The Korean War (101 page)

Chinese soldiers in one of the great network of tunnels that honeycombed the communist line from 1951 until the armistice.

British soldiers help to bring in a wounded American.

ROK and American troops on the move. Notice the age of the young Korean in the centre. He was not untypical.

Artillery in action:

UN.

Chinese.

A British doctor treats a wounded Chinese prisoner.

Behind the lines:

British conscripts of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment take a beer.

Australians take a shower.

Private William Speakman, of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, who won the Victoria Cross in November 1951.

Helicopter casevac: this was the first ‘war of the whirlybirds’ which saved the lives of so many wounded men and shot down aircrew.

‘I shall go to Korea.’ President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower on the fleeting visit which confirmed his determination to negotiate for an armistice.

Propaganda: a Chinese picture designed to show the world that UN prisoners in communist hands were enjoying good treatment. A PoW in home-made Santa Claus outfit distributes gifts.

Repatriation: the last, grotesque act of thousands of communist prisoners being shipped to Panmunjom for return to China and North Korea was to hurl away the clothing and boots with which they had been supplied by their UN captors.

THE KOREAN WAR

Max Hastings
, author of over twenty books, was born in 1945. He was a scholar at Charterhouse and University College, Oxford, before working as foreign correspondent for newspapers and BBC television, reporting from over fifty countries. He was editor of the
Daily Telegraph
for almost a decade, and then for six years edited the
Evening Standard
. He has won many awards for his journalism, particularly for his dispatches from the South Atlantic in 1982. He was knighted in 2002.