/​4 (part one) correspondence, biographical note by Miss Dorothy Morrison. 27 Return to Freedom (Pathé News), 27 April 1953. 28 George Blake, No Other Choice: An Autobiography (London, 1990), pp. 146–​7; Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London, 2009), p. 488. 29 Prisoners describe ‘phases’ of captivity in Korea, such as initial capture and interrogation and the period of intensive education. For example, NAM, 1989–​ 05–​ 163, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Robin Bruford-​Davies, 10 February 1989. 30 TNA, WO 32/​20495, MOD, ‘Report on the success of Communist indoctrination among British PW in North Korea’, October 1953, pp. 1–​2. 31 IWM, 9859, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with George Richards, 12 July 1987; Anthony Farrar-​Hockley, The Edge of the Sword (London, 1954), p. 221. 32 IWM, 10982, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Edward Beckerley, 8 November 1987. 33 Ford, The Bureau of Current Affairs, pp. 7–​8; Christopher Hilliard, To Exercise Our Talents: The Democratization of Writing in Britain (Cambridge, MA and London, 2006), p. 206. 34 Aaron William Moore, ‘Talk about heroes:  expressions of self-​mobilization and despair in Chinese war diaries, 1911–​1938’, Twentieth Century China, 34:2 (2009), 30–​54. 35 Dennis Lankford, I Defy! The Story of Lieutenant Dennis Lankford (London, 1954). 36 TNA, AIR 40/​2644, ‘Verbatim transcription of re-​interrogation of Carne’ with Lieutenant Colonel J.F.D Murphy (Psychiatric Department of the Royal Army Medical Corps) and Cyril Cunningham, c. December 1953. 37 TNA, WO 208/​ 4021, special interrogation reports on British officer POWs: preliminary appreciation of the Chinese interrogation of Lieutenant Col. J.P. Carne by Cyril Cunningham, 21 December 1953.

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Brainwashing in Britain 38 TNA, AIR 40/​2644, ‘Verbatim transcription of re-​interrogation of Carne’ with Lieutenant Colonel J.F.D Murphy (Psychiatric Department of the Royal Army Medical Corps) and Cyril Cunningham, c.  December 1953. It was in solitary confinement that Carne carved a small stone Celtic cross, subsequently installed in Gloucestershire Cathedral. 39 Edgar H. Schein, ‘The Chinese indoctrination for prisoners of war: a study of attempted brainwashing’, Psychiatry, 19:2 (1956), 157. 40 NAM, 1992–​ 04–​ 28, standard War Office leaflet relating to the rights of prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention; Stanley James Davies, In Spite of Dungeons: The Experiences as a Prisoner-​of-​War in North Korea of the Chaplain to the First Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment (Stroud, 1992), p. 31. 41 Cyril Cunningham noted that all British prisoners were compelled to fill in autobiographical forms (and only 8 per cent of servicemen resisted the CPV in every way possible), see TNA, AIR 8/​2473, MOD, ‘Report of the advisory panel of prisoner of war conduct after capture’, August 1955, pp. 4, 31 and 34. 42 Cyril Cunningham, No Mercy, No Leniency:  Communist Mistreatment of British and Allied Prisoners of War in Korea (Barnsley, 2000), pp. 164–​6. 43 Ibid., pp. 24–​5. 44 IWM, Docs. 12481, diary for 1951, produced by Chinese People’s Volunteers; Huxford ‘ “Write your life!” ’, 11. 45 IWM, 10982, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Edward Beckerley, 8 November 1987; IWM, 9859, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with George Richards, 12 July 1987; TNA,WO 208/​4021, special interrogation reports on British officer POWs:  preliminary appreciation of the Chinese interrogation of Lieutenant Col. J.P. Carne by Cyril Cunningham, 21 December 1953. 46 Alan Winnington, I Saw the Truth in Korea (London, 1950); IWM, 10982, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Edward Beckerley, 8 November 1987. 47 Condron et al., Thinking Soldiers, p. 2. 48 Ibid., p. 38. 49 NAM, 1980–​09–​79/​98, papers of J.G. Meade, report ‘The conduct of prisoners of war of the VIII KRI Hussars captured in Korea 1951–​1953’, c. 1953, p. 5. 50 Mackenzie, British Prisoners in the Korean War, pp. 140–​1. 51 Ibid., p. 140. Ashley Cunningham-​Boothe even insinuated that a tyrannical NCO was thrown overboard on the way to Korea, see IWM, 19913, oral history interview by Conrad Wood, Thomas Ashley Cunningham-​Boothe, 8 December 1999. 52 IWM, 9859, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with George Richards, 12 July 1987. 53 NAM, 1989–​05–​164, oral history interview with Frank R. Wisby, 1989. 54 TNA, AIR 8/​2473, MOD, ‘Report of the advisory panel of prisoner of war conduct after capture’, August 1955, p. 9.

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The Korean War in Britain 55 IWM, 9693, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Andrew Condron, 1 February 1987; S.P. Mackenzie, ‘The individualist collaborator:  Andy Condron in Korea and China, 1950–​62’, War and Society, 30:2 (2011), 147–​65. 56 IWM, 9693, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Andrew Condron, 1 February 1987. 57 Young, Name, Rank and Serial Number, pp. 33–​4. 58 Callum MacDonald, ‘ “Heroes behind barbed wire”:  the US, Britain and the POW issue in the Korean War’, in James Cotton and Ian Neary (eds), The Korean War in History (Manchester, 1989), p. 136. 59 Mackenzie, British Prisoners of the Korean War, p. 134. 60 MacDonald, Korea, p. 134. 61 Hennessey, Britain’s Korean War, p. 208. 62 Ibid., p. 209. 63 HM Government, Korea:  A Summary of Developments in the Armistice Negotiations and the Prisoner of War Camps June 1951–​May 1952 (London, 1952), p. 13. 64 Editorial, ‘How odd about Dodd’, Daily Mail, 14 May 1952, p. 1; Noel Monks, ‘Red terror on prison isle rivals Belsen Torture’, Daily Mail, 27 May 1952, p. 3. 65 Editorial, ‘Alsatia in Korea’, Daily Mail, 28 May 1952, p. 1. 66 HM Government, Korea:  A Summary of Developments in the Armistice Negotiations. 67 Bishopsgate Institute Library, ROTH/​3/​24 Andrew Roth, ‘Britain’s stage-​ whisper on Korea’, 24 May 1952. 68 MRC, MSS951.9, letter from Enid Aswell, sent to Churchill, Attlee, Bevan and the TUC on Prisoners of War in Korea, 20 November 1952. 69 Rees, Korea, p. 230. 70 Qiang Zhai, ‘China’s emerging role on the world stage’, in Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Regional Cold Wars in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East (Washington, DC, 2015), p. 70. 71 Mackenzie, British Prisoners of the Korean War, p. 134. 72 Young, ‘POWs’, pp. 155–​70. 73 Farrar-​Hockley, The British Part in the Korean War, Volume II, p. 484. 74 NAM, 8905–​261, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Sebastian ‘Sam’ Mercer, 18 July 1988. 75 Lankford, I Defy!, p. 159. 76 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 483, cols 700–​3, Major Harry Legge-​Bourke MP, 30 January 1951. 77 BBC, R19/​612, letter from Miss Marjorie Banks to Foreign Office, 4 May 1953. 78 Cunningham, No Mercy, No Leniency, p. xiv. 79 Ibid., p. xiii. 80 Carruthers, Cold War Captives, p. 245. 81 Dunne, A Cold War State of Mind, p. 23. 82 Hunter, Brainwashing, pp. 17–​42.

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Brainwashing in Britain 83 Schein, ‘The Chinese indoctrination for prisoners of war’, 158. 84 Joost A.M. Meerloo, Mental Seduction and Menticide:  The Psychology of Thought Control and Brainwashing (London, 1957); Carruthers, ‘Redeeming the captives’, 275. 85 Albert Biderman, ‘Image of “brainwashing” ’, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 26:4 (1962), 547. 86 Cunningham argued that asking interviewees what they expected gave him a further layer of meaning through which to ascertain their psychiatric state and loyalty, see TNA, WO 208/​4021, special interrogation reports on British officer POWs:  preliminary appreciation of the Chinese interrogation of Lieutenant Col. J.P. Carne by Cyril Cunningham, 21 December 1953. 87 The psychiatric assessment element to the interview is the principal reason why these transcripts remain closed. 88 TNA, AIR 40/​2644, ‘Verbatim transcription of re-​interrogation of Carne’ with Lieutenant Colonel J.F.D Murphy (Psychiatric Department of the Royal Army Medical Corps) and Cyril Cunningham, c. December 1953. 89 TNA, AIR 40/​2644, statement by Lieutenant Colonel J.P. Carne, British Embassy Tokyo, 7 September 1953. 90 TNA, Air Ministry, AIR 40/​2644, letter from Esler Dening to WD Allen, 8 September 1953. 91 Ibid. 92 Hennessey notes that London officials were inclined not to take Carne’s report seriously or at least felt that it was not right to pay attention to material coming to them ‘in this way’, see Hennessey, Britain’s Korean War, p. 264. 93 IWM, 10982, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Edward Beckerley, 8 November 1987; NAM, 8905–​ 261, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Sebastian ‘Sam’ Mercer, 18 July 1988. 94 TNA, AIR 8/​2473, MOD, ‘Report of the advisory panel of prisoner of war conduct after capture’, August 1955, p. 21. 95 TNA, ADM 1/​ 27310, report ‘Korea, Commonwealth prisoners of war: ­resistance to interrogation and indoctrination carried out by the Communists: special briefing for officers and other ranks by evasion and escape sub-​ committee’, April 1952. 96 TNA, AIR 8/​2473, MOD, ‘Report of the advisory panel of prisoner of war conduct after capture’, August 1955, pp. 5 and 9. 97 Ibid., pp. 14–​15. 98 NAM, 2005–​05–​86, papers of D.F. Barrett, ‘The War in Korea, 1st Battalion the Middlesex’, p.  23; Mackenzie, British Prisoners of the Korean War, pp. 141 and 146. Mackenzie notes that MI5 never launched an investigation into any returned prisoners who were involved in the CPGB, arguing that Christopher Andrew’s recent history of MI5 The Defence of the Realm (2009), which had unparalleled access to closed sources, makes no mention of such involvement.

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The Korean War in Britain 99 Mackenzie suggests this was due to the fortunate timing of his return in the early 1960s, before the collaborators were more strongly sentenced, Mackenzie, ‘The individualist collaborator’, 163–​5. 100 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 539, cols 1424–​32, Mr William Hamilton MP, 7 April 1955; MOD, Treatment of British Prisoners of War in Korea, p. iv. 101 TNA, CAB 129/​72/​36, C (54), 386, memorandum: publicity for the treatment of British prisoners-​of-​war in Korea by the Communists, 13 December 1954. 102 Mackenzie, British Prisoners of the Korean War, pp. 144–​5. 103 MOD, Treatment of British Prisoners of War in Korea, p. ii. 104 Ibid., p. 3. 105 Ibid., p. 14. 106 Ibid, p. 11. 107 TNA, WO 32/​ 20495, report ‘Ex-​ Korean Prisoners of War Radcliffe Recommendation (XXII)’, April 1963. 108 Ibid. 109 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 768, cols 1823–​ 34, Mr Michael Hamilton MP, 18 July 1968. 110 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 768, cols 1823–​ 34, Mr William Whitlock MP, 18 July 1968. 111 ‘Major “shattered” by diplomatic ban’, Daily Telegraph, 20 July 1968, p. 11; ‘Major held by Reds told: you can’t be diplomat’, Daily Mail, 19 July 1968, p. 2; TNA, ADM 201/​109/​72, minute on Ex Korean Prisoners of war from VCGS, 9 August 1968. 112 Roy Willis, ‘They’re out to brain-​wash you’, West London Observer, 5 July 1957, p.  4; Anonymous, ‘Voyage of discovery’, West London Observer, 10 September 1954, p. 6. One of the earliest references to ‘brain-​wash’ before the Korean War was made in 1874 when a poet sought to criticise a fellow poet’s verse in the local West Yorkshire press: ‘Peace, Reuben –​for we would not now be cynical, Could not the Faculty invent a good brain-​wash, For Persons unaware that thy pen trash’, see J.E.P., ‘Local notes and queries’, Bradford Observer, 7 March 1874, p. 7. 113 Virginia Palsey, 21 Stayed: The Story of American GIs Who Chose Communist China, Who They Were and Why They Stayed (New  York, 1955); Eugene Kinkhead, In Every War but One (Westport, 1959); Albert D. Biderman, March to Calumny:  The Story of American POWs in the Korean War (New  York, 1963); William Sargant, Battle for the Mind:  A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-​Washing (London, 1957). 114 D.J. Morey, ‘A vicar defends Dr.  Billy Graham’, Somerset County Herald, 6 May 1961, p. 6. 115 Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore and London, 1996), pp. 1 and 10; The Rack (dir. Arnold Laven, MGM, 1956); The Manchurian Candidate (dir. John Frankenheimer, M.C. Productions, 1962).

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Brainwashing in Britain 116 The Ipcress File (dir. Sidney J. Furie, Rank Organisation, 1965). 117 Plain, ‘Before the Colditz myth’, 269–​282. 118 As Carruthers points out, captivity’s important place in American literature can be traced back to at least the previous century, see Carruthers, Cold War Captives, pp. 4–​5. 119 Stefan Schwarzkopf, ‘ “They do it with mirrors”: advertising and British Cold War consumer politics’, Contemporary British History, 19:2 (2005), 137. 120 Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (London, 1957). 121 Madge and Harrison, Mass-​Observation, p. 20. 122 Miriam A Glucksmann, ‘Some do, some don’t (but in fact they all do really); some will, some won’t; some have, some haven’t:  women, men, work and washing machines in inter-​war Britain’, Gender and History, 7:2 (1995), 277. This is not to argue that women’s roles changed significantly, as they largely still did the washing, but the nature of the labour involved changed. 123 Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, ‘Kitchens as technology and politics: an introduction’, in Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann (eds), Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology and European Users (Cambridge, MA, 2009), p.  3. In the immediate post-​war period, governments across Europe were actively involved in debates over the best design and function of kitchens, particularly in new or reconstructed housing, see Julian Holder, ‘The nation state or the United States? The irresistable kitchen of the British Ministry of Works, 1944 to 1951’, in Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann (eds), Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology and European Users (Cambridge, MA, 2009), pp. 235–​58. 124 Cold War historians first touched on the issue when analysing the significance of the Nixon-​Khrushchev ‘kitchen debate’ in 1959. In July that year, both leaders attended the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow, both extolling their vision of how consumer goods would feature in American and Soviet social life. This exchange of views, recorded and later televised in both the United States and Soviet Union, covered the role of women in the two societies and how far goods such as washing machines liberated women. See Lary May, ‘Introduction’, in Lary May (ed.), Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of the Cold War (Chicago and London, 1989), p. 5. 125 Oldenziel and Zachmann, ‘Kitchens as technology and politics’, pp. 3 and 10. 126 Schwarzkopf, ‘ “They do it with mirrors” ’, 139. 127 Advertisement: Hoover Keymatic, Daily Mail, 9 March 1961, p. 12. 128 Keith Thompson, ‘Brainwashing shocks: War Office admits grilling tests on elite troops’, Daily Mail, 9 March 1960, p. 1. 129 TNA, PREM 11/​ 2900, Prime Minister’s Office, ‘Use of brainwashing techniques’, March 1960.

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The Korean War in Britain 130 Science Correspondent, ‘Spies brainwashed in Britain:  wartime method adapted to help old people’, Observer, 28 February 1960, p. 17. 131 Marcia Holmes, ‘The “brainwashing” dilemma’, History Workshop Journal, 81:1 (2016), 286. 132 NAM, 2006–​10–​5–​13, transcript of oral history interview with Corporal Donald Griffin, Westward Television Limited (Plymouth), 1976. 133 Biderman, ‘Image of “brainwashing” ’, 556.

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How to bring the boys home: Popular opposition to the Korean War

In June 1951 popular debate about the Korean War concentrated around one rather unlikely figure:  the chair of the Stevenage Development Corporation (SDC), Dr Monica Felton.1 In 1951 Felton was invited by the British Section of the Women’s International Democratic Foundation (WIDF) to undertake a ‘fact-​finding’ mission in North Korea. Felton later argued that she had accepted the invitation to find out more about Korea, both on her own account, but also for the Labour Movement and British society. She argued that there was hardly any real first-​hand news of what was happening in North Korea and that even reports from the South were heavily censored.2 Her trip was arranged by Molly Keith, a former bus conductress and secretary of the British Section of the WIDF, and Felton left on 29 April 1951. Together with twenty other members of the WIDF from seventeen different countries, Felton took part in a highly orchestrated tour of North Korean villages and, it later emerged, British and American POW camps. She claimed that what she saw in Korea was ‘ruthless brutality that was beyond imagination’.3 Felton returned to Britain on 7 June, with stop-​overs in Czechoslovakia and, controversially, Moscow.4 Her absence from the SDC, however, had not gone unnoticed. Former Labour Chancellor Hugh Dalton, then chair of the Public Accounts Committee, described Felton’s absence from its 7 June meeting as ‘discourteous’ and pointed out that she had made no arrangements for ‘the carrying on of her duties during her absence’.5 Felton was sacked on 12 June, amid criticism of her abandoning a ‘£1500-​a-​year appointment’ and allegations of profound disloyalty to Britain and to the UN mission in Korea. Felton put the Korean War firmly back on the front pages, even as the war itself slowly settled down to static fighting and patrolling near the 38th Parallel during the summer of 1951. The scandal surrounding v 127 v

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The Korean War in Britain her visit, like that around brainwashing, was one of the many short-​term outcries that characterised the British response to the Korean War: initial uproar, criticism and calls to action were, as with other aspects of war, later replaced by a degree of ambivalence and acceptance. But why did Felton become so notorious? The route of her trip was certainly controversial, particularly the Moscow stop-​over, where she recorded a radio broadcast on her Korean experiences, as was the level of access she had been given behind North Korean lines. But Felton’s notoriety chimed with broader concerns raised by the conflict, as shown in the previous chapter:  worries about external manipulation and Communist interference, though often divorced from reality and far less strident than in the United States, certainly did influence British culture during the early Cold War. Allegations about her supposed Communist allegiance abounded in the press. Questions were also asked in Parliament and the press about how far individuals like Felton should be allowed the freedom to oppose government policy. One Daily Mail editorial asked if the laws surrounding ‘treason’, which had been in place since Edward III’s reign, should be changed in an ‘ideological war’ like the Cold War.6 At the time, death was the only penalty for outright treason and it was unclear whether this law could even be applied to operations in Korea. Felton is one ­example –​often overlooked or misinterpreted –​of how different individuals and groups opposed the aims and conduct of the Korean War. More significantly, this constellation of small groups and controversial individuals ultimately compelled the British state to define more clearly what it meant by democratic citizenship in the early Cold War. As Mark Clapson has noted, Felton ‘brought the Cold War crashing into Stevenage’ and highlighted the uneasy relationship between global, national and local politics.7 The figures around whom this chapter is based pushed the British state to articulate more clearly the limits between democratic debate and disloyalty. The Korean War made both the government and British people consider what constituted reasonable and good citizenship in the early days of the Cold War. Felton herself answered this question in her 1953 vindicatory book What I Saw in Korea, where she held that this was a question for all British people –​for anyone who chatted ‘with the neighbours about other things beside the weather’. She claimed that it was ‘in this way, and only in this way, that we can do our part in making certain that peace will be made in Korea, and ultimately, throughout the world’.8 This statement was a curious convergence with military and governmental thought at the time. Felton, much like military commentators in the RAEC in Chapter 2, felt that the Cold v 128 v

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How to bring the boys home War necessitated a deeper popular engagement with politics: now more than ever, British people needed to talk about more than just the weather. This chapter examines the actions of opponents to the Korean War, the consequences for the British state and how British people felt about such forthright critics of the war. This chapter first starts by analysing the heavily criticised CPGB. Part of the outrage around Felton’s visit related to her alleged Communist sympathies and CPGB associates. But what was the position of the CPGB and Communist opposition during the Korean War? Although much has been written about the impact of the Cold War on the left (the Labour Party in particular), the position of the CPGB and affiliated groups has been taken rather for granted, their stance largely depicted as uncomplicatedly pro-​Soviet. But the work of smaller organisations and individuals during the Korean War reveals the varied ways in which British policy and wider Cold War issues were opposed and in turn how such opposition was viewed by British people. Being a Communist during the Korean War was a difficult and often lonely business. Some of the most outspoken critics of the war were vilified for their Communist sympathies in the press and in their daily lives. Although not as virulent as McCarthyism in the United States, British anti-​Communism is an important dimension of cultural life during the Korean War. It also explains the motivations of Dalton and others within the Labour Party when dealing with Felton’s case, as they were keen not to be seen as pro-​Soviet. This chapter therefore unpicks the central elements of Communist opposition to the war and the largely poor reception their campaign received, despite the lacklustre support for the war at large. This chapter nevertheless highlights the cultural tenacity and appeal of one recurring component of British Communist opposition –​ anti-​Americanism. This sentiment chimed with other strands of post-​ war British culture which set the tone for both later protest movements and cultural responses to Americanisation in the second half of the twentieth century. Political opposition was not just restricted to those at home in Britain. This chapter also explores instances of frontline resistance from British servicemen. Soldiers did not commonly question military policy or relations with the United States and those who did largely did so based on their pre-​war political convictions. But the fact that it happened at all reveals the extent to which soldiers were, as Royal Marine and defector Andrew Condron wrote, ‘thinking soldiers’ of the Cold War. This chapter also shows the smaller ways in which servicemen and others in Korea –​ most notably war correspondents –​were appalled by the level of violence v 129 v

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The Korean War in Britain directed at the civilian population. This coverage contributed to the Korean War’s unpopularity even further. Biological or ‘germ’ warfare attracted particularly vehement criticism, by individuals including the so-​called ‘Red Dean of Canterbury’ Hewlett Johnson (1874–​1966) and the scientist Joseph Needham (1900–​95). Their sensational allegations that USAF had conducted a germ warfare campaign against northern China made headlines in the latter half of the war. Like brainwashing, allegations about germ warfare broadened people’s understandings of what war actually was, and could be, in the Cold War: the period ushered in new technological changes in how war was conducted, not just ideological shifts. The opponents at the heart of this chapter, such as Johnson, Needham and Felton, were typically treated in 1950s Britain with mild incredulity or outright criticism. But although they were largely unsuccessful in achieving their intended aims, they are vital in understanding both small-​scale instances of opposition to the war and the wider British response to the Korean War and early Cold War. Opposition to the Korean War is also an important, if overlooked, episode in the history of protest and anti-​war resistance, as it set the tone for much subsequent protest in the Cold War. In the case of Britain, the most well-​known protest group of the era is CND, founded in 1957 and which held its first Aldermaston March in spring 1958. CND histories hurry over Korea when describing its origins. Kate Hudson has argued that MacArthur’s eagerness to use atomic weaponry increased worries about nuclear war in Britain and that by the beginning of the 1960s the majority of Britons favoured the elimination of ‘the bomb’.9 Elsewhere Korea is sometimes alluded to in Labour Party histories when describing the tempestuous relationship the party had with the peace movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Christopher Driver has argued that the internal divisions which emerged over Korea preoccupied Labour, meaning that it did not pay enough attention to growth of peace organisations.10 Yet Korea is seldom more than a prelude to later protest movements, in both British and American history. Charles S.  Young points out how small-​ scale opposition to Korea was, especially when compared with the era-​ defining marches and draft resistance during the Vietnam War.11 Doug Dowd, a Cornell University professor, remarked that ‘you couldn’t get anybody to say anything against the Korean War’.12 But as this chapter shows, Korea is an important, if inconclusive, moment in the history of protest for several reasons. Many key later protagonists in British peace and anti-​nuclear movements began to articulate their views during Korea, among them the historian and v 130 v

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How to bring the boys home anti-​nuclear activist E.P. Thompson. In the early 1950s, Thompson was still a member of the famous Communist Party Historians’ Group and published a poem in 1951 entitled ‘On the Liberation of Seoul’ in Arena, which he later re-​published under the title ‘The Massacre of the Innocents (General Herod takes Command)’. Thompson ridiculed the highfalutin war rhetoric of the United States (‘the incarnate concept of dignity etc.’) and its violence (‘all are cleansed of sin, their throats being cut’).13 At this time, prior to the fallout of the Hungarian Rising in 1956, Thompson worked hard for various peace organisations, chairing the Halifax Peace Committee and acting as secretary of the Yorkshire Federation of Peace Organisations.14 At the time of the Korean War, Thompson and others like him were involved in a range of semi-​connected international or peace groups operating in Britain in the early 1950s. Their activities were far-​ranging, from organised groups and political activism, to exhibitions, meetings and letter-​writing. Whilst this opposition did not produce as many iconic images or moments as CND’s first Aldermaston March or the turn away from Communism by substantial segments of the British left in 1956, opposition to Korea pre-​dates both and shows an earlier form of Cold War opposition. Unlike early CND, it lacked a specific coherent focal point and instead focused on particular issues and individuals. Much of the criticism alluded to the exceptionally harsh suffering the Korean people (the ‘Innocents’ as Thompson called them) were being forced to endure, including displacement, disease and death. The diffuse opposition to the war enjoyed limited success in spreading this message more widely in Britain, but it proved an important lesson for Cold War peace movements.

British Communism and the Korean War The impact of the Cold War on the British left and particularly on the Labour Party has been well-​documented.15 It deepened many existing divisions, as well as creating new ones. Lawrence Black has explored the complicated splits in the Labour Party over foreign policy after 1951, particularly the emerging disputes between the Atlanticists, anti-​Communist revisionists and the anti-​American Bevanites. A  range of Cold War issues sharpened these differences of opinion, such as the contentious matter of German rearmament and the nature of the Anglo-​American relationship.16 By contrast, the overwhelmingly pro-​Soviet stance of the CPGB of the early 1950s was comparatively stable and accepted by its party members. Under the leadership of Harry Pollitt (secretary between v 131 v

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The Korean War in Britain 1929 and 1965), it maintained that the Korean War was being conducted purely to fill US coffers and to further their imperialist conquest of the world. For some, Korea was reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War  –​a decisive moment for the British left. The Daily Worker journalist Alan Winnington claimed that ‘Korea is the Spain in which the Nazis of Wall Street are testing their weapons and the capacity of the common people to prevent aggression’.17 Korea was conceived not in terms of two divergent political regimes, but of one nation struggling to unite. In 1950 the Communist Labour Monthly editorial board referred to the war as ‘the Korean War of Independence’ and drew a parallel between it and Spain, arguing that ‘progressive opinion all over the world has recognised a common cause with the people of Korea in their heroic struggle’.18 British Communist opposition to the Korean War was framed around a clear, anti-​American sentiment, set out by Pollitt in Britain Arise (1952). In this pamphlet, US profiteering was at the centre of all current wars and the British were their dupes:  drawing connections between Korea and Britain’s other military commitments, Pollitt described ‘the British lads being forced to shoot down other lads in Korea, Malaya and Egypt’ and how the Labour leadership had ‘sold Britain down the river to the dollar millionaires, those Yankee warmongers whose plan is to send British lads as cannon-​fodder in an American-​organised war’.19 James Klugmann, later the official CPGB historian, had taken a similar line in Wall’s Street Drive to War (1950), where he claimed that every day in the American press leading business and military individuals were ‘openly calling for another world war’ to revive the economy and assuage fears about the rising power of the Soviet Union.20 British Communists depicted the USSR, by contrast, as the ‘head of the mighty peace camp’, a claim seemingly vindicated when Soviet diplomat Yakov Malik made an early (ultimately unsuccessful) proposal at the UN on 23 June 1951 for a Korean armistice.21 The Soviets understood, Pollitt argued, that Korea was in the midst of an internal dispute, aggravated by US meddling.22 He held that the Chinese were helping their Korean neighbours in a ‘heroic fight’ as an ‘immense contribution to the cause of peace and to check the insane aggressive aims of American imperialism’.23 Korea was thus an anti-​imperialist struggle, one connected to the wider liberation of peoples from the British Empire, Pollitt argued.24 But how successful were these condemning criticisms in raising public support, both for the CPGB and for their anti-​war stance? Was Pollitt correct when he claimed that war in Korea had led to a ‘growing awakening of the people?’25 To a large extent, the CPGB’s call to arms v 132 v

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How to bring the boys home failed. Pollitt himself acknowledged the accepting, ‘fatalist attitude to the question of war’ by the British people and cited the low level of activity against the ‘infamous war in Malaya’.26 Korea was no different. During the war, the sense of personal isolation that came with being a British Communist grew.27 Journalist Andrew Roth noted that in August 1950, some employees in London firms had been dismissed for circulating Communist-​sponsored peace petitions and even that a seventeen-​year-​ old scout had been dismissed from the Boys Scouts as his Communist tendencies allegedly contravened his oath to the King.28 But Tom Buchanan has argued that Korea saw a peak in British support for China from across different left-​wing organisations.29 The CPGB’s membership peaked in May 1950 at 38,579 and in 1952 alone it held 7,000 campaign meetings.30 Just before the war in March 1950, the CPGB’s role in generating interest in the Stockholm Appeal was heralded as a particular success:  one million British people signed the petition supporting this appeal calling for the prohibition of the H-​Bomb.31 Organised by the Soviet-​backed World Peace Council, signatures were gathered by the British Peace Committee (BPC). The Committee’s early members included figures like the ‘Red Dean’ Hewlett Johnson, but also Labour and Liberal MPs. The BPC later went on to pledge itself to CND in 1958, although it had adopted an anti-​nuclear stance far earlier. It was, however, soon added to Labour’s list of prohibited organisations and suffered from the Soviet ‘hijacking’ of the peace label.32 Yet perhaps the most significant scheme to oppose the war by the CPGB came from its newspaper, the Daily Worker. Aside from providing reading material for British POWs in Korea, the Daily Worker and its correspondents carved out a specific niche for themselves in Korean War coverage. For the first two years of the war, it often contained detailed analyses of the war’s social cost in Korea, more so than other daily newspapers at the time. Sir Frank Soskice, the Attorney General in June 1951, lamented how the Daily Worker was constantly misrepresenting the war and asked the Director of Public Prosecutions to report on its activities.33 Although sales had peaked before the war, the Daily Worker became synonymous with criticising the conflict in Korea, particularly the British role in suppressing the Korean ‘uprising’.34 Its journalists expounded the anti-​American critique of Pollitt and others: in May 1951 Party organiser Sam Aaronovitch claimed that through co-​operating with the United States in Korea, ‘we are not dealing with a problem of “cultural exchange” but with a systematic, well-​organised and financed attempt to impose coca-​colonisation on the British people’.35 That month, the Daily v 133 v

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The Korean War in Britain Worker also falsely alleged that the United States had used smallpox germs in areas of Korea. By June, the newspaper was claiming that British housewives backed a Five-​Power peace pact and a truce in Korea. The Daily Worker’s reporters were also granted unique access to life behind Communist lines. Alan Winnington had been sent to the PRC in 1948 and was the only British journalist with access to North Korean troops when the war broke out in 1950.36 In 1950, he delivered a long radio dispatch, later re-​published as a pamphlet entitled I Saw the Truth in Korea. In this pamphlet, Winnington drew particularly upon the recent memories of the Second World War, making connections between Hitler’s Germany and the US policy of ‘saturation’ bombing. He wrote:  ‘We still talk of Coventry as an example of malicious and futile bombing, but the Americans have gone far ahead of the Nazis.’37 Others followed this example. Radical lawyer D.N. Pritt also wrote in a Labour Monthly pamphlet that the armament of South Korea, supported by the United States, was ‘colossal’ and that its repressive policies were on a ‘vast –​almost a Hitlerian –​scale’.38 The WIDF report, to which Monica Felton contributed, similarly claimed that US ‘mass murders surpass the crimes committed by Hitler Nazis [sic]’.39 These efforts to depict the Korean conflict as a moral war on a par with the Second World War were not successful. Winnington’s efforts in particular were poorly pitched. Visiting North Korean POW camps Winnington offered lectures on the peace talks and germ warfare. The MOD’s 1955 report on the treatment of POWs reported that whilst servicemen in Camp Five listened to Winnington, those in Camp One greeted his lectures ‘with shouts of “You’ll hang” ’. Winnington also never visited the officers’ or sergeants’ camps, having called them ‘a lot of bloody Fascists’.40 Even Condron felt little attachment to Winnington, despite him visiting their camp three times.41 Less prominently, British Communists expressed their dissatisfaction with the Korean War through a host of smaller associations. Buchanan has noted that although ‘the British left’s relationship with China could easily be presented as little more than a series of gaffes born of mutual incomprehension’, it made notable achievements in building bridges between Britain and the PRC. One example of this relationship is the Britain-​China Friendship Association (BCFA).42 The BCFA was successor to the China Campaign Committee, a committee set up in 1937 after the Japanese invasion of China, loosely comprised of left-​wing organisations, Chinese individuals living in Britain and China enthusiasts. After this organisation petered out in 1949, the BCFA took over its mantle, v 134 v

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How to bring the boys home calling for closer co-​operation between Britain and China.43 Its activities and members were largely London-​based, organised by Derek Bryan and his wife Hung-​Ying.44 Pollitt listed it as one of the CPGB-​backed organisations in Britain Arise and they potentially received backing from Chinese Communists too.45 Among its most active members was its president, Joseph Needham, who had long-​standing connections with and respect for Chinese society. The BCFA’s activities included publications, exhibitions of Chinese artists and craftsmen, and film screenings. During the 1950s it also sought to make connections with industry workers. British trade unions were worried about British and American policies in East Asia: at the Clerical and Administrative Workers Union Annual Conference in 1953, the conference concluded that ‘it believes that the new American policy relating to Formosa, announced by President Eisenhower, could constitute a serious threat to the British people’.46 Others worried about the suppression of the trade union movement in South Korea.47 Capitalising on this worry, in 1956 the BCFA supported a conference organised by the Coventry Labour Party and Coventry Trades Council to further British–​Chinese trade. By this time, it also had sixty-​ six local trade union branches affiliated with its organisation.48 But again its small-​scale measures had limited success, not least because of the intense antipathy of the trade union movement towards the CPGB and Communist-​backed organisations. Only its most militant members took this staunchly anti-​American view and official union leadership consistently ‘froze out’ Communist Party members.49 Therefore although many organisations on the left were undoubtedly concerned with aspects of the Korean War, animosities and divisions prevented any collective response. In particular, despite its best efforts and its heightened profile, the CPGB’s limited focus on American profiteering and the frenzied reporting of the Daily Worker failed to garner wider support.

Anti-​Americanism and atrocities Nevertheless, the CPGB’s anti-​American stance was shared by others. Since at least the start of the twentieth century, elements of British society had harboured hostile views of ‘Americanisation’ and the United States more broadly. By 1950, several MO respondents expressed concern over US military policy and its attitude to world diplomacy.50 MacArthur attracted particular criticism, being seen as ‘a most dangerous man’ and evoking feelings that the United States was trying to ‘control the world’.51 Similarly, there was some hostile feeling toward US military actions v 135 v

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The Korean War in Britain amongst soldiers too. For instance, during the defence and subsequent withdrawal from ‘Gloucester Hill’ during the Battle of Imjin in April 1951, British soldiers criticised US forces for their lack of air support. One particularly well-​known story from this battle came to stand as a microcosm for the Anglo-​American relationship: faced with two divisions of Chinese troops bearing down on their position, British Brigadier Tom Brodie reported to the American Corps headquarters that 29 Brigade’s position was ‘a bit sticky’.52 This understatement was misinterpreted by the Corps headquarters, who presumed that a ‘sticky’ situation could not be too bad and did not send in sufficient support. The subsequent capture of many of the Gloucestershire Regiment testified to just how ‘sticky’ the battle had been. For many, this anecdote stands as the epitome of the differences between British and American culture.53 On other occasions, such as during POWs’ march northwards, the opposite problem was true, with the United States being criticised for bombing NKPA forces, along with the British troops now in their custody, too readily.54 American POWs were also censured by British POWs for lacking the moral fibre and physical ability to withstand the privations of captivity. The phrase ‘give-​up-​itis’ was used by some servicemen to describe this apparent lack of American self-​discipline.55 Though not as acerbic as CPGB opposition or global anti-​American sentiment, this low-​level cultural animosity towards US servicemen and their attitudes to war crossed political lines and infused many British responses to their allies. As seen with the case of Marine Condron in the previous chapter, there were also opponents to the war from within the military itself. In the case of some ‘progressive’ POWs, this opposition was stoked by the activities set by the CPV in the camps, but a very small number of servicemen opposed the war from the very beginning. In 1951, Socialist Outlook published the letters of Lance Corporal Bill Tyler, a former employee of the English Electric Company in Preston, who had been killed earlier that year serving with the Gloucestershire Regiment. Tyler’s collection contained a searing set of letters to various socialist and Communist Party contacts, decrying the war and the destruction it had wrought. Tyler claimed early on in his correspondence that ‘only the knowledge that I can … [be] useful for socialism among my comrades in khaki keeps me going’.56 Tyler was convinced that others in his position too opposed the war, especially veterans from the Second World War: in fact, he stated ‘that a large-​scale war is likely to produce a classical Marxist revolution’.57 Although Tyler’s claims were untypical, more low-​level grumbling was certainly a fact of life:  the cold winter of 1950–​51 and the poor v 136 v

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How to bring the boys home provision of clothing was a widespread cause of discontent and discomfort. To some extent these privations of war were not unexpected, even if they were undoubtedly unwelcome. What was unusual was the level of violence directed at the civilian population. Tyler wrote in one published letter: ‘I can honestly say that I have never seen such misery as is now being experienced by the Korean peoples. Their country is totally ruined.’58 In an oral history with the Imperial War Museum (IWM), Ashley Cunningham-​Boothe even claimed that a Canadian major had ordered mass executions of Koreans: What they made them do, they dug a trench, made them dig their own grave, shot them in the back of the head, and some of them were not killed. Then they brought along a second party, lined them up and shot them and they did that three times. And in the end, when they came the next day to do it again, we decided enough was enough and we stopped the party. We fixed bayonets –​there wasn’t many of us.59

Cunningham-​Boothe maintained that this was a ‘matter of record’ and that some 300 civilians died. He later claimed to be kept awake with nightmares of such violence even in the late 1990s.60 Although hard to verify and unique in its particular claims, the tone of Cunningham-​ Boothe’s story resonates with other soldiers’ later recollections of civilian suffering, especially the long lines of refugees seen on roads across the peninsula. Although their dismay was seldom articulated as a form of direct opposition and in some cases it developed after rather than during the war, British servicemen were nevertheless aware of the disruption, hardship and violence meted out to the local population. The violence of the Korean War was a major focus for more organised opposition too: Felton’s report for instance with the WIDF drew particular attention to the appalling cruelty endured by the Korean population.61 This opposition was not just focused on the US forces: the WIDF report highlighted British brutality too. Violence was also a main theme for war correspondents, such as British journalist James Cameron and photographer Bert Hardy’s coverage of the war for Picture Post. Cameron, later a founding member of CND and committed pacifist, who had reported on the repressive Rhee regime in South Korea before the war broke out, wrote detailed dispatches on the war in Korea. On 16 September, he described the immense firepower that accompanied the Americans’ march northwards and noted that the war, although not necessarily its underlying principles, was ‘filthy’.62 He steadily documented the suffering and brutality endured by the local v 137 v

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The Korean War in Britain population. One Picture Post reader wrote:  ‘When you want the truth unvarnished, send Cameron!’63 But Cameron ran into difficulties when he and Hardy sought to publish particularly shocking images of POW treatment and other atrocities committed by Rhee’s ROK forces. When his editor, H.T. Hopkinson, attempted to publish these images in November 1951 he was sacked from Picture Post by its owner: Cameron resigned in sympathy.64 The Daily Worker was later passed a copy of the images that Cameron had tried to distribute.65 Hardy’s images set the tone for later photo-​journalism, later seen in the visceral photographs that would go on to define the Vietnam War. Other war correspondents too sought to reveal the violence of the war, albeit with less scandal. Daily Telegraph war correspondent Reginald Thompson produced the book Cry Korea in November 1951 which charted the military campaign alongside the tremendous misery endured by the local population. Thompson drew parallels with his earlier experiences in the liberated camps at Belsen and Cry Korea finished with the despondent conclusion that: ‘Death comes now in ever more hideous guises, death to the unseen, the unknown multitudes, the remote communities[.] … Soldiers have become the street cleaners of the new war’.66 The BBC’s special correspondent in Korea, René Cutforth, accompanied UN Forces in the winter retreat down the peninsula in 1950–​51 and was especially struck by the plight of Korean refugees on the road.67 He also criticised the first US use of napalm in Korea: in an interview with journalist Phillip Knightley he later recalled the sickening smell of ‘Sunday dinners in Britain  –​the smell of roast pork, for that’s what a napalmed human being smells like’.68 The appalling levels of violence that characterised the Korean War remained one of the main focal points of opposition across the world: in 1951, the most famous artist of the age, Pablo Picasso, produced Massacres on Corée, a grim depiction of women and children awaiting execution by a well-​armed, anonymous firing squad. Although eager to use his work to further the Communist cause, Picasso’s associates in the French Communist Party felt the identity of the firing squad could have been more obvious (as Americans) and, as the historian Judith Keene notes, they were disappointed not to have ‘another Guernica’.69 War correspondents, artists and opponents thus had mixed success in exposing the civilian casualties of the war to the wider world: although Cameron’s coverage was well-​known in Britain, Picture Post was one of the few publications to cover civilian suffering in any great detail. The Labour MP Frank Allaun wrote to Picture Post in the wake of the Easington mining disaster, when an underground explosion v 138 v

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How to bring the boys home had killed miners on 29 May 1951. He asked: ‘Millions of people have grieved for the families of the 80 Easington miners. Yet how many of us spare a thought for the families of the thousands killed or horribly wounded in a single day’s fighting in Korea last week?’70

‘Germ’ warfare British opposition groups also underlined another way in which civilians were being unfairly targeted: bacteriological or ‘germ’ warfare.71 According to the PRC, the United States embarked on a major aerial germ warfare campaign against China and North Korea in January 1952:  diseased rodents and insects were reportedly dropped over Jilin, Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces during a two-​month campaign.72 But it was not just the PRC which made these claims. Both Joseph Needham and Hewlett Johnson, leading scientific and religious figures, fervently supported these allegations and publicised them widely in Britain. Some scholars have also repeated these claims, drawing attention to the scientific secrets the Japanese passed to the Americans after the Second World War and to the alarm that British Chiefs of Staff felt at the bacteriological warfare developments of their allies.73 But detailed archival study has shown that ultimately these claims were nothing but a ‘grand piece of political theatre’ by the PRC.74 However, despite their dubious factual basis, these allegations and their supporters in Britain raised important questions about the limits of democratic citizenship and acceptable behaviour during wartime. Should a member of the Royal Society or a Church of England minister be allowed to criticise the conduct of the war? Furthermore, as with the language of brainwashing, these allegations also began to extend the activities people associated with modern warfare. In short, the Cold War broadened the scope of military weapons and what constituted a military target in the British imagination. A renowned biochemist, socialist and committed sinologist, Joseph Needham and his wife had developed a keen interest in Chinese society as early as 1937 and spent several years in China in the early 1940s. In 1952, Needham stepped forward to chair the group of six foreign scientists who formed the World Peace Council-​backed ‘International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China’ (known as the ISC).75 He visited China and North Korea during the summer of 1952, but the ISC did no field investigations itself, relying on the evidence presented to it by the Chinese and North Koreans.76 For Needham, as for other opponents, v 139 v

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The Korean War in Britain the most definitive evidence came from the testimonies of two captured American airmen, Kenneth Enoch and John Quinn.77 The Chinese People’s Committee for World Peace published their statements in 1952, where Enoch claimed that he and ten other pilots and fifteen navigators had attended secret lectures on bacteriological weapons in August 1951 and that he had dropped two bombs on 7 January 1952 on North Korea and four more on 11 January.78 On his return home to Britain, Needham embarked on a lecture tour. He was greeted with a degree of mild incredulity, with some political figures on the left expressing concerns about Needham’s ‘nerves’ and fellow scientists criticising the Commission’s findings.79 Needham wrote to The Times in response, urging his fellow scientists to study the report and offering to send on copies: he wrote that he did ‘more than “give my name” to the report’, dedicating two-​and-​a-​half months to the Commission and retorted that of course his claims were one-​sided, as ‘it is not claimed that bacteriological warfare incidents have occurred on the other side’.80 Yet despite its limited impact, Needham’s work had succeeded in redirecting British attention back to Korea, however briefly. That summer, the Trade Union Congress meeting at Margate called for the government to lobby for chemical and ‘germ’ warfare to be prohibited.81 The BPC organised a series of lectures across the country on germ warfare, with statistics and unnerving magnified images of insects for the ‘best chance of affecting … [the] audience’.82 Germ warfare also permeated British culture in the 1950s. Margaret Lockwood starred as the brave scientist Frances Gray in comedy-​thriller Highly Dangerous (1950), where she investigated Communist bacteriological weapons testing in the Balkans.83 Germ, bacteriological and biological warfare would go on to be a staple component for many Cold War films in both Britain and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.84 The claims also had a significant impact in China. Ruth Rogaski has explored the social impact of bacteriological warfare allegations on Chinese society in the summer of 1952. Allegations about US use of bacteriological warfare were followed by the launch of the Patriotic Hygiene Campaign, aimed at eradicating disease and pests across the entire country. Motivated by this campaign, Rogaski shows how the city of Tianjin claimed to have killed 31,486 rats in the first month alone.85 Exhibitions and propaganda heralded this campaign as a victory and an act of defiance in the face of US military tactics. Another prominent figure in the ‘germ’ warfare allegations was Hewlett Johnson, the ‘Red Dean of Canterbury’. Johnson had tried as early 1929 to visit the Soviet Union in order to pursue his interest in v 140 v

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How to bring the boys home the connections between socialism and Christianity.86 Labelled as the ‘Red’s friend’, he retained this interest during the 1930s and sought to dispel misunderstandings about the Soviet Union.87 He also visited anti-​ Franco forces in Spain in 1937, causing controversy when he lectured in Strasbourg about the German role in bombing.88 In the early years of the Second World War his pro-​Soviet views were deeply unpopular, embroiling him once again in scandal.89 After the war, Johnson continued pursuing political causes close to his heart. By the time of the Korean War, he had helped found the BPC and won the Stalin Prize in 1951.90 Johnson visited China in 1952, where he was shown alleged scientific evidence of bacteriological warfare and was utterly convinced by its veracity.91 Much like Needham, Johnson was persuaded by the evidence of the two American airmen and published an emphatic appeal for their testimonies

Figure 2  Hewlett Johnson inspecting test tubes v 141 v

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The Korean War in Britain to be taken seriously.92 He and his wife Nowell returned from China with the signatures of 410 protestant pastors in China who spoke out against the use of the germ warfare, with a further 13,000 names from Chinese churches.93 Johnson called this ‘the most serious message that I have ever carried in my life’ and spoke widely on the subject upon his return.94

Figure 3  The 35ft long Chinese petition against the alleged use of ‘germ warfare’ by the Americans during the Korean War, which Nowell and Hewlett Johnson brought back from China in 1952 v 142 v

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How to bring the boys home Johnson was keen to stress that his opposition centred around the Christian churches in China:  in a letter to Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, he maintained: ‘I have said nothing of Korea, nothing of British forces.’95 But certainly within the press, his trip and its conclusions were seen as undermining the campaign in Korea and thus the British troops involved.96 Even in 1951, the Kent Branch of the British Legion discussed moving their annual service away from Canterbury, as some did not want ‘to witness their service being conducted by one who was avowedly a Communist’.97 Many argued that his socialist beliefs seemed at odds with his Christianity:  one newspaper clipping sent to Johnson in 1952, for instance, was emblazoned with the message:  ‘What does the Judas Dean says to this? What a contemptible object is a professional Christian now towing to Satan.’98 In the pamphlet I Appeal (1952) Johnson wrote that: ‘Since my return I have been attacked by the whole weight of the national press. Why? Because I  expressed my conviction that germ bombs had been dropped by United States planes in North-​ East China.’99 Johnson sent this pamphlet to every one of his fellow peers in the House of Lords, but few provided him much support.100 Lord Vansittart had listed Johnson as a Communist ‘fifth columnist’ even before the Korean War and Lord Ammon pointed out that the ‘whole country has been stirred on this matter’ and asked if legal action against the Dean was possible as his comments were inflammatory ‘at a time when the world, is sitting on a gunpowder barrel’.101 Archbishop Fisher stated in the House of Lords that: ‘I think we can put up with the Dean[.] … Even if the price we have to pay for freedom is rising, as a letter in The Times said, it is still worth paying.’102 However, this grudging approval of the Dean followed a series of acrimonious letters between Johnson and Fisher in the immediate aftermath of his trip to China. Fisher stated that he had not known that Johnson was planning a visit to China and that he seriously objected to Johnson’s claim that he had gone on behalf of the Church of England.103 His letters also implied that Johnson’s politics were not helpful to the Church’s cause and were something of a ‘dilemma’. Johnson responded angrily:  ‘When have you ever since you were Archbishop let me even state my side? … My own political views, most emphatically, do not hinder the fulfilment of my duties; in fact they help to fulfil the obligations which are imposed upon me by my office.’104 Johnson even told the Archbishop of Canterbury: ‘You constantly mistake your own dilemma for my mine.’105 Johnson did receive some letters of support following his return from China. Cecil Thomson from Stirling wrote encouragingly that: ‘the great v 143 v

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The Korean War in Britain majority of the ordinary decent men and women of Britain will be with you in your efforts to stop this horrible method of warfare and to preserve peace. This witch-​hunt against you is the beginning of the same gangster methods used by the Americans against every representative of progressive thought in that country’.106 The parallels with McCarthyism were obvious to some: E.P. Thompson wrote to Johnson in his capacity of secretary of the West Yorkshire Peace Federation, speaking out against the ‘campaign of vilification’.107 Other clergymen too wrote in support of his stance, including Reverend Bryn Evans who himself led a march against General Ridgway’s visit to London in 1952.108 The impact of figures such as Needham and Johnson is complex. They were undoubtedly individuals working at odds with their professional backgrounds. When criticising Needham in a letter to The Times, Henry Dale and Robert Robinson of the Royal Society argued that ‘nobody … would call the Church or churchmen to account for the Dean of Canterbury’s report on bacteriological warfare’, so asked for commentators not to embroil the Society in these debates.109 Needham and Johnson, as well as the claims they made, were on the whole treated as isolated and peculiar cases.110 Although they received some support, their connections to China were not widely shared by a largely anti-​Communist public. But they were well-​known and certainly set the tone for much subsequent Cold War opposition in both their anti-​American and anti-​war stances. Towards the end of his career as Dean of Canterbury, Johnson lent his support to CND and nailed a painted board above his door, emblazoned with the words ‘Christians, Ban Nuclear Weapons’.111 This sign remained in place for several years until Johnson’s retirement in 1963, setting the scene for the next wave of Cold War opposition.

Monica Felton: town planner, activist, traitor? However, neither Johnson nor Needham were seen as representatives of the British state. Their opposition, whilst unpatriotic and inconvenient, did not pose the challenge that the visit of Monica Felton to Korea did in 1951. Prior to her visit to Korea, Felton was well-​known mainly in local administrative and town planning circles. After obtaining her History doctorate from the London School of Economics, she was elected as a Labour member of the London County Council (LCC) for St Pancras South West and worked in the Ministry of Supply between 1941 and 1943, when she also became involved in the Housing and Public Health Committee of the LCC.112 Felton became the only female v 144 v

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How to bring the boys home member of the New Towns Committee established in 1945.113 She was instrumental in setting up the Peterlee Development Corporation and chaired it from March 1948 until October 1949, when she took over the chairmanship of another new town, Stevenage.114 It was this appointment that she held when she made her fateful visit to North Korea in the summer of 1951. Felton had been invited on a funded ‘fact-​finding’ mission by the British WIDF committee and argued that ‘as a life-​long member of the Labour Party’ she was keen to help the ‘rank and file to understand world events and to base their opinions on facts’ through her visit.115 On her visit to North Korea she claimed she saw empty villages, countless refugees and orphans, the cultural destruction of temples and museums, mass graves and evidence and reports of widespread brutality against the local population.116 She later described second-​hand accounts of the burning of local inhabitants alive and the rape of women by American soldiers.117 The subsequent WIDF report was equally condemnatory. It claimed that US forces had destroyed food stores, factories, towns and villages and that their ‘merciless and methodical campaign of extermination’ contravened both international rules of war and ‘the principles of humanity’. It urged people to call for the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops from Korea.118 Nor were the British excluded from these allegations:  in her Soviet radio broadcast she claimed that a peasant woman came up to her during her trip and said ‘ “You are English, you must know that it is not only the United States soldiers that did these things. There were English soldiers, too.” I think I shall hear that accusation for as long as live’.119 The public furore which followed such allegations first began on 9 June when the press revealed the details of her trip: the Daily Mail editorial noted that the ‘great mass of British people will be affronted’ to hear this news at a time of war.120 Dalton dismissed Felton as SDC Chairman on 12 June, maintaining that it was her failure to appear to the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee on 7 June that showed a ‘neglect of duty which renders her unfit to continue in the post’. The Daily Mail speculated that this sacking took place with ‘unusual speed’ as she had become a liability to the government due to her Communist sympathies, but Dalton stated that ‘it is a matter of total indifference to me whether Mrs Felton was absent in Hollywood or the Riviera or anywhere else. The point to me is that she was absent’.121 According to Dalton, she had failed to tell either the Public Accounts Committee or her deputy at the SDC and as such could not be entrusted with this important post.122 v 145 v

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The Korean War in Britain Whether or not Dalton genuinely cared about the location of her visit, it became clear in the following week that other MPs certainly did. Nigel Fisher, MP for Hitchin (the constituency in which the SDC operated) argued that Felton should be indicted for treason, once again drawing parallels with the previous war: ‘If a British subject had gone to Germany, consorted with the enemy, returned to this country and spread Nazi propaganda here, it seems to me he could have been indicted for treason[.] … What is the difference in this case?’123 So vociferous was debate on the subject of Felton that papers on her case were forwarded onto the Director of Public Prosecutions, who concluded on 25 June that there was insufficient evidence to make a criminal charge against her.124 Cases of alleged treason in the war were complicated by the fact that Britain was not officially at war with China.125 The debate about treason did not, however, go away. In 1955, when the MOD published its Treatment of British Prisoners of War in Korea, parliamentarians again drew parallels between the activities of traitors during the Second World War and the cases of Felton and journalist Alan Winnington. Felton was called ‘a sinister and repulsive kind of figure’ and Lord Vansittart, ever relentless in his campaign against Communism and Soviet Russia, called Felton’s actions ‘utterly revolting’.126 The Attorney General Reginald Manningham-​Buller again stated that charges would not be brought against Felton. Felton’s treatment by the press and in Parliament reveals how small-​ scale political opposition was received in early Cold War Britain. Although the phrase ‘double agent’ is often used by popular historians of the Cold War in Britain, Felton’s case shows how in the 1950s most of the language used actually concerns ‘treason’ and ‘loyalty’. Although many noted that treason laws themselves were antiquated, there were calls to discuss how these would apply to new ‘ideological wars’ and particularly in UN and coalition warfare.127 On 19 June 1951, prior to the first decision that Felton would not be charged, Attorney General Frank Soskice wrote in a memorandum entitled ‘Mrs Felton’ that hers was unlikely to be the last case like this. He added that ‘The cold war will continue and if I  should decide not to prosecute Mrs Felton others may take this as a carte blanche for them to visit North Korea as much as they like’. The conundrum was changing the law so that it would ‘not unduly infringe freedom of expression and movement and yet would be enforceable’.128 Felton’s case brought to light the tremendous difficulties of striking this balance. Such debates extended beyond Felton herself. In The New Meaning of Treason, a 1964 reworking of her previous book on the trials of ‘pro-​Nazis’ v 146 v

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How to bring the boys home William Joyce and John Amery, Rebecca West explored the cases of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess who had defected to the Soviet Union in 1951. She was concerned about the effect of such treason on society: ‘The traitor can change the community into a desert haunted by fear[.] … Loyalty has always had its undramatic but effective answer to treason, insisting on its preference for truth instead of deceit, and good faith instead of bad.’129 Cold War political disloyalty was again repeatedly framed in terms of treason. The debates about Felton’s visit to North Korea indicated the popularity and longevity of this term in the cultural climate of Cold War Britain. There was a further aspect of Felton’s actions that aroused public interest. Felton held a series of meetings in London in June 1951 which attracted hundreds of attendees, reputedly 700 at a meeting at Holborn Hall.130 The Press Association reported that women openly wept at Felton’s descriptions of violence against Koreans.131 The popularity of her talks was likely due to her high-​profile dismissal and her controversial statements about British soldiers, but also due to her access to British POWs in Korea. When the press first reported her visit to Korea some commented how she had not taken the rare opportunity to visit British POWs, although she had received twenty-​six of their letters to their families, which she would return to their families.132 But by 1952, she had returned to visit the ‘progressive’ Camp Five at Pyoktong and had received around 150 letters from British POWs.133 Families of these men then came to hear her talk and to find out more about the conditions in the camps. Some later even speculated that the Chinese government secretly paid for the return fares for wives and mothers to attend such meetings.134 But not all attendees were on Felton’s side. One angry wife of an officer records in a letter to the mother of another prisoner that she ‘asked her [Felton] if there was any evidence that POWs were in fact receiving the letters sent by relatives in this country[.] … She replied that some were … [but] she could give no satisfactory reply as to why the Red Cross were not allowed to operate in N. Korea’.135 Felton’s reputation among service families fell further when it was alleged that the 150 letters had been forwarded along with Chinese propaganda leaflets, with ‘ “filthy” pictures of mutilated people’, the alleged victims of UN forces.136 Christine Knowles (1890–​1965), who had run a welfare fund to support British POWs during the First and Second World Wars, had continued her practice of visiting the families whose husbands or sons were in captivity and was aghast to find that Felton, and even the Chinese themselves, had also corresponded with relatives. In one letter to the War Office Knowles wrote that: ‘I feel very glad that I  have been able to speak in various places where Mrs Monica Felton v 147 v

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The Korean War in Britain had been active and to counteract, I hope, some of her propaganda.’137 Rifleman John Shaw’s family wrote that they had received books from the Chinese Peace Committee, complete with quotes from prisoners about fair treatment.138 Three friends of Private Edward Beckerley were separately encouraged to circulate a chain-​letter calling for peace to other people of Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.139 Affronted by what she saw as overt manipulation of relatives and POWs alike, Knowles began to produce her own newssheets with letters that she had been sent or been permitted to read by relatives.140 This ‘Campaign against Relatives’ even formed part of the MOD’s 1955 report on the treatment of POWs as it was deemed a ‘significant’ component of the war. To many this ‘Felton woman’ was at best a meddler in international affairs and families’ distress; at worst she was a traitor. Felton herself addressed the POW letter issue in 1953 in a pamphlet entitled Korea! How to Bring the Boys Home (1953), saying that these letters were trying to make a more important point. They were ‘not written in the language of diplomacy’, but were an example of men who had ‘learned’ about world affairs the hard way and were now among the strongest opponents to the war.141 Felton did receive some support, although largely from individuals sympathetic to her political views. Peace activist Dora Russell, economist Joan Robinson (who in 1964 visited North Korea herself) and the UK’s first female geography professor Eva G.R. Taylor wrote to the prime minister and Hugh Dalton to protest against Felton’s dismissal.142 Socialist MP Gilbert McAllister claimed that her dismissal was one of the ‘gravest [of]

Figure 4  Monica Felton, 1 March 1955 v 148 v

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How to bring the boys home attacks on civil liberties that we have seen’ and eighty Labour MPs went to see her speak in June 1951.143 She too was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952, a year after Hewlett Johnson and the year before singer and activist Paul Robeson.144 Despite the personal and professional difficulties her trip brought her, Felton remained convinced it had been the right thing to do for herself, the Labour Movement and even Stevenage itself. For Felton, her trip to Korea would add to her task of developing the new town in Stevenage, not detract from it: ‘In 1945, Stevenage had been a part of our hope for a new and better kind of world. Most of those hopes had already faded, and now the fate of Stevenage depended, I was sure, on the fate of the world.’145 Felton herself represented both the post-​war aims of reconstruction and development in post-​war Britain and the uncertainties and insecurities of the Cold War. Felton did not see herself in any way as a traitor or opponent to the British way of life. She concluded one of her books with an exchange she shared with a policeman while waiting for her friend to pick her up from London airport. He asked her if she had been able to find out the ‘truth’ about Korea. She felt vindicated hearing this, writing ‘England was even better than I remembered. “Yes,” I answered. “That’s why I went” ’.146 Felton later left England for good, moving to India in 1956 where she wrote fiction and non-​fiction books.147 By the time of her death in Madras in 1970, aged sixty-​three, much of her infamy had receded. The few obituaries marking her death simply noted she was an ‘authoress’, with little mention of her earlier exploits, even in the Daily Mail.148 But her involvement with the peace movement had ultimately tainted her previous achievements as a town planner: as Clapson points out, her contribution to the SDC and post-​war planning were eclipsed by her trip to North Korea, shattering any lasting remembrance of her as a pioneering female planner in a profession dominated by men.149 Her only monument was two almond trees planted in her memory in Stevenage.150 The example of Monica Felton and the public reaction to her visit to North Korea demonstrates the limited power of dissenting voices to the Korean War in Britain. Some have even argued that Felton’s dismissal was almost ‘McCarthyite’ in its toppling of her well-​established career and reputation.151 Although Dalton maintained that her political affiliations played no part in her dismissal, her subsequent depiction in the press as a traitor of British forces indicated the unpopularity of opposition to the war. Perhaps Pollitt was correct when he claimed that it was only a ‘handful of millionaires that want war’, but this certainly did not translate into strong opposition.152 The activities of the CPGB, v 149 v

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The Korean War in Britain BPC, BCFA and the ‘Red Dean’ did not convince the British population that British troops should be withdrawn immediately. This did not mean that British people were not moved by descriptions of civilian suffering or remained unnerved by allegations of British involvement in atrocities, as attendance at Felton’s meetings demonstrates. Nevertheless, short-​lived panics and scandals were by far the most common reactions to the war. Yet opposition to the Korean War raised important questions about the freedoms and duties of Cold War citizens. Some regarded the activities of Felton, Johnson and others as disloyal or treacherous. But as mentioned in the War Office film Two Ways of Life, these individuals, bizarre though they may be, were potentially the sign of a healthy democracy.153 The British state was forced to walk this tightrope between civil liberties and security during the Korean War and the issue continued to worry Western governments throughout the Cold War. Korea was also important for protest movements. To some extent, as Holger Nehring has noted, the protests of the early 1950s were a ‘rehearsal’ for the more pronounced debates in the late 1950s and early 1960s.154 Korea shaped the language and focal points for movements protesting against different aspects of Cold War militarism, from anti-​nuclear campaigners to those protesting against the use of biological warfare. The anti-​American tone of opposition proved culturally popular and provided much of the intellectual context of subsequent activism. The Korean War also reveals how British people responded to protest organisations. Campaigns around germ warfare or mistreatment of civilians failed to attract much sustained support, but at the same time neither did anti-​Communism: although Communism was certainly criticised, often strongly, the level of animosity was not sufficient to maintain public interest beyond short-​lived scandals and scares. Felton’s case was an important case for the British government and raised far-​reaching issues about how it should respond to the realities of the Cold War, but Felton herself was steadily forgotten. However momentous Felton’s case –​ and the Korean War itself –​was to the British state and its role in the Cold War, it failed to be remembered by the British public. The next chapter of this book examines how Korea became so forgotten and the significance of such forgetting for British and Cold War history.

Notes 1 Stevenage was designated a new town in 1946, with the SDC tasked with developing it. Its first residents moved in during 1952.

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How to bring the boys home 2 Monica Felton, What I Saw in Korea (London, 1951), p. 3. 3 Monica Felton, That’s Why I Went (London, 1953), p. 154. 4 Geoffrey Wakeford, ‘Mrs Felton: government act’, Daily Mail, 15 June 1951, p. 1; Mark Clapson, ‘The rise and fall of Monica Felton, British town planner and peace activist, 1930s to 1950s’, Planning Perspectives, 30:2 (2015), 221–​2; I am grateful to Mark Clapson for sharing an early draft of this article with me. 5 Geoffrey Wakeford, ‘Mrs Felton was discourteous’, Daily Mail, 14 June 1951, p. 1; Hansard, vol. 488, cols 2308–​13, Mr Hugh Dalton MP, 13 June 1951. 6 ‘A word on treason’, Daily Mail, 8 March 1955, p. 1. 7 Clapson, ‘The rise and fall of Monica Felton’, 219. 8 Felton, What I Saw in Korea, p. 12. 9 Kate Hudson, CND –​Now More than Ever: The Story of a Peace Movement (London, 2005), pp. 32 and 61. 10 Christopher Driver, The Disarmers: A Study in Protest (London, 1964), p. 20. 11 Young, Name, Rank and Serial Number, p. 186. 12 Doug Dowd quoted in Tom Wells, War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam (Berkeley and London, 1994), p. 36. 13 E.P. Thompson, Infant and Emperor:  Poems for Christmas (London, 1983), pp. 11–​12. 14 Bryan D. Palmer, E.P. Thompson:  Objections and Oppositions (London and New York, 1994), p. 56. 15 John Callaghan, ‘The Cold War and the march of capitalism, socialism and democracy’, Contemporary British History, 15:3 (2001), 1–​25; Richard Toye and Nicholas Lawton, ‘ “The challenge of co-​existence”:  the Labour Party, affluence and the Cold War, 1951–​64’, in Paul Corthorne and Jonathan Davis (eds), The British Labour Party and the Wider World (London, 2012), pp. 145–​66. 16 Lawrence Black, ‘  “The bitterest enemies of Communism”:  Labour revisionists, Atlanticism and the Cold War’, Contemporary British History, 15:3 (2001), 26–​62. 17 Winnington, I Saw the Truth in Korea, p. 15. 18 Labour Monthly, Korea Handbook (London, 1950), p. 3. 19 Harry Pollitt, Britain Arise: 22nd National Congress of the Communist Party, Political Report (London, 1952), pp. 3–​4 and 12. 20 James Klugmann, Wall Street’s Drive to War (London, 1950), pp. 3–​6. 21 Pollitt, Britain Arise, p. 10; Harry Pollitt, Negotiate Now (London, 1951), p. 12. 22 Pollitt, Negotiate Now, p. 10. 23 Pollitt, Britain Arise, p. 11. 24 Ibid., pp. 15–​17. 25 Ibid., p. 13. 26 Ibid., pp. 14 and 18. 27 Tom Buchanan, East Wind: China and the British Left, 1925–​1976 (Oxford, 2012), p. 124.

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The Korean War in Britain 28 Bishopsgate Institute Library, ROTH 3/​30, Andrew Roth ‘London periscope’, 17 August 1950; two more boy scouts were dismissed for Communist views in Bristol and Birmingham in 1954, see Sarah Mills, ‘Be prepared: Communism and the politics of Scouting in 1950s Britain’, Contemporary British History, 25:2 (2011), 436. 29 Buchanan, East Wind, p. 141. 30 John Callaghan, Cold War, Crisis and Conflict:  The CPGB, 1951–​ 1968 (London, 2003), pp. 7, 17 and 29. 31 Pollitt, Britain Arise, p. 13; Callaghan, Cold War, Crisis and Conflict, p. 141. 32 Martin Ceadel, ‘The peace movement:  overview of a British brand leader’, International Affairs, 90:2 (2014), 363–​4. 33 TNA, CAB 128/​19/​45, memorandum: Mrs Felton, 21 June 1951. 34 Pollitt, Britain Arise, p. 44; Callaghan, Cold War, Crisis and Conflict, p. 28. 35 Sam Aaronovitch, ‘Britons as the new “Gooks” ’, Daily Worker, 2 May 1951, p. 2. 36 Callaghan, Cold War, Crisis and Conflict, p. 142. 37 Winnington, I Saw the Truth in Korea, p. 3. 38 D.N. Pritt K.C., New Light on Korea (London, 1951), p. 1. 39 WIDF, Korea:  We Accuse! Report of the Commission of the Women’s International Democratic Federation in Korea (Berlin, 1951), p. 6. 40 MOD, Treatment of British Prisoners of War in Korea, p. 26. 41 IWM, 9693, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Andrew Condron, 1 February 1987. 42 Buchanan, East Wind, p. vii. 43 Robert Bickers, Britain in China (Manchester, 1999), p. 233; Gregor Benton and Edmund Gomez, The Chinese in Britain, 1800–​ Present:  Economy, Transnationalism, Identity (Basingstoke, 2008), p. 262. 44 Buchanan, East Wind, p. 116. 45 Pollitt, Britain Arise, p. 14; Buchanan, East Wind, p. 116. 46 MRC, MSS 292/​51.9/​2, Clerical and Administrative Workers’ Union, 1953 annual conference note on ‘War with China’. 47 MRC, MSS 292/​51.9/​2, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, regional fund committee meeting notes, 26–​28 November 1953. 48 Britain-​China Friendship Association, Seventh Annual Report, 1956: Annual General Meeting (London, 1957), pp. 5–​6. 49 Black, ‘ “The bitterest enemies of Communism” ’, 32. 50 MOA, diarist response 5073, 7 March 1951. 51 MOA, diarist response 5074, 10 March 1951; MOA, diarist response 4965, 22 March 1951. 52 Hastings, The Korean War, p. 313. 53 Stanley Reynolds, ‘Cold comfort war’, Punch, 30 September 1987, p. 71. 54 IWM, 10982, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Edward Beckerley, 8 November 1987.

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How to bring the boys home 55 IWM, 9693, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Andrew Condron, 1 February 1987; NAM, 1989–​ 05–​ 163, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Robin Bruford-​Davies, 10 February 1989. 56 Socialist Outlook, Lance Corporal Bill Tyler’s Letters from Korea (London, 1951), p. 4. 57 Ibid., pp. 5–​6. 58 Ibid., p. 3. 59 IWM, 19913, oral history interview by Conrad Wood with Thomas Ashley Cunningham-​Boothe, 8 December 1999. 60 Ibid. 61 WIDF, Korea, pp. 6–​7. 62 James Cameron, ‘We follow the road to hell’, Picture Post, 16 September 1950, p. 11. 63 S.M. Osborne, ‘Letter to the editor:  with his mind and heart’, Picture Post, 21 October 1950, p. 9. 64 Michael Foot, ‘Cameron (Mark) James Walter (1911–​ 1985)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​ 30892 (accessed 26 January 2017). 65 James Cameron, Point of Departure:  An Experiment in Biography (London, 1967; 2006 edn), p. 146; Callum MacDonald, ‘Great Britain and the Korean War’, in Lester H. Brune (ed.), The Korean War: Handbook of Literature and Research (Westport and London, 1996), p. 104. 66 Reginald Thompson, Cry Korea (London, 1951), p. 291. 67 René Cutforth, Korean Reporter (London, 1952), p. 101. 68 Philip Knightley, The First Casualty:  The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-​Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo (London, 1975; 2000 edn), p. 378. 69 Judith Keene, ‘Framing violence, framing victims: Picasso’s forgotten painting of the Korean War’, Cultural History, 6:1 (2017), 80–​101. 70 Frank Allaun, ‘Remember the other’, Picture Post, 23 June 1951, p. 10. 71 Needham himself preferred the term bacteriological warfare, see Tom Buchanan, ‘The courage of Galileo: Joseph Needham and the “germ warfare” allegations in the Korean War’, History, 86:284 (2001), 503. 72 Ruth Rogaski, ‘Nature, annihilation and modernity: China’s Korean War germ-​ warfare experience reconsidered’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 61:2 (2002), 383. 73 Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, The United States and Biological Warfare:  Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea (Bloomington, 1998), p.  x; Buchanan, ‘The courage of Galileo’, 507 and 521; Christian Enemark, Disease and Security:  Natural Plagues and Biological Weapons in East Asia (London and New  York, 2007), p.  88; Brian Balmer, Britain and Biological Warfare:  Expert Advice and Science Policy, 1930–​ 1965 (Basingstoke and New York, 2001), p. 134. 74 Milton Leitenberg, ‘China’s false allegations of the use of biological weapons by the United States during the Korean War’, Cold War International History Project, Working Paper 78 (March 2016), 21.

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The Korean War in Britain 75 Buchanan, ‘The courage of Galileo’, 504–​7. 76 Leitenberg, ‘China’s false allegations of the use of biological weapons’, 5. 77 John Butler, The Red Dean of Canterbury: The Public and Private Faces of Hewlett Johnson (London, 2011), p. 196; Buchanan, ‘The courage of Galileo’, 512. 78 Chinese People’s Committee for World Peace, Statements by Two Captured US Air Force Officers on Their Participation in Germ Warfare in Korea (Peking [Beijing], 1952), p. 1. 79 Henry Dale and Robert Robinson, ‘Letter to the editor’, The Times, 17 October 1952, p. 7; Buchanan, ‘The courage of Galileo’, 515–​16. 80 Joseph Needham, ‘Letter to the editor’, The Times, 25 October 1952, p.  7. Emphasis added. 81 MRC, Trades Union Congress papers, minutes of Margate Congress on Bacteriological Warfare, 27 January, 1953. 82 People’s History Museum, CP/​CENT/​PEA/​02/​08, British Peace Committee, lecture notes arranged by Ivor Montagu for British Peace Committee information film strip on germ warfare in China and Korea, 1952. 83 Highly Dangerous (dir. Roy Baker, 1950); Cecil Wilson, ‘Margaret put back on top’, Daily Mail, 7 December 1950, p. 5; Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: the State, Propaganda and Consensus (London and New York, 2001), p. 70. 84 Other examples include the US film The Whip Hand (dir. William Cameron Menzies, 1951) and The Man Who Wouldn’t Talk (dir. Herbert Wilcox, 1958), see Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War, pp. 70 and 218. 85 Rogaski, ‘Nature, annihilation and modernity’, 390. 86 ‘Soviet bans a dean’, Daily Mail, 1 April 1929, p. 12. 87 Hewlett Johnson, The Socialist Sixth of the World (London, 1939), p. 18. 88 ‘Dean and the Soviet’, Daily Mail, 29 June 1931, p. 9; ‘Dean as “reds’ friend” ’, Daily Mail, 20 April 1937, p. 14. 89 ‘ “I shall not resign” says “Red” Dean’, Daily Mail, 16 March 1940, p. 7. 90 Butler, The Red Dean, pp. 189–​90. 91 University of Kent Special Collections, UKC-​JOH-​COR/​1845 British-​China Friendship Association, press statement by Dr Hewlett Johnson, 6 July 1952. 92 Butler, The Red Dean, p. 196. 93 Hewlett Johnson, Searching for Light:  An Autobiography (London, 1968), p. 325; Buchanan, East Wind, p. 134; Butler, The Red Dean, p. 196. 94 University of Kent Special Collections, UKC-​JOH-​COR/​5777a, letter from Hewlett Johnson to Archbishop Fisher, 10 July 1952. 95 Ibid. 96 ‘Red Dean: I may be dismissed’, Daily Mail, 17 July 1951, p. 3. 97 ‘Legion men to take vote on the Red Dean’, Evening News (London), 12 October 1951. 98 University of Kent Special Collections, UKC-​JOH-​CUT-​WAR, newspaper clippings.

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How to bring the boys home 99 Hewlett Johnson, I Appeal (London, 1952), p. 2. 100 Johnson, Searching for Light, p. 326. 101 Geoffrey Wakeford, ‘Vansittart accuses a priest –​“murderous” ’, Daily Mail, 30 March 1950, p. 1; Hansard, HL Deb, vol. 177, cols 1116–​64, Lord Ammon, 15 July 1952. 102 Hansard, HL Deb, vol. 177, cols 1116–​ 64, Archbishop of Canterbury, 15 July 1952. 103 University of Kent Special Collections, UKC-​JOH-​COR/​5782, letter from Archbishop Fisher to Hewlett Johnson, 10 July 1952. 104 University of Kent Special Collections, UKC-​ JOH-​ COR/​ 5784, letter from Hewlett Johnson to Archbishop Fisher, 24 July 1952. 105 Ibid. 106 University of Kent Special Collections, UKC-​JOH-​COR/​1658, letter to Hewlett Johnson from Cecil Thomson (Stirling), 14 July 1952. 107 University of Kent Special Collections, UKC-​ JOH-​ COR/​ 1647, letter to Hewlett Johnson from E.P. Thompson, 21 July 1952. 108 The Western Daily Press and Bristol Mirror, 11 July 1952, from University of Kent Special Collections, UKC-​JOH-​CUT.KOREA. 109 Dale and Robinson, ‘Letter to the editor’, The Times, 17 October 1952, p. 7. 110 ‘Scandal of the Dean’, Daily Mail, 10 July 1952, p. 1; ‘The Dean accused of “hate” ’, Daily Mail, 26 July 1952, p. 3. 111 ‘The parting gesture of a saint’, The People, 5 May 1963. 112 Clapson, ‘The rise and fall of Monica Felton’, 212. 113 Ibid., 213. 114 Hansard, HC Written, vol. 489, cols 32–​4W, Mr Hugh Dalton, 19 June 1951. 115 Felton, What I Saw in Korea, 3. 116 Ibid., pp. 5–​10. 117 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 488, cols 2676–​86, Mr Charles Taylor, 14 June 1951. 118 WIDF, Korea, pp. 6–​7. 119 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 488, cols 2676–​86, Mr Charles Taylor, 14 June 1951. 120 ‘Who is Mrs Felton?’, Daily Mail, 14 June 1951, p. 1. 121 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 488, cols 2308–​13, Mr Hugh Dalton, 12 June 1951. 122 Gilbert McAllister claimed she told both the General Manager and the Deputy Chairman, see Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 488, cols 2676–​86, Mr Gilbert McAllister,14 June 1951. 123 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 488, cols 2676–​86, Mr Nigel Fisher, 14 June 1951. 124 Hansard, HC Written, vol. 489, cols 109–​10W, 25 June 1951. 125 Mackenzie, British Prisoners of the Korean War, p. 142. 126 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 539, cols 1424–​32, Mr William Hamilton, 7 April 1955; Hansard, HL Deb, vol. 191, cols 1123–​5, Lord Vansittart, 16 March 1955. 127 ‘Traitors: big vote for wider laws’, Daily Mail, 9 March 1955, p. 2; Hansard, HL Deb, vol. 191, cols 1123–​5, Lord Vansittart, 16 March 1955.

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The Korean War in Britain 128 TNA, CAB 128/​19/​45, memorandum:  Mrs Felton, 21 June 1951. I  thank James Freeman for his help uncovering much of the official documentation on Monica Felton. 129 West, The New Meaning of Treason, p. 369. 130 Rose Smith, ‘Dead soldier’s mother backs Monica Felton’, Daily Worker, 12 June 1951, p. 1. 131 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 488, cols 2676–​86, Mr Charles Taylor, 14 June 1951. 132 ‘Stevenage to Korea’, Daily Mail, 9 June 1951, p. 1. 133 Clapson, ‘The rise and fall of Monica Felton’, 223. 134 NAM, 2005–​05–​86, papers of D.F. Barrett, ‘The War in Korea, 1st Battalion the Middlesex’, p. 23. 135 IWM, Docs. 8462, papers of V.P.C. Whitamore, letter from Heather Docker to Mr. and Mrs. Whitamore, 23 June 1951. 136 Anthony Brown, ‘A peculiarly vile form of red propaganda’, Daily Mail, 2 December 1952, p. 1. 137 TNA, WO 208/​4007, letter from Christine Knowles to Major Young (Border Regiment), 8 September 1953. 138 IWM, Docs. 7803, papers of John Whittaker Shaw, letter from Mr Shaw (father) to John Whittaker Shaw, 18 July 1953. 139 ‘Chain letters from captive in Korea’, Northampton Mercury and Herald, 28 November 1952, p. 10. 140 Christine Knowles (ed.), British Prisoners of War Fund:  Information and News Sheet (January 1953). 141 Monica Felton, Korea! How to Bring the Boys Home (Britain China Friendship Association, London, January 1953), p. 7. 142 ‘Mrs Felton: a protest’, Daily Mail, 4 July 1951, p. 3. 143 Wakeford, ‘Mrs Felton was discourteous’, Daily Mail, 14 June 1951, p.  1; Buchanan, East Wind, p. 130. 144 MOD, Treatment of British Prisoners of War, p. 27. 145 Felton, That’s Why I Went, p. 11. 146 Ibid., p. 168. 147 Monica Felton, A Child Widow’s Story (London, 1966); Monica Felton, I Met Rajaji (London, 1962). 148 ‘Authoress dies’, Daily Mail, 5 March 1970, p. 2. 149 Clapson, ‘The rise and fall of Monica Felton’, 225. 150 ‘Fire on the hot seat’, Daily Mail, 20 November 1970, p. 9. 151 Mark Clapson, The Routledge Companion to Britain in the Twentieth Century (London and New York, 2009), p. 43. 152 Pollitt, Negotiate Now, p. 3. 153 Two Ways of Life (dir. Peter Bryan, War Office, 1958). 154 Holger Nehring, Politics of Security:  British and West German Protest Movements and the Early Cold War 1945–​1970 (Oxford, 2013), p. 50.

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Forgetting Korea: The Korean War in popular memory, 1953–​2014

Former national service conscript Ronald Larby wrote in his self-​ published memoir that after the war: Everything and everybody connected with … Korea just simply sank out of sight. Years went by during which time I never met anyone who had served in Korea. There were no books in the library and no films about Korea. There was nothing. It was as though it –​the Korean War –​had never happened. A truly forgotten war.1

Popular history has an abundant supply of books claiming to recover the forgotten voices of modern warfare. First-​person narratives from little-​ known conflicts, overlooked theatres of operation, domestic contexts or rank-​and-​file servicemen are all depicted as ‘forgotten’.2 One might even argue that labelling such groups as forgotten is little more than a helpful publishing strategy. But forgetting plays an important part in the Korean War’s social history in Britain. Korea has become the forgotten war of modern Britain:  from memoirs, popular histories and (rare) television programmes, the term ‘forgotten war’ is synonymous with Korea. The press reports about the unveiling in December 2014 of the first London memorial dedicated to Korea continued to use its infamous ‘forgotten’ label.3 This chapter explores how and why this label became so pervasive after the signing of the armistice in 1953 and the ways in which the veteran community have adopted this mantle. Forgetting has deeper consequences too for historians of Cold War Britain and this chapter asks why major aspects of Cold War experience failed to occupy a central role in the public and historiographical imagination of post-​1945 Britain. Reinstating forgotten voices into the historical narrative has been a central feature of social history since at least the 1960s. Indeed, it was the lure of recovering lost stories that first propelled the French historian Jules v 157 v

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The Korean War in Britain Michelet to delve into the archives in the early nineteenth century.4 Yet important questions remain about why particular events and figures have been forgotten in the first place and what it means when a society ‘forgets’ moments in its history. In the case of Korea, why has Britain, a country whose national identity was deeply connected with the military during the twentieth century, remained largely ambivalent towards a conflict that saw mass conscript involvement, panics around issues like treason and brainwashing, and which saw the death of over 1,000 servicemen? Once again, the impact of the Second World War proved essential in hastening this process of forgetting. Although many servicemen evoked Second World War ideas of duty and protecting the world from tyranny, the Korean War never came close to the 1939–​45 conflict in the national imagination. Neither did the low level of opposition it inspired make it a notorious war, like the Vietnam War later became. Nor did the war form a major bulwark in British post-​war identity and culture: aside from re-​ runs of M*A*S*H, the Korean War rarely featured on British television in the latter half of the twentieth century. The most famous fictional veteran of the conflict –​the haphazard hotelier Basil Fawlty –​was renowned for reasons other than his military service.5 Korea was neither lauded nor vilified in British culture and it sank into relative cultural obscurity during the second half of the twentieth century. However, Korea’s status as a forgotten war imbued in its British veterans a unique sense of identity. Faced with seeming apathy from younger generations, veterans like Larby have sought out one another. Larby argued that the British Korea Veterans Association (BKVA) filled the void of wider popular remembrance. His memoir was even produced by a small publishing company, Korvet, run by another veteran which focused solely on veteran memoirs. Veterans and regimental organisations, unencumbered by popular myths or cultural remakings of their experience, have retained a high degree of ownership over the memory of the war. Perhaps uniquely in British memorial culture, Korean War veterans have been the foremost guardians, preservers and historical curators of their ‘private kind o’ war’.6 The case of Korea also shows how forgetting is a vital component in understanding post-​war societies. Few histories of the Korean War go beyond 1953: as Chen Jian notes, both scholars and the general public ‘have devoted much of their attention to the war’s beginning rather than to its end’.7 Historians have deliberated the causes of the war thoroughly but, much like British society in 1953, they paid little heed to the aftermath of conflict. Yet Korea is distinct within British memorial and popular culture: that such a substantial military contribution should go v 158 v

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Forgetting Korea so unnoticed and under-​examined is highly unusual in twentieth-​century British society. The mnemonic turn in history-​writing since the 1980s certainly raised questions of collective military remembrance before, but the case of the Korean War sheds further light on the politics and practicalities of remembrance in post-​1945 Britain. The Korean War veteran’s story fitted neither into the post-​war narrative of national victory in the Second World War nor into the later British patriotic revival of the early 1980s. The conflict has not even featured extensively in recent historical fascination with the cunning and codes of Cold War espionage. This chapter suggests that the awkward nature, purpose and outcome of the Korean War led to its relative neglect in British history and popular culture, unlike in the United States where both its anti-​Communist rhetoric and proximity to the Vietnam War gave its veterans greater prominence. Together with its distance from Britain, unclear war aims and the growing dominance of the Second World War in British culture, charted in the other chapters of this book, this final chapter examines the ‘forgotten’ war in the context of post-​1953 British history. It first examines the significance of forgetting war in the twentieth century, before turning to Korea and its ‘forgotten’ veterans.

Forgetting twentieth-​century conflict Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) set in motion much of the historiographical debate on war and memory. The vast literature produced since the 1980s has accelerated this interest, particularly following Pierre Nora’s now seminal Realms of Memory (1996).8 Within this mnemonic turn, forgetting is largely interpreted as the inverse or absence of remembering. Paul Ricoeur describes forgetting as an ever-​ present fear, lurking behind all memory projects: he calls forgetting ‘[a]‌n attack, a weakness, a lacuna’.9 Similarly, in their study of the material culture of remembrance, Adrian Forty and Susanne Küchler interpret forgetting as the opposite or failure of remembrance: particular objects denote remembrance, their destruction a desire to forget.10 But remembrance and forgetting are not always divorced processes. As Jenny Edkins has argued, commemoration can hasten forgetting: memorialising stories of heroism and glory obscure trauma, suffering and a wide range of other counter-​narratives of conflict.11 Likewise, Freud argued that forgetting is not just an absence of memory: it is a deliberate act, executed by an individual or society, to construct a more comfortable narrative of their lives and to remove v 159 v

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The Korean War in Britain traumatic episodes which impede their daily psychic existence.12 Forgetting in this instance can be a powerful, purposeful act. Forgetting can encompass both the personal repression of painful events and the deliberate destruction or omission of unpalatable episodes in a society’s history. Forgetting can even be equated with silencing or erasing, rather than just an unintentional failure of memory. Memory scholar Paul Connerton has described this forgetting as ‘repressive erasure’, the first of seven types of forgetting.13 Like memory, forgetting also changes over time, according to the varying needs and motivations of individuals and societies. In his recent study of digital ‘forgetting’ Viktor Mayer-​ Schönberger has shown that technology now makes remembering (not forgetting) the default –​the 2015 debates in the European Court of Justice over internet search histories and the ‘right to forget’ illustrate this.14 Indeed, Tony Judt has remarked that twenty-​first-​century policymakers ‘wear the last century rather lightly’ and that forgetting is a hallmark of contemporary life.15 Historians too are deeply aware of the importance of forgetting. Michael Roth maintains that any examination of the past inevitably comes into confrontation with the ‘forces of forgetting’.16 As Steedman has argued, uncovering ‘forgotten’ items is central to the historian’s work and their view of themselves.17 Thompson’s famous introduction to The Making of the English Working Class (1963), highlighting those previously excluded from the historical narrative, was not just a call to re-​orientate the subjects a historian should study, but to actively ‘rescue’ historical subjects  –​through recording, archiving and cataloguing  –​in order to withstand the ‘condescension of posterity’.18 Peter Barham powerfully summarises this process of retrieval in Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War (2004): ‘I was alerted to the existence of this population by a footnote from which it slowly dawned on me that here was a cultural mass grave, a “pauper’s pit” … waiting to be excavated.’19 On one level, the criteria for ‘forgotten’ status seem fairly clear. Typically it refers to a particular group or story that has been excluded from the dominant historical narrative or that provides an alternative dimension to that narrative. Barham describes the ‘forgotten lunatics’ as an ‘embarrassment’ to officials during the First World War and they remain ‘unjustly neglected’ to this day.20 Restoring forgotten voices has thus been a profoundly political act:  for example, David Hall notes in his study of working-​class life that the current plight of post-​industrial areas and working-​class people might be taken more seriously if their experiences are more well-​known.21 Another assumption underpins such v 160 v

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Forgetting Korea literature: that voices are best represented by first-​person narrative. The IWM’s highly successful ‘forgotten voices’ series offer short, first-​person accounts of conflict, aiming to catalogue the ‘ordinary’ experiences of a wide range of men and women who witnessed some aspect of twentieth-​ century conflict. Its editor, Max Arthur, stated that ‘these are their words –​I have been but a catalyst’.22 To some extent, Korea is perhaps then not unique in being forgotten. It was not the first, or indeed the last, war to be described as forgotten, not least because it has proven to be a successful publishing strategy (Arthur’s first book was a Sunday Times bestseller in 2003). Delving into something ‘forgotten’ implies that it has been untouched by historians and is therefore, somehow, more authentic. Arthur and his reviewers have used the word ‘raw’ or ‘speaking for themselves’ to describe first-​person extracts used in his bestselling Forgotten Voices series.23 But as Dan Todman points out, these forgotten voices were in fact ones left over from the highly popular programme The Great War (1964) and some of these voices (such as Charles Carrington) had hardly been side-​lined or overlooked.24 The centenary celebrations of the First World War suggest that the war is in fact the least forgotten of all modern conflicts. In other cases, the label seems more justified. The British Fourteenth Army fighting in Burma between 1942 and 1945 was referred to at the time and subsequently as the ‘forgotten army’, so side-​lined were its actions.25 Yet the end of the Second World War proved a turning point in the remembrance of British involvement in war:  as David French argues, almost the entire military and its actions could be described as forgotten after 1945.26 Post-​1945 military engagements, such as Malaya or Korea, did not fit either with Britain’s vision of its growing sense of its army as a ‘humanitarian’ force in the world or its view of its recent military past. British veterans of Korea certainly tried to fit the war into a wider narrative of British military history. For instance, in a poem written long after the war, former Private, Russell Edwards, wrote: The First World War we went to help France The Second World War we went to help Poland The Korean War we went with the United Nations The Gulf War we went to help Kuwait The Falklands War was the only one where we actually went to war for ourselves and no-​one helped us then, I wonder why, are we invincible? Iraq was to help the Americans Afghanistan[,]‌I know not who instigated that, against terrorism.27

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The Korean War in Britain Looking back on the conflict, veterans tried to justify Korea along these humanitarian lines and, as we have seen, Britain’s Cold War was also defended as an act of democratic citizenship. Why then did it fail to fit within the canon of British military intervention? As the chapters of the book have indicated, the reason largely lies in the specific legacy of the Second World War itself and in a particular kind of forgetting that became prevalent. The memory of the Second World War infused the national narrative to such an extent that it eclipsed subsequent conflicts in popular culture.28 But forgetting can be an active process too, rather than just falling in the shadow of other events. Connerton argues that forgetting can be ‘constitutive in the formation of a new identity’.29 In other words, forgetting is an essential part of constructing collective and individual identity:  all ‘narrative[s]‌of modernity’ need to forget. In the case of Britain, identity formation in the second half of the twentieth century has certainly made use of conflict: Stephen McVeigh and Nicola Cooper argue that ‘[t]he soldier is a national avatar, a foundational figure and is evocative of the history, self-​image and identity of the nation’.30 The Second World War continued to exert a powerful hold over national memory for the remainder of the century and, in order to do so, other wars that contradicted its bold narratives had to be forgotten. Britain had been a junior partner in Korea, a war whose aims, methods and outcomes had been at best unclear, at worst criticised. As this chapter shows, its redeeming feature –​the seemingly worthwhile fight against a Communist foe –​became increasingly irrelevant to British identity in the contemporary world.

Forgetting Korea There were several key stages in the process of forgetting. The first was the end of the conflict in 1953. After years of on–​off negotiations, on 8 June diplomats settled the contentious issue of repatriated POWs and began to draw up plans for a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), supervised by a Military Armistice Commission.31 A  final armistice agreement was signed just after ten o’clock in the morning on 27 July and fighting stopped shortly afterwards.32 But this end was deeply inconclusive. At the Geneva Conference in 1954 none of the proposals for a reunified Korea were acceptable to all parties and no political solution to the discord was reached.33 This uneasy conclusion to the war did not provide an edifying or decisive end-​point for either Britain or the United States. Charles S. Young v 162 v

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Forgetting Korea argues that the undistinguished military record of the United States in Korea (which was ‘twice in danger of being driven into the sea’) led it to its lack of remembrance in American popular culture.34 More significantly, the unclear aims of the war and the frequent stalling of peace talks from 1951 meant that the armistice was not celebrated, despite the fact it marked a major concession for Communist China over ‘voluntary repatriation’ of UN-​held POWs.35 As Young argues ‘Washington was left with very little salvage for a usable past’.36 Likewise, the unclear ending of the conflict did little to integrate the war into British narratives of conflict. Even in 1952, POW welfare fund organiser Christine Knowles, who had so fiercely denounced Monica Felton, was astonished at the ‘utter apathy on the part of the public’.37 Added to this was the feeling that Britain had only played a subsidiary role at best. In July 1953, MP Walter Eliot summarised the situation: ‘This has been a great war in which we have not played the major part. Such a thing is almost unknown.’38 Korea was not seen as part of Britain’s ‘usable past’ or a positive sign for its future. Nor was this sentiment limited just to policymakers. On 31 July 1953, Bury Free Press reported the bemusement with which the citizens of Bury St  Edmunds viewed the UN flag flying above the council offices, marking the end of the war. The reporter lamented that it all seemed ‘so remote’ and that Britain’s long-​awaited Ashes victory in 1953 gained more attention: ‘What a scathing commentary upon the times in which we live! For what was true of West Suffolk was true also of the country as a whole. The forgotten war … [has] come to an almost unnoticed end.’39 Neither, as the years went by, did the Korean War speak to contemporary trends or conflicts. Even during the early 1960s, Korea was being regarded as the prelude to Vietnam, the latter conflict becoming steadily more unpopular during the early 1970s.40 By the time of the Falklands War in the early 1980s, Britain’s wartime past was once again integral to contemporary politics and society. The Thatcher government appropriated the memory of the Second World War, promoting military endeavour and ‘duty’ as part of a resurgent nationalism.41 Korean veterans were profoundly aware of their exclusion from such rhetoric. The Falklands War coincided with the retirement of many veterans, a time which, psychologist Nigel Hunt argues, encouraged greater reflection on military service.42 It also coincided with the first large-​scale oral history projects with Korean War veterans, such as the National Army Museum’s ‘Project Korea’ in the late 1980s. Both the Second World War and the Falklands are constant reference points in these interviews. Jarlath Donnellan was proud to mention how the model of machine gun he used in Korea was v 163 v

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The Korean War in Britain also used in the Falklands.43 Veterans also highlighted the difference between the popular reception of the Falklands War and the Korean War. Jim Jacobs asked at the end of his memoir if the public would retain their interest in war: ‘Like Korea, will the Falklands and [the] Gulf have faded from public memory … excepting those who will proudly proclaim, “I was there, that was my war”.’44 The Falklands War made Korea’s omission even more stark to its veterans, who had by that time began to reflect on their experiences and found a British public seemingly disinterested in the cause for which they had fought. There was also potentially another level of forgetting at work. If we return to Larby’s statement that the ‘Korean War never happened’, we are reminded powerfully of Jean Baudrillard’s theoretical argument that the Gulf War ‘did not take place’. Baudrillard argued that the conflict in fact primarily composed of hackneyed media representations and clichés of war. The ‘fake and presumptive warriors, generals, experts and television presenters’ used familiar ideas to ‘signify’ the event of the war. This meant that the conflict in the Gulf had ‘been anticipated in all its details and exhausted by all the scenarios’.45 The memory of the Second World War on the Korean War generation meant that every action of theirs had also been anticipated, and it was thus overlooked, its unique characteristics forgotten. In this way, the Korean War ‘never happened’, as it had been ‘anticipated in all its details’.46 Perhaps Baudrillard’s claim that war takes place through media representations as much as it does on the battlefield can be seen in Korean War veterans’ awareness of the textual tradition in which they were writing. Veteran Anthony Perrins lamented that there was no Korean War Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon.47 Similarly, upon his return home, Norman Davies commented on the discomfort he felt compared to his military-​literary forebears: ‘Being an avid reader it seemed to me that fictional characters, when they arrived home from a distant land or a distant war, enthused over the journey as they neared their homes and their loved ones. So what was the matter with me?’48 There was an expectation that servicemen would tell their stories and that society would listen and respond. Although Korean War writers never gained the fame of First World War authors and poets, there were some novels set in the war in its immediate aftermath. Simon Kent’s A Hill in Korea (1954) follows an ambushed British patrol who become trapped on a hill near a Korean temple. The sixteen men only escape when the area is bombed by UN forces and Private Wyatt (an unpopular national serviceman) mans a v 164 v

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Forgetting Korea machine gun to enable their escape. The novel is largely written from the standpoint of Lieutenant Jeff Butler, the reluctant platoon commander, and underlines the obscurity of the war in which they are engaged: ‘There had once been a certain chivalrous sound to the trumpets of war –​but that was an ancient bugle call. Today it had a hollow, old-​fashioned sound! Today you ambushed the enemy, trapped him, you gave him no warning, and with cold efficiency you shot him down.’49 The character of Private Rabin also describes how ill-​fitting the martial masculinity of their fathers and grandfathers was to Korea. He irreverently borrows the high diction of remembrance by describing himself as ‘The Immortal Soldier. Died, avoiding action. Unwashed and undefeated. Profane in victory, loused up in retreat’.50 A  later novel, John Hollands’ The Dead, the Dying and the Damned (1956) also concentrated on national service experience, focusing on the exploits of members of Able Company, the ‘Rockinghamshire’ Regiment.51 The novel enjoyed much more success than other representations of the Korean War, allegedly selling around three million copies  to date. Its blunt and sincere style attracted much criticism, not least from Hollands’ former school in Tiverton, Blundell’s School, which explicitly banned the book from its library.52 Yet despite the small ­sensation the book caused, Holland himself still referred to the war as ‘forgotten’ by younger generations in Britain.53 It was against this background of apathy that servicemen explored their experiences in Korea. The Korean War had seemingly ‘not happened’, although not in the Baudrillardian sense of a media outpouring obscuring the actual conflict. In fact the opposite was true: the public’s apparent apathy meant that the war had not been reproduced or represented enough. Television, so integral to public history, similarly overlooked the Korean War. The most famous and mocked fictional veteran of the Korean War –​Basil Fawlty –​has his experience in Korea summarily dismissed in one episode of the popular 1970s TV programme Fawlty Towers. He tells his wife Sybil that he killed people in Korea, to which she points out to some passing guests that he was in the Catering Corps and poisoned them with his cooking.54 The other major fictional depiction in Britain came with the screening of American television series M*A*S*H. Based on a popular 1970 film of the same name and covering to the exploits of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, the series ran in the United States from 1972 to 1983 and starred Alan Alda as Captain ‘Hawkeye’ Pierce. It is often regarded as one of the most successful US television programmes to be exported to the UK. When its last episode was filmed in 1983, Television Today noted that its comedy v 165 v

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The Korean War in Britain appealed to British viewers, as did its cast of characters away from home. But the article also asked: ‘Have many viewers realised that it was about a war over thirty years ago, not the Vietnam War, and if they did, did it matter at all?’55 Once again, Korea’s specific history was overlooked or subsumed into general, hackneyed expressions of wartime life. Two notable British documentary programmes were made in the late 1980s on Korea. Max Hastings presented the BBC’s six-​part The War in Korea from January 1988, including interviews with P.J. Kavanagh and Anthony Farrar-​Hockley. Its six episodes covered key moments in the run-​up to war and wartime action and accompanied Hastings’ book on the British involvement.56 The next major television programme came later that year, when Bruce Cumings wrote Channel 4’s Korea:  The Unknown War (July 1988).57 Cumings later maintained that this programme was ‘infinitely better than Max Hastings’ BBC-​produced potboiler and anything else ever done on the Korean War’.58 The programme again made use of extensive interviews, including another with Farrar-​ Hockley. But Cumings cited problems in maintaining control over the script and direction of the programme. Given his revisionist stance on the origins of the war, Cumings was keen to examine the causes of the war in more depth (noting that the BBC only dedicated seven minutes to this), but argued that the editors of the programme ultimately had the greatest power over the story told. But it was its airing on ‘a Saturday night film slot in mid-​summer’ that really limited its impact and its first programme only had 669,000 viewers (compared with eight million who had watched the first episode of The Great War in 1964 or 2.6  million who watched Testament of Youth in 1979).59 Despite an outpouring of military-​ related programmes on British television, Korea remained largely ‘forgotten’ once again. The only British-​made film specifically about the war, A Hill in Korea, based on the novel, was released three years after the war ended and starred a young Michael Caine, fresh back from Korea himself.60 Released in America under the title Hell in Korea, it again centred on a British patrol cut off from British forces who must defend themselves against Chinese and North Korean forces in an abandoned temple. Like the novel, the film strikes a glum note, highlighting the men’s ambivalence, although it does include an introductory dedication to the national serviceman of the post-​war military. As already seen with POW films, Second World War topics were extremely popular with film-​going audiences in the 1950s:  in the year A Hill in Korea was released, the film Reach for the Sky about RAF pilot Douglas Bader won the BAFTA for Best Film. By v 166 v

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Forgetting Korea contrast, A Hill in Korea was described by reviewers as ‘earnest and conscientious’ and to some extent more authentic than many other war films, but with ‘too much talk, most of it cliché’.61 Once again, the Korean War had, in Baudrillardian fashion, been acted out already.62 But to what extent was the limited popularity of the war due to the ambiguity of the wider Cold War in British cultural life? Peter Hennessy points out that the Cold War was never a ‘people’s war’ in Britain.63 Its most sensational aspects peppered British film and literature in the second half of the twentieth century –​not least the British appetite for spy thriller novels –​but this interest rarely translated into any lasting form of social identity or into memorialisation. As Rosanna Farbøl argues, the very fact that the war was ‘cold’ and never broke out makes commemoration difficult: the Cold War lacks those ‘powerful lieux de mémoire which usually function as occasions for retelling myths and narratives, thus confirming the unity and identity of the community adhering to them’.64 Those few lieux de mémoire or sites of memory that do exist within British culture are too diffuse in their message to provide any unifying emblem or rallying point. Yet the Cold War did involve significant amounts of manpower. Elsewhere in Britain’s Cold War world, 63,000 British servicemen were stationed in Germany in 1951 alone, yet this sort of British involvement never became part of national identity in the way that active combat did.65 Britain’s unclear relationship with its Cold War commitments was summed up by one commentator in 1971, who wrote that ‘deterrence can be boring, as much for the public in Britain as for the soldiers and airmen’.66 As much as it falls in the shadows of the Second World War, Korea is also part of the Cold War’s ambiguous and evolving legacy.

Veterans groups and memorialisation Given this lack of widespread public interest, veterans’ organisations have fundamentally shaped the memorialisation of the war. For the servicemen who fought in Korea, such disinterest was an affront to their military service. Former national serviceman Derek Halley wrote in his memoir: I remember the forgotten war. Disraeli was wrong: if time were the ‘great physician’ I would have forgotten long ago. But who was he, anyway? Just another politician who never saw Korea[.] … The government may have locked their records away but mine are staring me in the face. I can’t forget the madness which savaged more people in three years than Vietnam did in ten.67

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The Korean War in Britain During war, soldiers often feel like the domestic world has forgotten them.68 Nevertheless, Halley’s directionless anger at all politicians (even those of the previous century) represents a broader resentment by the Korean War generation at the lack of recognition they received within British memorial and popular culture. Nor was Halley alone. In 2003, Harry Orton, a former Communications Sergeant, recounted how he had written dozens of letters to the MOD and even to the Queen three times, asking for more recognition of the Korean War. He noted how: ‘when my son was at school he brought an exam paper home asking which dates corresponded with which wars. The First and Second World Wars were there and so was Vietnam, but the Korean War was left out.’69 Faced with this apparent apathy, the Korean War veteran community have taken up the mantle of the ‘forgotten war’ as a way of defining themselves. Just as Connerton argues that forgetting can be ‘constitutive in the formation of a new identity’, so too can being forgotten. Forgotten on a national level, the war retained and even gained a special significance for veteran, regimental and national service organisations. National serviceman Private Russell Edwards wrote in his 2008 unpublished memoir that, until he became involved in the BKVA, his medals lay ‘cast aside in a drawer, forgotten, from a forgotten war’.70 Others called for the conflict to feature more in political decision-​making. Former intelligence officer Anthony Perrins claimed that the ‘forgotten’ status of the Korean War did ‘not make … [him] unhappy, except that there were those whose selflessness and courage should not go untold; and if the inevitable mistakes made by the politicians and the military are forgotten, they will surely be repeated’.71 Similarly S.G. Buss noted that he would not be angry at the ‘forgotten’ status of the war if it was not for the fact that the same ‘mistakes’ were being made by contemporary governments.72 As a frequent VIP guest at BKVA events, Anthony Farrar-​Hockley summed up the essence of this veteran community. In 2000 in an address at the dedication of the BKVA memorial at the National Arboretum, Farrar-​ Hockley told veterans that although they might have been overlooked, they were nevertheless part of an ‘exclusive club’ and had fought for something bigger than themselves.73 Being forgotten was thus a central part of this group’s identity. In fact, the degree of veteran ownership in their own memorialisation is largely unique in the history of twentieth-​century memorialisation. Their efforts have centred primarily on two areas: publishing and the leading veteran organisation, the BKVA. Many Korean War veterans wrote, published or self-​published a large number of war memoirs from the 1980s onwards. v 168 v

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Forgetting Korea This distinct body of writing developed into a form of community publishing, facilitated by veteran publishing companies such as Korvet, based in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.74 In communicating with fellow veterans, preparing memoirs or reading others’ memoirs, the Korean War veteran community developed a distinct stance and style, pitting themselves against public disinterest. As Benjamin Kuberich argues, communities can be ‘made or enriched’ through the very process of publication.75 These memoirs had a distinct relationship with the historical discipline. Some aimed to provide an addendum to mainstream military history. Writing in the BKVA newsletter, Morning Calm, in 2011, Ted Stokes described his experience as a batman during the war, stating that: ‘We must all have moments in history that at the time were just events and only later blossomed into world affairs or significant experiences.’76 Although Stokes was unusual in claiming that he was ‘only vaguely aware of the future requirements to leave the comfort of home and hearth’, he described his story as a small part –​a sideshow –​to the main events of the war. Other writers also frequently contextualised their experiences as an extra chapter in the history books.77 Many quoted the most notable histories of the Korean War, including Max Hastings’ The Korean War (1993) and Anthony Farrar-​Hockley’s official history.78 Dave Brady, formerly of 41 Independent Commando Unit, Royal Marines, recalled reading ‘avidly’ about the British in Korea in later life, as he was keen to learn more about the famous Gloucestershire Regiment, concluding that ‘they really did have a tough time’.79 When national servicemen Julian Potter deposited wartime letters with the Imperial War Museum in the early 1990s, he provided them with an account of ‘his’ Korean War, contextualising each letter within the wider trajectory of the war.80 Veterans David Green and John Shipster included detailed historical summaries of the Korean War, quoting from Hastings, in their memoirs.81 Veteran writing style was influenced by history-​ writing too: for example, Colin Walker Downes, who flew USAF jets during the Korean War, described his experiences through the actions of his unit, rather than personal experience.82 For Harold Davis, his regiment, the Black Watch, stood for a set of transhistorical values which continue to be relevant:  ‘Afghanistan has been the latest port of call, and the skills the regiment is renowned for –​discipline, versatility, determination and efficiency –​are as relevant now as they when I signed up in the 1950s.’83 These former servicemen preferred to use regiments or units to provide a suitably ‘historical’ account, but also to situate their actions within a broader, seemingly more meaningful, framework. v 169 v

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The Korean War in Britain Others hoped that their account could provide an alternative, rather than a supplementary, account. In 1982 Dave Morley and Ken Worpole suggested that community publishing can provide a more ‘readable’ alternative to the ‘dominant forms of history-​writing’ (i.e. academic history writing).84 There are numerous examples of this from the veteran community. National serviceman John Whybrow stated that Hastings’ history of the Korean War matched his own experiences as a platoon commander in the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI), adding that ‘as Max Hastings observes [it was] “a platoon commander’s war” ’.85 However, later in the memoir, Whybrow queried Hastings’ account of events:  ‘The weather was hot (but not the unbearable heat which Max Hastings speaks of) and it rained frequently and heavily.’86 Revealingly, in criticising Hastings’ description of the climate, Whybrow questioned a particularly embodied part of the Korean War experience. As Yuval Harari notes, veterans or ‘flesh-​witnesses’ tend to treat war ‘as a revelatory experience … [and] see the bodily experiences of war as superior to the intellectual mediations of peacetime’.87 Temperature and bodily discomfort were treated as experiences which a historian cannot hope to fully understand, both due to their distance from events and the inadequacy of the written word in the capturing such sensations. Elsewhere, Derek Kinne, taken prisoner at Imjin, noted how museums displays also did not fully correspond with the battle itself. He stated that when ‘you go into a museum showing paintings of old battles, you see the horses prancing, the sabres slashing, the infantrymen firing volleys or locked hand to hand[.] … This is not enough to give you any idea of how it really comes to pass’.88 Many of these memoirs express dissatisfaction with contemporary society, their lack of recognition by it and history-​writing. This did not always prompt anger:  in fact, veterans arguably formed closer ties with one another as a result. The BKVA has been the foremost veterans’ organisation for Korean War veterans. Officially formed with the amalgamation of several local veterans organisations in 1981, by 2004 there were fifty-​nine branches across the country.89 Veterans have noted how each branch had a distinct history and character, depending on those involved. Larby, with characteristic flair, described how the Herts and District Branch came together: The forming of the branch came out of rather bizarre circumstances. Two Croxley G[r]‌een RBL [Royal British Legion] members, Bill Armstrong (ex Glosters) and Eddie Carter (ex-​Royal Norfolks), were watching the 1981  ‘Miss World’ beauty contest, when on came a drop-​dead gorgeous

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Forgetting Korea oriental beauty –​‘Miss South Korea’! Quite actually who said the following is not clear. ‘Never saw anyone like that when I was out there!’ The other replied, ‘You were in Korea? Well, so was I.’ Bill and Eddie got chatting, found they knew of other local Korea Vets and proceeded to form a branch of the newly created BKVA.90

BKVA members were often also members of the Royal British Legion and regimental organisations. As Nigel Hunt has commented, retirement is often the first moment that former servicemen and women address their military experience for many years, as they become less busy with family or work commitments: the Wessex Branch membership alone was sixty in 1989, increasing to 151 in 2005 and 185 in 2009.91 From their inception the BKVA branches aimed to provide welfare support to former servicemen and women who served in Korea and their families.92 The BKVA also developed international connections. In particular, the BKVA have established strong links with the ROK through the ‘revisit programme’ for veterans and commemorative events. Many veterans have been able to return to Korea from the early 1980s and recall the changes in South Korea, but also the ‘gratitude’ of their government.93 Sergeant Henry Tyler described how he visited regularly from 1974 onwards and that the South Koreans had ‘really pulled themselves into the twentieth century’.94 In 2010 one veteran wrote in the veteran newsletter Morning Calm that:  ‘It’s worth noting that while the Koreans are treating 2010 as a key war anniversary … the British government is not.’95 The transnational character of BKVA events in the UK further reflects the strong connections with the ROK. In 1999 veterans from around the world gathered in London for the International Reunion of the Korean Veterans Association (KVA) and Farrar-​ Hockley noted how the BKVA were looking forward to reciprocating the ‘friendship and hospitality shown … by veterans in countries across the world in the intervening years, particularly in the Republic of Korea’.96 The strong relationship with the ROK continued well into the twenty-​first century. In conjunction with the Korean Cultural Centre, the Royal British Legion and ROK Ambassador to the UK, Sotheby’s hosted a charity auction of contemporary Korean art to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Korean War in October 2010. All the proceeds went to the BKVA Relief Fund.97 The ambassador, Choo Kyu Ho, thanked the veterans for devoting ‘their youth for the Korean War’.98 Major General Mike Swindells, President of the BKVA, reciprocated by thanking ‘our friends from the Republic of Korea [who] have never forgotten’.99 Another notable recent event was the award in 2012 of the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show Best in Show to Jihae Hwang v 171 v

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The Korean War in Britain for ‘Quiet Time: DMZ Forbidden Garden’. Alan Guy noted in Morning Calm that ‘[t]‌he final chapter of this story is that the Korean War has been brought to the attention of the public via television, the radio and the Internet and her team are to be commended for their fine effort to make sure that “We are NOT Forgotten” ’.100 Until 2006 the BKVA also continued to fund undergraduate students from Britain to attend South Korean universities.101 Through such events, the BKVA defined itself as both a transnational and highly active veteran organisation and one which owned its war memories. This almost unique position as guardians of Korean War memory was evident at the local level too. BKVA members ran a range of events for its members, but also lobbied for local communities to provide physical memorials to those who died in Korea. BKVA members in Derby and Plymouth provided much of the funding for conventional monuments, whilst Ipswich BKVA adopted a Korean fir tree near the town cenotaph.102 In 2000, BKVA members in the Lothian and West of Scotland Branch created a pagoda-​style memorial, on a site in the Bathgate Hills reminiscent of the hilly Korean terrain.103 There were other small-​scale national memorials before this time, such as the plaque dedicated in 1987 in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral and in the National Arboretum in 2000, but it was not until 2014 that a large-​scale national memorial was unveiled on the Victoria Embankment in London. This was funded by the South Korean governments and Korean groups and individuals based in the UK. Some saw this achievement as the BKVA’s ‘final fight’ and it was announced at the Annual General Meeting that the BKVA would dissolve on 27 December 2014: ‘The decision was made on the basis: “We go out with our heads held high rather than just fade away”.’104 However, some members greeted this decision with indignation and viewed this vote as unrepresentative (100 out of 2,600 members) and in 2014 a new organisation, the British Korean War Veterans Association (BKWVA) was set up by veterans, including William Speakman VC. This organisation, its new members claim, ‘far from being a “last man standing” organisation’, sought to open membership to other Commonwealth countries, as well as relatives of veterans.105 More than sixty years after the end of the war, veteran activity continues to occupy an important part of the lives and selfhood of the generation of men who fought in Korea. Forgetting is not simply the absence of memory, but an active process. Just as forgetting can help identity construction, so too can the stark reality of being forgotten. As seen by v 172 v

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Forgetting Korea

Figure 5  Korean War Memorial, London, 2016 veteran publishing, the BKVA and BKWVA, forgetting has facilitated a high degree of veteran ownership and guardianship of their own war and it is likely that the war will continue to be labelled as ‘forgotten’.

Notes 1 This chapter is based on an article published in Twentieth Century British History (Oxford Journals). For the full article see Grace Huxford, ‘The Korean War never happened: forgetting a conflict in British society and culture’, Twentieth Century British History, 27:2 (2016), 195–​219. Larby, Signals to the Right, pp. 174–​5.

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The Korean War in Britain 2 Max Arthur, Forgotten Voices of the Great War (London, 2003); Max Arthur, Forgotten Voices of the Second World War (London, 2004); Roderick Bailey, Forgotten Voices of the Victoria Cross (London, 2010); Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941–​5 (London, 2004); Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory:  The First World War:  Myths and Realities (London, 2002). 3 Joe Shute, ‘Britain’s Korean War veterans win their final fight’, Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/​history/​britain-​at-​war/​11260575/​ Britains-​Korean-​War-​veterans-​win-​their-​final-​fight.html (accessed 10 June 2016). 4 Carolyn Steedman, Dust (Manchester, 2001), pp. 69–​70. 5 M*A*S*H was a long-​running television programme (1972–​83), based on a 1969 film of the same name and followed exploits of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (US Army) in Korea; Basil Fawlty was the title character of the BBC television series Fawlty Towers (1975–​79). 6 Kent, A Hill in Korea, p. 129. 7 Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War, p. 85. 8 Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory:  Construction of the French Past, Volume 1 (Columbia, 1996). 9 Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History and Forgetting (Chicago and London, 2006), p.  413. 10 Adrian Forty, ‘Introduction’, in Adrian Forty and Susanne Küchler (eds), The Art of Forgetting (Oxford and New York, 1999), pp. 8–​10. 11 Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge, 2003), p. 54. 12 Sigmund Freud, ‘Remembering, repeating and working-​ through’, in J. Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, Vol. 12 (London, 1958), p. 148. 13 Paul Connerton, ‘Seven types of forgetting’, Memory Studies, 1:1 (2008), 59–​71. 14 Julia Powles and Enrique Chaparro, ‘How Google determined our right to be forgotten’, Guardian, 18 February 2015 www.theguardian.com/​technology/​ 2015/​feb/​18/​the-​right-​be-​forgotten-​google-​search (accessed 10 June 2015). 15 Tony Judt, Reappraisals:  Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century (London, 2009), p. 3. 16 Michael S. Roth, Memory, Trauma and History (New York, 2012), p. 83. 17 Steedman, Dust, 70. 18 Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 12. 19 Peter Barham, Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War (New Haven and London, 2004), p. 7. 20 Ibid., p. 9. 21 David Hall, Working Lives: The Forgotten Voices of Britain’s Post-​War Working Class (London, 2012), p. 10. 22 Arthur, Forgotten Voices of the Great War, p. xii. 23 Ibid., p.  xii; Tom Payne, ‘A writer’s life’, Daily Telegraph, 8 November 2004, p. 12.

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Forgetting Korea 24 Dan Todman, The Great War: Myth and Memory (London, 2005), pp. 211–​12. 25 C.G.H. Dunlop, ‘Forgotten army (act. 1942–​1945)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford; online edition, October 2016), www.oxforddnb. com/​view/​theme/​96392 (accessed 25 April 2017). 26 French, Army, Empire and Cold War, p. 1. 27 IWM, Docs. 19562, papers of Russell Frederick Edwards, unpublished memoir, May 2008, p. 15. 28 Hinton, Nine Wartime Lives, p. 1; Paris, Warrior Nation, p. 221. 29 Connerton, ‘Seven types of forgetting’, 63. 30 Stephen McVeigh and Nicola Cooper, ‘Introduction:  men after war’, in Stephen McVeigh and Nicola Cooper (eds), Men after War (New York and Abingdon, 2013), p. 3. 31 Hennessey, Britain’s Korean War, p. 237. 32 Farrar-​Hockley, The British Part in the Korean War, Volume II, p. 399. 33 J.Y. Ra, ‘The politics of conference:  the political conference on Korea in Geneva, 26 April–​ 15 June 1954’, Journal of Contemporary History, 34:3 (1999), 400. 34 Young, ‘POWs’, p. 156. 35 Ibid., p. 160. 36 Ibid., p. 168. 37 ‘Britain’s “Forgotten Army” in Korea’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Mercury, 11 November 1952, p. 5. 38 Hansard, HC Deb, vol. 518, cols 1547–​610, Mr Walter Eliot MP, 30 July 1953. 39 ‘The war which was forgotten in excitement of the Test Match’, Bury Free Press, 31 July 1953, p. 1. 40 Arthur Cook, ‘Vietnam: it’s now or never for the US’, Daily Mail, 26 November 1964, p. 2. 41 Raphael Samuel (ed.), Patriotism:  The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity (London, 1989). 42 Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma, p. 149. 43 NAM, 1989–​05–​160, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer, Jarlath Donnellan, 4 August 1988. 44 IWM, papers of Jim Jacobs, unpublished memoir, c. 2001, Docs. 9870, p. 191. 45 Jean Baudrillard (trans. Paul Patton), The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (Bloomington, 1995), pp. 31 and 35. 46 This process had also taken place a generation earlier: as George Orwell sat around waiting for something –​anything –​to happen in the hills of Zaragoza during the Spanish Civil War, Kevin Foster argues he and others were acutely aware of their fathers’ heroic experiences in the First World War. See Kevin Foster, Fighting Fictions:  War Narrative and National Identity (London and Sterling, 1999), p. 13. 47 Perrins, ‘A Pretty Rough Do Altogether’, p. 338. 48 Norman Davies, Red Winds from the North (Knebworth, 1999), p. 150.

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The Korean War in Britain 49 Kent, A Hill in Korea, p. 136. 50 Ibid., p. 21. 51 Hollands, The Dead, the Dying and the Damned. 52 ‘Story of Korean War reissued on sixtieth anniversary’, Express and Echo (Exeter), 25 July 2013, pp. 36–​7. 53 Ibid. 54 Fawlty Towers (BBC Two, 3 October 1975). 55 ‘Writing and characters are everything about comedy’, The Stage and Television Today, 10 March 1983, p. 16. 56 The War in Korea (prod. John Gau, January 1988). 57 Korea: The Unknown War (prod. Philip Whitehead, July 1988). 58 Bruce Cumings, War and Television (London and New York, 1992), p. 232. 59 Ibid., p. 236; Todman, The Great War, pp. 30 and 184. 60 Kent, A Hill in Korea; A Hill in Korea (dir. Julian Amyes, Wessex Film, 1956). 61 ‘A Hill in Korea’, The Sketch, 10 October 1956, p. 31. 62 Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, p. 35. 63 Hennessy, The Secret State, p. 2. 64 Rosanna Farbøl, ‘Commemoration of a cold war: the politics of history and heritage at Cold War memory sites in Denmark’, Cold War History, 15:4 (2015), 473. 65 Vinen, National Service, p. 286. 66 Gordon Lee, The Half-​ Forgotten Army:  The British Forces in Germany (London, 1971), p. 1. 67 Derek Halley, The Iron Claw: A Conscript’s Tale (Angus, 1998), p. 9. 68 Fussell, Wartime, pp. 267–​8. 69 ‘Harry still campaigning to get country to salute Korean veterans 50 years on’, The Star (Sheffield), 2 July 2003. 70 IWM, Docs. 19562, papers of Russell Frederick Edwards, unpublished memoir, May 2008, p. 50. 71 Perrins, ‘A Pretty Rough Do Altogether’, p 337. 72 S.G. Buss, ‘The forgotten war’, in Reuben Holroyd (ed.), Poetry of the Korean War (Halifax, 2003), p. 74. 73 NAM, 2000–​11–​41, dedication of BKVA memorial, Staffordshire, 27 July 2000 [VHS]. 74 Korvet’s publications included: Larby, Signals to the Right; Ed Evanhoe, Dark Moon (Leamington Spa, 1995); John Martin, K-​Force:  To the Sharp-​End (Leamington Spa, 1999). 75 Benjamin D. Kuebrich, ‘Keywords:  community publishing’, Community Literacy Journal, 7:1 (2012), 142. 76 Ted Stokes, ‘Batman 1951–​1954: the memoirs of a squaddie’, Morning Calm, 65 (2011), 4. 77 Including those based in Japan rather than Korea, such as Jilly McNair who began each chapter of her 2007 memoir with a brief summary of action in

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Forgetting Korea Korea as a backdrop to her work in Kure, Japan, see E.J. McNair, A British Army Nurse in the Korean War: Shadows of the Far Forgotten (Stroud, 2007). 78 Hastings, The Korean War; Anthony Farrar-​Hockley, The British Part in the Korean War. vol. I, A  Distant Obligation (London, 1990); Farrar-​Hockley, The British Part in the Korean War, Volume II. 79 Dave Brady, One of the Chosin Few:  A Royal Marine Commando’s Fight for Survival Behind Enemy Lines in Korea (Stanford Rivers, 2004), p. 186. 80 IWM, Docs. 6882, papers of J.J. Potter, summary sheet ‘Letters from Korea from 2nd/​Lt. J.J. Potter, RA.’, c. 1990. 81 Green, Captured at the Imjin River, p. 106; John Shipster, Mist on the Rice-​ Fields: A Soldier’s Story of the Burma Campaign and the Korean War (Barnsley, 2000), pp. 116–​18. 82 Colin Walker Downes, By the Skin of My Teeth:  Flying RAF Spitfires and Mustangs in World War II and USAF Sabre Jets in the Korean War (Barnsley, 2005); Hayhurst, Green Berets in Korea. 83 Davis, Tougher than Bullets, p. 21. 84 Dave Morley and Ken Worpole, The Republic of Letters: Working Class Writing and Local Publishing (London, 1982), p. 21. 85 IWM, Docs. 12723, papers of J.  Whybrow, unpublished memoir, pp. 1 and 4. 86 Ibid., p. 3. 87 Harari, The Ultimate Experience, p. 19. 88 Kinne, The Wooden Boxes, p. 15. 89 IWM, 31425, oral history interview by Peter M. Hart with Mick Geoghegan, July 2008; John Dutton, The Forgotten Punch in the Army’s Fist: Korea 1950–​ 1953. Recounting REME’s Involvement (2nd edn, Aborfield, 2007), p. 225. 90 Ron Larby, ‘In the beginning: branch formation histories –​Herts and District Branch’, Morning Calm, 60 (2009), 15. 91 Brian Burt, ‘In the beginning:  branch formation histories:  Wessex Branch’, Morning Calm, 60 (2009), 15. 92 Dutton, The Forgotten Punch in the Army’s Fist, p. 225. 93 Jacqueline Reditt, ‘Gloucester’s veterans return to site of Korean glory’, The Times, 23 April 1981, p. 6; Anthony Farrar-​Hockley, ‘No, it was worth it’, The Times, 8 July 2003, p. 5. 94 NAM, 8905–​167–​1, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer, Henry Tyler, 14 April 1989. 95 Roy Horn, ‘Korea revisit April 2010’, Morning Calm, 61 (2010), 10. 96 Anthony Farrar-​ Hockley in Korean Veteran Association, International Reunion Programme, July 1999, p. 2. 97 The event raised over £20,000. Venetia van Kuffeler, ‘Korean auction at Sotheby’s’, Diplomat, November 2010. 98 Paul Wadey (ed.), Charity Auction:  The Sixtieth Anniversary of the Korean War in Honour of the British Veterans of the Korean War (London, 2010), p. 5.

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The Korean War in Britain 99 Ibid., p. 9. 100 Alan Guy, ‘The Royal Horticultural Show’, Morning Calm, 67 (2012), 3. 101 BKVA, ‘Samsung /​Royal British Legion /​British Korean Veterans Association Scholarship’. British Korean Veterans Association. 2006. www. bkva.co.uk/​samsung.htm (accessed 4 February 2014). 102 ‘May they live in our memories’, Evening Star (Ipswich), 28 February 2011. 103 ‘Korean War memorial in Bathgate too difficult to find’, Scotsman, 27 April 2016, www.scotsman.com/​heritage/​people-​places/​korean-​war-​memorial-​ in-​bathgate-​too-​difficult-​to-​find-​1–​4112708 (accessed 10 April 2017). 104 BKVA, ‘Closure’, British Korean Veterans Association, 2013. www.bkva. co.uk/​closure.htm (accessed 4 February 2014). 105 Vince Courtenay, ‘The Korean War veteran: internet journal for the world’s veterans of the Korean War’, 21 December 2013, www.kvacanada.com/​ newsletterpdf/​Dec242013newsletter.pdf (accessed 4 February 2014).

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Conclusion

In an oral history project in the late 1980s, British Korean veterans were asked if British servicemen had thought that Korea was the start of a third world war. D.R. Milbery responded: ‘I don’t think they did, no, no’.1 Frank Wisby disagreed too, adding that they were nevertheless protecting ‘a bullied people who were the third biggest rice producing country in the world’ from their ‘greedy neighbours’.2 Robin Bruford-​Davies, who had joined as a regular British Army officer in 1946, said that he did not question things much at that age and that, after all, ‘everybody else had just had a war’ so it was their turn.3 Veterans could not be drawn on the point and few used the phrase ‘Third World War’ in their recollections. Yet it was a frequent question and reflected the context in which the interviews took place. From the vantage point of the very end of the Cold War, historians and commentators regarded Korea as one of the sparks that could have led to a global conflict –​safe in the knowledge that it had not. The ‘Third World War’ label did not stick: by this stage, the war was so firmly welded to its ‘forgotten war’ title, among both the veteran community and British popular culture, that there was little room for other interpretations. By the end of the twentieth century, Korea’s forgotten status had become its most enduring characteristic. Nonetheless, as this book has suggested, Korea was not always forgotten. During the war, certain episodes or characters precipitated a series of short-​lived alarms in Britain. These pockets of panic accompanied the outbreak of the war and the initial months of fighting. The opening months marked the height of interest in the war, but there were also peaks of interest when particularly prescient issues arose. Scandals around conscription, brainwashing and political loyalty brought into question fundamental mid-​century British values like citizenship, individual freedom and the shaping of the modern self. In pinpointing v 179 v

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The Korean War in Britain these specific moments in the Korean War’s social history, this book has shown how the war was a worrying episode in modern British history. Rehabilitating the war can thus help us to reappraise the social and cultural history of 1950s and 1960s Britain. Korea also gave British people new terms for understanding modern warfare and the Cold War. The war broadened British people’s definition of what constituted warfare, from the allegations of ‘germ’ warfare to the cultural obsession with mind control. An eclectic mix of groups and individuals stressed the war’s singularly violent nature and the havoc it had wrought on the Korean population, attempting to mobilise public opposition against the war, although largely without success. These newer visions of warfare merged with older assumptions, such as particular characterisations of Asian society or views on the value of active citizenship in a time of war. Coming at a time of major geopolitical reconfiguration, the social history of the Korean War thus reveals how, on an everyday level, British people saw themselves and the world around them. These social perspectives are not tangential or parallel to Cold War British history:  concerns about political communities, the limits and duties of citizenship, and the way people viewed themselves were vigorously discussed at this time. In political commentary but also in everyday life, British people debated the meaning of democracy in the Cold War world and what could be expected of the citizen under such a system and in such a fraught geopolitical situation. These questions were not simply theoretical either. National servicemen and anti-​war protestors alike were forced to consider what constituted active citizenship in the post-​1945 world. Many anxieties evoked by the war emanated from the worry that selfhood itself was susceptible to interference. Some of these concerns continued to circulate long after the war had ended: for instance, as late as 2013, in language reminiscent of 1951, journalist John Sweeney investigated claims of ‘brainwashing’ in North Korea.4 Brainwashing is still a popular way to depict a political or ideological enemy in some contemporary journalism and social media.5 The Korean War thus sparked interest in threats to individual freedom and thought, which has continued to fascinate and horrify. But anxiety was not the only response to Korea:  apathy and forgetting  were creeping in even during the war. Although the generation ‘tailor-​made for the Korean War’ knew their fair share of hardship, battle weariness and bravery, their military experience has often been overlooked. Even in the 1950s British national identity began to draw heavily upon the memory of the Second World War, with evident v 180 v

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Conclusion consequences for veterans engaged in post-​1945 military operations. Korea, like Malaya, did not tell a clear, teleological tale of good triumphing over evil, nor did it provide useful images as post-​war Britain retuned its identity in a changing world. Through telling the social history of the Korean War, the shadow of the ‘long Second World War’ is evident, even amid the novel features unique to the Korean conflict. How the Korean War became the ‘forgotten war’ of the twentieth century reveals some aspects of how societies remember, repress or recycle memories of modern war. This is not a dormant issue either. In the twenty-​first century, British politics and identity formation are persistently built on a select few images from the Second World War: of ‘standing alone’, being an underdog or rallying together through ‘communal effort’. The abiding dominance of the Second World War still shapes British social, cultural and political life today and it is vital that we continue to analyse its manifold evocations, both historically and in the contemporary world. In doing so, we should not overlook the historical specificity of conflicts like Korea, but we nevertheless need to fully confront the impact of previous wars on multiple areas of social and cultural life. In telling this social history of the war in Britain, this book has also argued that it is inaccurate to depict the civilian and the soldier as occupying separate spheres during the war. The national service army of ‘citizen-​soldiers’ and the recent memory of the Second World War, as well as more practical issues such as regular postal contact, break down the idea of separate ‘fronts’ in the social history of war. Elsewhere, the wartime history of the Daily Worker also illustrates this cross-​pollination: criticised by domestic commentators, the newspaper was nevertheless widely read by British POWs and their families and was a crucial component in the anti-​war movement. The social and cultural impact of modern warfare often transcends the neat demarcation of ‘home’ and ‘war’ fronts. Similarly, Korea shows how the categories of ‘Cold War’ and ‘post-​ war’ are not inseparable categories in modern British history. Although the Cold War never had the imaginative pull of the world wars, it proved a constant, if understated, element in British social and cultural life. The preceding chapters are a conscious attempt to bring the Cold War into British social history and to acknowledge its complicated impact on British life. Britain can and should be a focal point for Cold War history, as the pattern of short-​lived anxieties was arguably replicated across Western democracies. Britain’s story also represents an important counter-​point to US Cold War history:  although we can draw parallels between McCarthyism and the criticism levelled v 181 v

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The Korean War in Britain at Monica Felton and Hewlett Johnson, the vitriol they received was never as state-​directed or full-​scale as in the United States. Similarly, although brainwashing was acknowledged as an American term, its impact and the particular scares it caused were specific to Britain. At an everyday level, British servicemen repeatedly stressed the social differences between them and their US allies, from their hardiness to their appreciation of understatement and irony. To view British Cold War history as an addendum to US Cold War history overlooks many of these differences, which were strongly felt at the time. Cases like the Korean War in Britain show how vital it is to appreciate the wide cultural and social reach of the Cold War and its differing impact on multiple nations and communities.

Notes 1 NAM, 1989–​ 05–​ 259, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer, D.R. Milbery, c. 1989. 2 NAM, 1989–​05–​164, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer, Major Frank R. Wisby, c. 1989. 3 NAM, 1989–​05–​163, oral history interview by David Smurthwaite with Robin Bruford-​Davies, 10 February 1989. 4 BBC Panorama (prod. Howard Bradburn, aired 15 April 2013, BBC One). 5 NAM, 1989–​05–​160, oral history interview by unnamed interviewer with Jarlath Donnellan, 4 August 1988.

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Appendix

Battle experience form (1952)

1 What battle areas were you in and from what dates? 2 In action, did you experience any shortcomings in the training you received prior to going into battle? 3 What enemy tactics, and/​or enemy weapons, took you by surprise or came as something quite unexpected? 4 What general tactics were employed by the enemy? Were they orthodox by our teaching? 5 Did the enemy possess any arms or equipment to which we had no answer? 6 Were we short of any arms or equipment? 7 How did the enemy manage to compete against our air superiority? 8 What limitations, if any, did our equipment impose on our mobility? 9 Were the normal methods of intercom satisfactory under all conditions? 10 What enemy weapons had the greatest adverse morale effect upon our own troops and why? 11  Give a couple of tips which you think would help an officer of your rank when he is posted to Korea.

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Select bibliography

Archive sources National Archives ADM 1, 201 AIR 8, 40 CAB 128, 129 FO 383 PREM 11 WO 32, 208, 308

Mass Observation Archive 9–​1-​A, public opinions of the Korean War, June–​July 1950 9–​1-​B, news quota survey of public attitudes to Korean War, July 1950 9–​1-​C, news quota survey of public attitudes to Korean War, August 1950 9–​1-​D, news quota survey of public attitudes to Korean War’, October 1950 Diarists:  4037, 4535, 4580, 4726, 4749, 4791, 4889, 4957, 4965, 5073, 5074, 5075, 5447.

Imperial War Museum Papers of:  C.B.L. Barr, F.E. Carter, Russell Frederick Edwards, John H.A. Gerrard, R.S. Gill, Peter Holmes, Jim Jacobs, Thomas Nowell, John Whittaker Shaw, Julian J.  Potter, L.G.G. Smith, Michael West, V.P.C. Whitamore, J. Whybrow. Recorded oral history interviews from collection Edward Beckerley, 8 November 1987. Andrew Condron, 1 February 1987.

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Select bibliography Thomas Ashley Cunningham-​Boothe, 8 December 1999. Anthony Farrar-​Hockley, 2 April 2000. Mick Geoghegan, July 2008. Ronald Larby, 1999. George Richards, 12 July 1987. Betty Smith, 29 September 1998.

National Army Museum Papers of: Anthony John Baker, D.F. Barrett, W. Bull., Georgina Johnstone, Ron Laver, James Majury, J.G. Meade, B. St G.A. Reed M.C., John Whitehouse, Patrick J. Wye. Recorded oral history interviews from collection Robin Bruford-​Davies, 10 February 1989. Jarlath Donnellan, 4 August 1988. Georgina Johnstone, c. 2010. Sebastian ‘Sam’ Mercer, 18 July 1988. D.R. Milbery, c. 1989. Barry Smith, c. 1990. Keith Taylor, 1 September 1988. Henry Tyler, 14 April 1989. Frank R. Wisby, c. 1989.

Adjutant General’s Corps Museum Army Educational Corps Papers

BBC Written S Series R series Scripts: CMHS 23/​1/​52, B/​C GOS 6/​8/​50

Bishopsgate Institute Library Andrew Roth Papers

Bodleian Library Special Collections Clement Attlee Papers

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Select bibliography British Psychoanalytical Society John Rickman Papers

Hoover Institution Archives Malcolm Muggeridge collection

Modern Records Centre (Warwick) Trades Union Congress papers

People’s History Museum British Peace Committee, lecture notes, 1952

University of Birmingham Cadbury Special Collections Records of the Korean Mission

University of Kent Special Collections Papers of Hewlett Johnson

Wellcome Trust Collection John Bowlby Papers Royal Army Medical Corps papers

Government publications Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates HM Government, Korea:  A Summary of Developments in the Armistice Negotiations and the Prisoner of War Camps June 1951–​ May 1952 (London, 1952). Ministry of Defence, Treatment of British Prisoners of War in Korea (London, 1955).

Select newspapers and periodicals Army Education: The Journal of the Army Educational Corps Bureau of Current Affairs

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Select bibliography Daily Express Daily Mail Daily Telegraph Daily Worker Manchester Guardian Morning Calm Observer Picture Post Punch The Sketch Sunday Times The Times Yorkshire Post and Leeds Mercury

Contemporary academic articles, published books and memoirs Anon., ‘British Commonwealth naval operations during the Korean War—​part VII’, RUSI Journal, 99:593 (1954), 102–​12. Bevan, Aneurin, In Place of Fear (Weybridge, repub. 2008; orig. edn, 1952). Biderman, Albert, ‘Image of “brainwashing” ’, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 26:4 (1962), 547–​63. Biderman, Albert D., March to Calumny:  The Story of American POWs in the Korean War (New York, 1963). Blake, George, No Other Choice: An Autobiography (London, 1990). Brady, Dave, One of the Chosin Few:  A Royal Marine Commando’s Fight for Survival Behind Enemy Lines in Korea (Stanford Rivers, 2004). Britain-​China Friendship Association, Seventh Annual Report, 1956:  Annual General Meeting (London, 1957). Cameron, James, Point of Departure: An Experiment in Biography (London, 1967; 2006 edn). Condron, Andrew M., Richard G. Corden and Larance V. Sullivan, Thinking Soldiers: By Men Who Fought in Korea (Peking, 1955). Cunningham-​Boothe, Ashley, One Man’s Look at Arthritis (Leamington Spa, 1993). Cutforth, René, Korean Reporter (London, 1952). Davies, Norman, Red Winds from the North (Knebworth, 1999). Davies, Stanley James, In Spite of Dungeons:  The Experiences as a Prisoner-​of-​ War in North Korea of the Chaplain to the First Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment (Stroud, 1992). Davis, Harold (with Paul Smith), Tougher than Bullets: The Heroic Tale of a Black Watch Survivor of the Korean War (Edinburgh and London, 2012). Directorate of Army Education, The British Way and Purpose:  Consolidated Version (London, 1944).

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Select bibliography Evanhoe, Ed, Dark Moon (Leamington Spa, 1995). Farrar-​Hockley, Anthony, The Edge of the Sword (London, 1954). Felton, Monica, A Child Widow’s Story (London, 1966). Felton, Monica, I Met Rajaji (London, 1962). Felton, Monica, Korea! How to Bring the Boys Home (London, 1953). Felton, Monica, That’s Why I Went (London, 1953). Felton, Monica, What I Saw in Korea (London, 1951). Ford, Boris, The Bureau of Current Affairs 1946–​1951 (London, 1951). Green, David, Captured at the Imjin River: The Korean War Memoires of a Gloster 1950–​1953 (Barnsley, 2003). Greene, Graham, ‘Malaya:  the forgotten war’, LIFE Magazine, 30 July 1951, pp. 51–​65. Halley, Derek, The Iron Claw: A Conscript’s Tale (Angus, 1998). Hayhurst, Fred, Green Berets in Korea: The Story of 41 Independent Commando Royal Marines (Cambridge, 2001). Hollands, D.J., The Dead, the Dying and the Damned (London, 1956). Holroyd, Reuben (ed.), Poetry of the Korean War (Halifax, 2003). Hunter, Edward, Brainwashing:  The Story of the Men Who Defied It (New York, 1956). Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World Revisited (London, 1959). Johnson, Hewlett, I Appeal (London, 1952). Johnson, Hewlett, Searching for Light: An Autobiography (London, 1968). Johnson, Hewlett, The Socialist Sixth of the World (London, 1939). Kavanagh, P.J., The Perfect Stranger (Saint Paul, 1988). Kent, Simon (Max Catto), A Hill in Korea (Watford, 1954). Kinkhead, Eugene, In Every War but One (Westport, 1959). Kinne, Derek, The Wooden Boxes (London, 1955). Klugmann, James, Wall Street’s Drive to War (London, 1950). Knowles, Christine (ed.), British Prisoners of War Fund: Information and News Sheet (January 1953). Koh, Whang-​Kyung, Korea through British Eyes (London, 1952). Labour Monthly, Korea Handbook (London, 1950). Lankford, Dennis, I Defy! The Story of Lieutenant Dennis Lankford (London, 1954). Larby, Ron, Signals to the Right, Armoured Corps to the Left (Leamington Spa, 1993). Lodge, David, Ginger, You’re Barmy (London, 1962). Madge, Charles, and Tom Harrison, Mass-​Observation (London, 1937). Martin, John, K-​Force: To the Sharp-​End (Leamington Spa, 1999). McNair, E.J., A British Army Nurse in the Korean War:  Shadows of the Far Forgotten (Stroud, 2007). Meerloo, Joost A.M., Mental Seduction and Menticide: The Psychology of Thought Control and Brainwashing (London, 1957). O’Kane, Henry, O’Kane’s Korea:  A Soldier’s Tale of Three Years of Combat and Captivity in Korea 1950–​53 (Kenilworth, 1988).

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Select bibliography Packard, Vance, The Hidden Persuaders (London, 1957). Palsey, Virginia, 21 Stayed:  The Story of American GIs Who Chose Communist China, Who They Were and Why they Stayed (New York, 1955). Perrins, Anthony (ed.), ‘A Pretty Rough Do Altogether’: The Fifth Fusiliers in Korea, 1950–​1951 (Alnwick, 2004). Pollitt, Harry, Britain Arise:  22nd National Congress of the Communist Party, Political Report (London, 1952). Pritt, D.N., New Light on Korea (London, 1951). Rose, David, Off the Record:  The Life and letters of a Black Watch Officer (Staplehurst, 1996). Sargant, William, Battle for the Mind:  A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-​ Washing (London, 1957). Schein, Edgar H., ‘The Chinese indoctrination for prisoners of war: a study of attempted brainwashing’, Psychiatry, 19:2 (1956), 149–​72. Shipster, John, Mist on the Rice-​Fields: A Soldier’s Story of the Burma Campaign and the Korean War (Barnsley, 2000). Socialist Outlook, Lance Corporal Bill Tyler’s Letters from Korea (London, 1951). Stapledon, Olaf, ‘The bridge between’, in National Peace Council, Two Worlds in Focus: Studies of the Cold War (London, 1950), pp. 44–​60. Thompson, Reginald, Cry Korea (London, 1951). Walker Downes, Colin, By the Skin of My Teeth:  Flying RAF Spitfires and Mustangs in World War II and USAF Sabre Jets in the Korean War (Barnsley, 2005). West, Rebecca, The New Meaning of Treason (New York, 1964). Williams, Neville, A Conscript in Korea (Barnsley, 2009). Winnington, Alan, I Saw the Truth in Korea (London, 1950). Women’s International Democratic Federation, Korea: We Accuse! Report of the Commission of the Women’s International Democratic Federation in Korea (Berlin, 1951).

Published secondary sources Aldrich, Richard J., The Hidden Hand:  Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (Woodstock and New York, 2002). Allport, Allan, Demobbed:  Coming Home after the Second World War (New Haven and London, 2009). Andrew, Christopher, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London, 2009). Arthur, Max, Forgotten Voices of the Great War (London, 2003). Balmer, Brian, Britain and Biological Warfare: Expert Advice and Science Policy, 1930–​1965 (Basingstoke and New York, 2001). Barnes, Robert, ‘Between the blocs:  India, the United Nations, and ending the Korean War’, Journal of Korean Studies, 18:2 (2013), 263–​86.

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Select bibliography Barnes, Robert, ‘Branding an aggressor: the Commonwealth, the United Nations and Chinese intervention in the Korean War, November 1950–​January 1951’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 33:2 (2010), 231–​53. Baudrillard, Jean (trans. Paul Patton), The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (Bloomington, 1995). Bickers, Robert, Britain in China (Manchester, 1999). Bickers, Robert, and Jonathan J. Howlett (eds), Britain and China, 1840–​ 1970: Empire, Finance and War (Abingdon and New York, 2016). Black, Lawrence, ‘ “The bitterest enemies of Communism”: Labour revisionists, Atlanticism and the Cold War’, Contemporary British History, 15:3 (2001), 26–​62. Bourke, Joanna, Fear: A Cultural History (London, 2006). Bourke, Joanna, ‘New military history’, in Mathew Hughes and William J. Philpott (eds), Palgrave Advances in Modern Military History (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 258–​80. Broad, Roger, Conscription in Britain 1939–​ 1964:  The Militarisation of a Generation (London and New York, 2006). Buchanan, Tom, ‘The courage of Galileo: Joseph Needham and the “germ warfare” allegations in the Korean War’, History, 86:284 (2001), 503–​22. Buchanan, Tom, East Wind: China and the British Left, 1925–​1976 (Oxford, 2012). Butler, John, The Red Dean of Canterbury: The Public and Private Faces of Hewlett Johnson (London, 2011). Buzo, Adrian, The Making of Modern Korea (London and New York, 2002). Callaghan, John, ‘The Cold War and the march of capitalism, socialism and democracy’, Contemporary British History, 15:3 (2001), 1–​25. Callaghan, John, Cold War, Crisis and Conflict:  the CPGB, 1951–​ 1968 (London, 2003). Campsie, Alexandre, ‘Mass Observation, left intellectuals and the politics of everyday life’, English Historical Review, 131:548 (2016), 92–​121. Carruthers, Susan, Cold War Captives: Imprisonment, Escape and Brainwashing (Berkeley, 2009). Carruthers, Susan L., ‘Redeeming the captives: Hollywood and the brainwashing of America’s prisoners of war in Korea’, Film History, 10:3 (1998), 275–​94. Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War:  The Making of the Sino-​American Confrontation (New York, 1994). Clapson, Mark ‘The rise and fall of Monica Felton, British town planner and peace activist, 1930s to 1950s’, Planning Perspectives, 30:2 (2015), 211–​29. Connerton, Paul, ‘Seven types of forgetting’, Memory Studies, 1:1 (2008), 59–​71. Cooper, George, Fight, Dig and Live:  The Royal Engineers in the Korean War (Barnsley, 2011). Cumings, Bruce, The Korean War: A History (New York, 2011). Cumings, Bruce, War and Television (London and New York, 1992).

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Select bibliography Cunningham, Cyril, No Mercy, No Leniency: Communist Mistreatment of British and Allied Prisoners of War in Korea (Barnsley, 2000). Cunningham-​Boothe, Ashley, and Peter Farrar (eds), British Forces in the Korean War (Leamington Spa, 1988). Dawson, Graham, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London and New York, 1994). Dockrill, Michael L., and Michael F. Hopkins, The Cold War, Second Edition (Basingstoke, 2006). Dower, John, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (London and Boston, 1986). Downes, Alexander, Targeting Civilians in War (Ithaca and London, 2008). Doyle, Robert C., Voices from Captivity: Interpreting the American POW Narrative (Lawrence, 1994). Driver, Christopher, The Disarmers: A Study in Protest (London, 1964). Dunne, Matthew W., A Cold War State of Mind:  Brainwashing and Post-​War American Society (Amherst and Boston, 2013). Dutton, John, The Forgotten Punch in the Army’s Fist: Korea 1950–​1953, Recounting REME’s Involvement (2nd edn, Aborfield, 2007). Edgerton, David, Warfare State: Britain 1920–​1970 (New York, 2006). Edkins, Jenny, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge, 2003). Eley, Geoff, ‘Finding the people’s war: film, British collective memory, and World War II’, American Historical Review, 108:3 (2011), 818–​38. Endicott, Stephen and Edward Hagerman, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea (Bloomington, 1998). Engen, Robert, Canadians under Fire: Infantry Effectiveness in the Second World War (Montreal, 2009). Enloe, Cynthia, ‘Women after wars:  puzzles and meanings’, in Kathleen Barry (ed.), Vietnam’s Women in Transition (New York, 1996), pp. 299–​315. Farrar-​Hockley, Anthony, The British Part in the Korean War, Volume I: A Distant Obligation (London, 1990). Farrar-​Hockley, Anthony, The British Part in the Korean War, Volume II:  An Honourable Discharge (London, 1995). Flint, Colin, ‘Mobilizing civil society for the hegemonic state:  the Korean War and the construction of soldiercitizens in the United States’, in Deborah Cowen and Emily Gilbert (eds), War, Citizenship, Territory (New York and Abingdon, 2008), pp. 345–​61. Foot, Rosemary, The Wrong War:  American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950–​1953 (New York, 1985). Forty, Adrian, and Susanne Küchler (eds), The Art of Forgetting (Oxford and New York, 1999). Foster, Kevin, Fighting Fictions: War Narrative and National Identity (London and Sterling, 1999).

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Select bibliography Fox, Jo, ‘Millions like us? Accented language and the “ordinary” in British films of the Second World War’, Journal of British Studies, 45:4 (2006), 819–​45. Francis, Martin, ‘A flight from commitment? Domesticity, adventure and the masculine imaginary in Britain after the Second World War’, Gender and History, 19:1 (2007), 163–​85. French, David, Army, Empire and Cold War: The British Army and Military Policy, 1945–​1971 (Oxford, 2012). Fussell, Paul, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (New York and Oxford, 1989). Gallwey, April, ‘The rewards of using archived oral histories in research: the case of the Millennium Memory Bank’, Oral History, 41:1 (2013), 37–​50. Giddens, Anthony, Modernity and Self-​Identity:  Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge, 1991). Goscha, Christopher, and Christian Ostermann (eds), Connecting Decolonisation and the Cold War in Southeast Asia (Washington, DC, 2009). Grant, Matthew, After the Bomb:  Civil Defence and Nuclear War in Cold War Britain, 1945–​68 (New York and Basingstoke, 2010). Grant, Matthew, ‘Historicizing citizenship in post-​war Britain’, The Historical Journal, 59:4 (2016), 1187–​206. Greenwood, Sean, Britain and the Cold War (Basingstoke and New York, 2000). Greenwood, Sean, ‘ “A war we don’t want”:  another look at the British Labour Government’s commitment in Korea, 1950–​ 51’, Contemporary British History, 17:4 (2003), 1–​24. Grey, Jeffrey, The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War: An Alliance Study (Manchester and New York, 1988). Grob-​Fitzgibbon, Benjamin, Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire (Basingstoke, 2011). Halberstram, David, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (London, 2008). Harari, Yuval Noah, The Ultimate Experience:  Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture 1450–​2000 (Basingstoke and New York, 2008). Hastings, Max, The Korean War (Basingstoke, 2010). Hellbeck, Jochen, Revolution on my Mind:  Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, MA and London, 2006). Hellbeck, Jochen, ‘Working, struggling, becoming:  Stalin-​era autobiographical texts’, Russian Review, 60:3 (2001), 340–​59. Hennessey, Thomas, Britain’s Korean War:  Cold War Diplomacy, Strategy and Security 1950–​53 (Manchester, 2013). Hennessy, Peter, Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties (London, 2007). Hennessy, Peter, The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (London, 2003). Highmore, Ben, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (London and New York, 2002).

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Select bibliography Hinton, James, The Mass Observers: A History, 1937–​1949 (Oxford, 2013). Hinton, James, Nine Wartime Lives:  Mass-​Observation and the Making of the Modern Self (Oxford, 2010). Hinton, James, Protests and Visions: Peace Politics in Twentieth-​Century Britain (London, 1989). Hogg, Jonathan, British Nuclear Culture: Official and Unofficial Narratives in the Long Twentieth Century (London, 2016). Holmes, Richard, Firing Line (London, 1985). Hubble, Nick, Mass Observation and Everyday Life: Culture, History and Theory (Basingstoke, 2010). Hudson, Kate, CND  –​Now More than Ever:  The Story of a Peace Movement (London, 2005). Hughes, Celia, ‘Young Socialist men in 1960s Britain: subjectivity and sociability’, History Workshop Journal, 73:1 (2012), 170–​92. Hunt, Nigel C., Memory, War and Trauma (Cambridge and New York, 2010). Huxford, Grace, ‘The Korean War never happened: forgetting a conflict in British society and culture’, Twentieth Century British History, 27:2 (2016), 195–​219. Huxford, Grace, ‘ “Write your life!”: British prisoners of war in the Korean War (1950–​1953) and enforced life narratives’, Life Writing, 12:1 (2015), 3–​23. Hynes, Samuel, The Soldier’s Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War (London, 1988). Jager, Sheila Miyoshi, Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea (London, 2013). Johnson, B.S. (ed.), All Bull: The National Servicemen (London, 1973). Jones, Matthew, After Hiroshima: The United States, Race and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945–​165 (Cambridge, 2010). Keegan, John, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (London, 1991). Kim, Donggil, ‘New insights into Mao’s initial strategic consideration towards the Korean War intervention’, Cold War History, 16:3 (2016), 239–​54. King, Laura, Family Men:  Fatherhood and Masculinity in Britain, 1914–​1960 (Oxford, 2015). Knightley, Philip, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-​ Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo (London, 1975; 2000 edn). Kynaston, David, Austerity Britain, 1945–​51 (London, 2008). Kynaston, David, Family Britain, 1951–​57 (London, 2010). LaCapra, Dominick, History in Transit:  Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (New York, 2004). Landsdown, John R.P., With the Carriers in Korea: Fleet Air Arm Story, 1950–​1953 (Worcester, 1992). Langhammer, Claire, ‘Love, selfhood and authenticity in post-​ war Britain’, Cultural and Social History, 9:2 (2012), 277–​97. Lee, David, Eastward: A History of the Royal Air Force in the Far East 1945–​1972 (London, 1984).

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Select bibliography Lejeune, Philippe (eds Jeremy D. Popkin and Julie Rak; trans. Katherine Durning), On Diary (Honolulu, 2009). Lowe, Peter, ‘The frustrations of the alliance: Britain, the United States and the Korean War, 1950–​1951’, in James Cotton and Ian Neary (eds), The Korean War in History (Manchester, 1989), pp. 80–​99. Lowe, Peter, The Origins of the Korean War (London and New York, 1986). MacDonald, Callum, Britain and the Korean War (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1990). MacDonald, Callum, ‘ “Heroes behind barbed wire”:  the US, Britain and the POW issue in the Korean War’, in James Cotton and Ian Neary (eds), The Korean War in History (Manchester, 1989), pp. 135–​50. MacDonald, Callum, Korea: The War before Vietnam (Basingstoke, 1986). Mackenzie, S.P., British Prisoners of the Korean War (Oxford, 2012). Mackenzie, S.P., The Imjin and Kapyong Battles: Korea, 1951 (Bloomington, 2013). Mackenzie, S.P., ‘The individualist collaborator:  Andy Condron in Korea and China, 1950–​62’, War and Society, 30:2 (2011), 147–​65. Major, Patrick, and Rana Mitter, ‘Culture’, in Saki Dockrill and Geraint Hughes (eds), Palgrave Advances in Cold War History (London, 2006), pp. 240–​62. May, Lary (ed.), Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of the Cold War (Chicago and London, 1989). McCartney, Helen B., Citizen Soldiers: the Liverpool Territorials in the First World War (Cambridge, 2005). McVeigh, Stephen, and Nicola Cooper, ‘Introduction: men after war’, in Stephen McVeigh and Nicola Cooper (eds), Men after War (New York and Abingdon, 2013), pp. 1–​17. Miller, Char, Taylored Citizenships: State Institutions and Subjectivity (Westport and London, 2002). Miller, Peter, and Nikolas Rose, ‘The Tavistock programme: the government of subjectivity and social life’, Sociology, 22:2 (1988), 171–​92. Millett, Allan R., ‘The Korean War: a 50-​year critical historiography’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 24:1 (2001), 119–​26. Moore, Aaron William, ‘Talk about heroes: expressions of self-​mobilization and despair in Chinese war diaries, 1911–​1938’, Twentieth Century China, 34:2 (2009), 30–​54. Moore, Aaron William, Writing War:  Soldiers Record the Japanese Empire (Cambridge, MA and London, 2013). Morgan, David, ‘It Will Make a Man of You’: Notes on National Service, Masculinity and Autobiography (Manchester, 1987). Naiman, Eric, ‘On Soviet subjects and the scholars who make them’, The Russian Review, 60 (2001), 307–​15. National Army Museum, Project Korea: The British Soldier in Korea 1950–​1953 (London, 1988). Nehring, Holger, Politics of Security: British and West German Protest Movements and the early Cold War 1945–​1970 (Oxford, 2013).

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Select bibliography Noakes, Lucy, and Susan Grayzel, ‘Defending the homeland:  gendering civil defence from the First World War to the “War on Terror” ’, in Ana Carden-​ Coyne (ed.), Gender and Conflict since 1914: Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New York and Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 53–​70. Nora, Pierre, Realms of Memory:  Construction of the French Past, Volume 1 (Columbia, 1996). Oldenziel, Ruth, and Karin Zachmann (eds), Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology and European Users (Cambridge, MA, 2009). Onslow, Sue, ‘The Commonwealth and the Cold War, neutralism and non-​ alignment’, The International History Review, 37:5 (2015), 1059–​82. Orr, David R., and David Truesdale, A New Battlefield: The Royal Ulster Rifles in Korea 1950–​51 (Solihull, 2011). Paris, Michael, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850–​ 2000 (London, 2000). Pash, Melinda L., In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans who Fought the Korean War (New York and London, 2012). Plain, Gill, ‘Before the Colditz myth:  telling POW stories in post-​war British cinema’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, 7:3 (2014), 269–​82. Ra, J.Y., ‘The politics of conference: the political conference on Korea in Geneva, 26 April–​15 June 1954’, Journal of Contemporary History, 34:3 (1999), 399–​416. Rees, David, The Limited War (New York, 1964). Reilly, Joanne, Belsen: The Liberation of a Camp (London and New York, 1998). Reynolds, David. ‘Britain, the two World Wars and the problem of narrative’, The Historical Journal, 60:1 (2017), 197–​231. Ricoeur, Paul, Memory, History and Forgetting (Chicago and London, 2006). Robin, Ron, The Making of the Cold War Enemy:  Culture and Politics in the Military-​Intellectual Complex (Princeton and Oxford, 2001). Rogaski, Ruth, ‘Nature, annihilation and modernity: China’s Korean War germ-​ warfare experience reconsidered’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 61:2 (2002), 381–​415. Romero, Federico, ‘Cold War historiography at the crossroads’, Cold War History, 14:4 (2014), 685–​703. Roper, Michael, ‘Between manliness and masculinity: the “war generation” and the psychology of fear in Britain, 1914–​1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44:2 (2005), 343–​62. Rose, Nikolas, Governing the Soul:  The Shaping of the Private Self (2nd edn, London, 1999). Royle, Trevor, The Best Years of their Lives: The National Service Experience 1945–​ 63 (London, 1986). Samuel, Raphael (ed.), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity (London, 1989). Savage, Mike, Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940:  The Politics of Method (Oxford, 2010).

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Select bibliography Scott, Joan, ‘The evidence of experience’, Critical Inquiry, 17:4 (1991), 773–​97. Scott, L.V., Conscription and the Attlee Governments:  The Politics and Policy of National Service, 1945–​1951 (Oxford, 1993). Segal, Lynne, ‘Look back in anger:  men in the 50s’, in Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford (eds), Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity (London, 1988), pp. 68–​95. Shaw, Tony, British Cinema and the Cold War:  the State, Propaganda and Consensus (London and New York, 2001). Shaw, Tony, ‘The Information Research Department of the British Foreign Office and the Korean War, 1950–​53’, Journal of Contemporary History, 34:2 (1999), 263–​81. Shen, Zhihua, ‘Sino-​Soviet relations and the origins of the Korean War: Stalin’s strategic goals in the Far East’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 2:2 (2000), 44–​68. Shephard, Ben, A War of Nerves (London, 2000). Sheridan, Dorothy, ‘Writing to the archive: Mass Observation as autobiography’, Sociology, 27:12 (1993), 27–​40. Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis, 2010). Stanley, Liz, ‘The epistolarium: on theorizing letters and correspondences’, Auto/​ Biography, 12 (2004), 201–​35. Steedman, Carolyn, ‘Enforced narratives: stories of another self ’, in Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury and Penny Summerfield (eds), Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods (London, 2000), pp. 25–​39. Steedman, Carolyn, The Radical Soldier’s Tale: John Pearman, 1819–​1908 (London and New York, 1988). Stephanson, Anders, ‘Cold War degree zero’, in Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell (eds), Uncertain Empire: American History and the Idea of the Cold War (New York, 2012), pp. 19–​49. Stueck, William, Rethinking the Korean War:  A New Diplomatic and Strategic History (Princeton and Oxford, 2002). Taylor, Kathleen, Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control (Oxford, 2004). Thomas, Martin, Fight or Flight:  Britain, France and their Roads from Empire (Oxford, 2014). Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1965; 1991 edn). Thomson, Mathew, Psychological Subjects:  Identity, Culture and Health in Twentieth-​Century Britain (Oxford and New York, 2006). Todman, Dan, The Great War: Myth and Memory (London, 2005). Vinen, Richard, National Service: Conscription in Britain 1945–​1963 (London, 2014). Wayper, Leslie, Mars and Minerva: A History of Army Education (Winchester, 2004). Webster, Wendy, ‘Reconstructing boundaries: gender, war and empire in British cinema, 1945–​1950’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 23:1 (2003), 43–​57.

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Select bibliography Wells, Tom, War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam (Berkeley and London, 1994). Westad, Odd Arne, ‘Exploring histories of the Cold War: a pluralist approach’, in Joel Isaac and Duncan Bell (eds), Uncertain Empire: American History and the Idea of the Cold War (New York, 2012), pp. 51–​9. White, A.C.T., The Story of Army Education 1643–​1963 (London, 1963). Whitfield, Stephen J., The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore and London, 1996). Whiting, Allen S., China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War (Stanford, 1960). Woodward, Rachel, ‘ “Not for Queen and country or any of that shit”: reflections on citizenship and military participation in contemporary British soldier narratives’, in Deborah Cowen and Emily Gilbert (eds), War, Citizenship, Territory (New York and Abingdon, 2008), pp. 363–​84. Young, Charles S., Name, Rank, and Serial Number: Exploiting Korean War POWs at Home and Abroad (New York, 2014). Young, Charles S., ‘POWs:  the hidden reason for forgetting Korea’, in Robert Barnes (ed.), The Korean War at Sixty: New Approaches to the Study of the Korean War (Abingdon, 2012), pp. 155–​70. Young, Marilyn, ‘Korea: the post-​war war’, History Workshop Journal, 15 (2001), 112–​26.

Unpublished thesis Fensome, Jason Timothy, ‘The administrative history of national service in Britain, 1950–​1963’ (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2001).

Internet sources BKVA, ‘Samsung /​Royal British Legion /​British Korean Veterans Association Scholarship’. British Korean Veterans Association. 2006. www.bkva.co.uk/​ samsung.htm (accessed 4 February 2014). Foot, Michael, ‘Cameron (Mark) James Walter (1911–​1985)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​30892 (accessed 26 January 2017). Powles, Julia, and Enrique Chaparro, ‘How Google determined our right to be forgotten’, Guardian, 18 February 2015 www.theguardian.com/​technology/​ 2015/​feb/​18/​the-​right-​be-​forgotten-​google-​search (accessed 10 June 2015). Rose, Kenneth, ‘Brabazon, John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-​(1884–​1964)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004; online edition, January 2011), www. oxforddnb.com/​view/​article/​32018?docPos=2 (accessed 19 April 2016). Rose, Norman, ‘Robert Vansittart (1881–​1957)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004; online edition, January 2011), www.oxforddnb.com/​view/​ article/​36630?docPos=8 (accessed 19 April 2016).

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Select bibliography Film and television BBC Panorama (prod. Howard Bradburn, aired 15 April 2013, BBC One). Fawlty Towers (BBC Two, 3 October 1975). Highly Dangerous (dir. Roy Baker, 1950). A Hill in Korea (dir. Julian Amyes, Wessex Film, 1956). The Ipcress File (dir. Sidney J. Furie, Rank Organisation, 1965). Korea: The Unknown War (prod. Philip Whitehead, July 1988). The Manchurian Candidate (dir. John Frankenheimer, M.C. Productions, 1962). Return to Freedom (Pathé News, 27 April 1953). Two Ways of Life (dir. Peter Bryan, War Office, 1958). The War in Korea (prod. John Gau, January 1988). The Wooden Horse (dir. Jack Lee, Wessex Film/​British Lion/​London Film, 1950).

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Index

Note: Literary works can be found using authors’ surnames. ‘n.’ after a page reference indicates the number of a note on that page. 38th Parallel 8, 10, 31, 36 America see United States armed forces, Britain casualties 11 contribution to Korean War 2, 22n.7 experience 62–​8 passim prisoners of war see prisoners of war, British training 59–​60, 65–​6, 80–​3, 90n.16 travel to Korea 58–​9, 83 writing 3, 17–​19, 52, 54–​5 armistice see Korean War, ceasefire Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA) 16–​17, 77 Ashes, the 2, 163 Attlee, Clement (1883–​1967) 1, 9 government of 4, 12–​13, 50n.65 see also Labour Party bacteriological warfare see germ warfare battle experience forms 62–​8, 183 Battle of the Imjin River (1951) 2, 10, 74, 80, 86, 100, 136

BBC see media coverage BCFA see Britain China Friendship Association Bevan, Aneurin (1897–​1960) 4, 5, 12–​13 Bevin, Ernest (1881–​1951) 77 Blake, George (b. 1922) 101, 112, 113, 114 Brabazon (Moore-​Brabazon), John (Baron Brabazon of Tara) (1884–​1964) 44–​5 brainwashing 7, 96–​126 passim, 128, 179, 180 Britain China Friendship Association (BCFA) 21 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) see media coverage British defence policy 13–​14, 76–​7, 79, 105, 131 British empire and decolonisation decolonisation and the Korean War 11–​12, 37–​8 imperial emergencies see Malaya imperial exoticism 11, 37–​8, 58 British Korea Veterans Association (BKVA) 158, 168, 169, 170–​3

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Index Cameron, James (1911–​85) 11, 137–​8 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) 3, 15, 130, 131, 133, 144 Carne, James Power (1906–​86) 3, 98, 102, 108, 109, 110, 123n.92 Catto, Maxwell Jeffrey (1907–​92) see Kent, Simon CDC see Civil Defence Corps China armed forces 10, 67 British views of 11, 37, 44–​5, 67, 133, 134–​5 casualties 25n.52 political outlook 9–​10, 13–​14, 101–​2 Churchill, Winston (1874–​1965) 1, 34, 44 citizenship 5, 21, 179 active and passive 31, 76 Cold War and 5–​6, 73, 76–​9, 98, 128–​9, 146–​7, 150 gender and 31, 41–​2 group theories and 56, 112 soldiers and 5–​6, 73, 74–​6, 78, 89, 98 see also democracy Civil Defence Corps (CDC) 15, 42 civilians 19, 30–​51 class 33, 56, 84–​5, 86–​7 CND see Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Cold War British contribution to 4, 12–​17 British engagement with 5, 15, 157, 167, 179, 180, 181–​2 see also citizenship; Cold War Korean War and 8–​12 protest 130, 131, 150 see also opposition selfhood 16–​17, 98, 117–​18 Commonwealth 9, 25n.43

Communism British views of 40–​1, 114, 115, 129, 133, 135, 143, 146, 150 see also China; Soviet Union; Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) 21, 112, 131–​5 passim Condron, Andrew (b. 1928) 6, 100, 103, 118, 129 conscription, history of 75–​7, 78–​9, 87–​8 see also national service Cooper, Cecil (1882–​1964) 101 CPGB see Communist Party of Great Britain Cunningham, Cyril 108, 109, 110, 111 Daily Worker see media coverage Dalton, Hugh (1887–​1962) 127, 145, 148 decolonisation see British empire and decolonisation democracy 5, 41, 74 citizenship and 74, 89, 146–​7 democratic way of life 40, 78 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) see North Korea ‘empire route’ 59, 83 Empire Windrush, H.M.S. 58 experience 55–​7 passim authority and 53, 62–​8, 84 see also armed forces, Britain Falklands War 159, 163–​4 Farrar-​Hockley, Anthony Heritage (1924–​2006) 80, 110, 113, 166, 169 Far East Prisoners of War (FEPOWs) 11, 36–​7, 107 Fawlty Towers 21, 158, 165

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Index Felton, Monica (1906–​1970) 3, 21, 112, 127–​9, 144–​50 passim sacking of 127, 145–​6, 148–​9 FEPOWs see Far East Prisoners of War ‘flesh-​witnessing’ 3, 170 forgetting 3, 5, 7, 8, 75, 158, 159–​62, 168, 179, 180–​1 role of Second World War 4, 7, 22, 158, 164 see also Second World War Friedrich, Mathilda 2 gender Cold War and 116, 125n.123 masculinity 57–​8, 68, 83–​4 see also citizenship, gender and germ warfare 130, 139–​44 passim group cohesion 53, 111–​12 see also citizenship Holmes, Peter (1932–​2002) 79, 83 Holt, Vyvyan (1896–​1960) 101 Hunt, Charles 101 Hunter, Edward (1902–​78) 96, 109 Imjin River see Battle of the Imjin River India 12 Japan 8, 11, 17, 22n.24, 66–​7 see also Far East Prisoners of War Jessop, T.E. (1896–​1980) 56 Johnson, Hewlett (1874–​1966) 130, 140–​4, 149 Kavanagh, P.J. (1904–​67) 88, 89, 166 Kent, Simon (pseudonym for Max Catto), A Hill in Korea 5, 45–​6, 84, 86–​7, 164–​5 Kim Il-​sung (1948–​94) 8 Koh, Whang-​Kyung (1909–​2000) 4, 38

Koje-​do 104–​5 see also prisoners of war, UN prisoners Korean War ceasefire 10, 106, 162 chronology 8–​12 Korean casualties 10–​11, 25n.52 violence towards civilians 137–​9, 145 Labour Party 1, 13, 76, 130, 131 see also Attlee, Clement; Bevan, Aneurin; Bevin, Ernest ‘Lenient Policy’ 101–​2 life-​writing 3, 17–​18, 52 adventure 58–​9, 83–​4 Chinese 102 diaries 54, 60–​1, 71n.58, 103 Japanese 17–​18 letters 54, 60–​2 passim, 147 memoirs 80, 88, 157, 167–​9 poetry 52 questionnaires 102–​3, 121n.41 see also battle experience forms soldiers and 54–​5, 62–​64, 69n.15 Lodge, David (b. 1935) 88 ‘long Second World War’ 20, 52 see also Second World War Lord, Herbert 101 M*A*S*H 158, 165–​6, 174n.5 MacArthur, Douglas (1880–​1964) 9, 10, 130, 135–​6 British view of 34–​5, 43 Malaya 1, 26n.62, 82, 89, 181 masculinity see gender Mass Observation (MO) 2, 18, 30–​3 Korean War surveys 31–​2 selfhood, life-​writing and 33 media coverage British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 33–​4, 47n.22, 80, 107–​8 Daily Worker 103, 112, 133–​4, 138, 181

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Index media coverage (cont.) television 166 see also M*A*S*H; Fawlty Towers war correspondents 137–​9 memorials 171–​2, 173 menticide see brainwashing military history 18–​19 MO see Mass Observation Morrison, Herbert (1888–​1965) 35 Muggeridge, Malcolm (1903–​90) 1, 21 national service 2, 20, 53, 54, 73–​95 passim boredom 74, 79 ‘bull’ 79, 83, 88–​9, 91n.38 citizenship 89 see also citizenship, soldiers contribution 73–​4, 78–​9, 80 education and training 77–​8, 80–​3 humour 86 memory of 87–​90 see also class National Service Act (1947) 73, 76 Needham, Joseph (1900–​95) 130, 135, 139–​40, 144 new military history 18–​19 North Korea 1, 8–​9, 100, 104, 137–​9 novels 164–​5 see also Kent, Simon nuclear weapons 31, 35, 43–​5 passim nurses 58, 60, 84

Pollitt, Harry (1890–​1960) 131, 132, 133 see also Communist Party of Great Britain prisoners of war American 97, 136, 140 British 49n.63, 97, 99–​114 passim, 117–​18, 147–​8 Chinese administration of camps 100–​1 film and 57–​8, 115 ‘progressives’ 103–​4 repatriation 12, 104, 105–​8, 163 UN prisoners 104–​6, 163 see also Koje-​do Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps see nurses Quinlan, Thomas (1896–​1970) 101

Officer Cadet Training Unit 83 see also armed forces, Britain opposition 127–​56 passim oral history 18, 85, 137, 163–​4, 179

Radcliffe Committee 112–​14 RAEC see Royal Army Educational Corps RAF see Royal Air Force Republic of Korea (ROK) see South Korea reservists 2, 30 Revised National Service Act (1948) 73, 76 Rhee, Syngman (1875–​1965) 8, 35–​6, 105–​6 Ridgway, Matthew B. (1895–​1993) 10 Roth, Andrew (1919–​2010) 2, 105, 133 Royal Air Force 20, 29n.114 Royal Army Educational Corps (RAEC) 17, 56, 77, 90n.16 Royal Navy 20, 29n.114, 102

People’s Republic of China (PRC) see China Picasso, Pablo (1881–​1973) 138 poetry 52

Sassoon, Siegfried (1886–​1967) 52, 164 Second World War film 115, 166–​7

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Index memory of 4, 7, 30, 31, 38–​43 passim, 54, 57–​8, 61–​2, 66–​7, 85, 107, 134, 158, 161–​2, 164, 181 selfhood 3, 6, 16–​17, 23n.25, 80–​1, 98, 117, 179, 180 life-​writing and 18 ‘psy’ disciplines and 6, 62–​3, 74, 80–​2, 98, 117 soldiers and 3, 16–​17, 98 state and 62–​3 see also Cold War, selfhood Selwyn Lloyd (1904–​78) 35, 104–​5 Sillitoe, Alan (1928–​2010) 88 South Korea 1, 8–​9, 137–​9 Soviet Union 10, 15–​16, 24n.37, 24n.38 British views of 34, 40, 44–​5, 97 Spanish Civil War 132, 138, 141, 175n.46 sport and fitness 2, 59, 163 Stevenage Development Corporation 21 see also Felton, Monica Thompson, Edward Palmer (1924–​93) 55–​6, 131, 144, 160 trade unions 35, 105, 135, 140 Treatment of British POWs in Korea (MOD) 108, 112, 146, 148

United Nations (UN) 1, 9, 13–​14, 27n.79, 30 United States (USA) 15–​16 British influence over 13–​14 British views of 14, 43–​4, 48n.28, 67, 86, 97–​8, 111, 114–​15, 132, 135–​6, 182 Vansittart, Robert Gilbert (1881–​1957) 3, 44–​5, 143 veterans 167–​73, 179, see also British Korea Veterans Association Vietnam War 12, 36, 130, 138, 158, 159, 163, 165–​6, 167, 168 War Office Selection Boards 82 see also armed forces, Britain Wavell, Archibald (1883–​1950) 5, 55 Winnington, Alan (1910–​83) 103, 112 see also media coverage Women’s International Democratic Foundation (WIDF) 127, 134, 137, 145 WIDF see Women’s International Democratic Foundation

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