ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE - BY BOB GUESS, HIS OWN STORY OF 1 R NORFOLK, KOREA MAY 52 TO APRIL 53

The obituary for Bob Guess was in B&C 103 Dec 04. He died on 29 May 2004 aged 73. Fifty two years earlier to the day, Bob, a National Serviceman LCpl, was serving with 1 R Norfolk in Korea. On 29 May 1952 he was 2IC of the assault group of a fighting patrol lead by 2Lt Wormald. In a sharp fire-fight with the enemy, where Mr Wormald was killed, Bob was severely wounded and taken prisoner. At that time their fate was unknown to the unit and both were posted missing. It was not until Christmas 1952 that Bob was notified as a PoW. Rarely has the Norfolk Editor read anything as moving as Bob’s account. Running to 5 pages it will appear in successive issues.

It all began on the 28th of May 1952. I had been in Korea since February having joined the Bn Assault Pioneer Pl while they were in reserve. I settled in very well and after a short spell of repairing roads we went back ‘up the sharp end’.

The position we took over was a small hill, slightly to the right and forward of pt 355 ‘Kowang San’ or Mountain of the Sun, in Korean I believe, but often called the ‘Glass Mountain’ by many of the lads. We, the Assault Pioneers, were attached to the Welch Regt, who occupied 355, for a few weeks and then we moved back into a first reserve position on the reverse side of 355. It was then that the Assault Pioneers were required to furnish an officer, Mr Wormald, a NCO, myself and twelve men to spearhead a four-stage patrol, the rear sections stopping off at intervals, with us making the final assault.

It was a sunny evening, the weather had been fine and warm for some time I recall, because Johnny Byfield, Joe Lindsay and myself had been fortunate enough to go on a few swimming details to the Imjin the days previous. I remember thinking, after buttoning my olive greens for about the tenth time in as many minutes, ‘why does your bladder work overtime when you are waiting to go through the wire?’ when the order came to move out.

Our objective was to the fore of ‘Little Italy’ which lay to the left of pt 317, the once pointed hill that had been sandpapered down by constant air strikes. The twilight faded as we moved through the wire towards our target. It was very dark when we cautiously approached our objective, which we found to be unmanned. Mr Wormald reported our position, and that ‘the birds had flown’, or something similar, to ‘Sunray’. The order came back to advance to contact. We moved upwards, in single file, stopping and listening every few yards. We started to spread out in extended line, when the silence was broken by a single challenge and then the excreta really did collide with the air-conditioning.

The enemy was very close, and, it appeared to me, above and around us in an arc. I was firing in a kneeling position when two grenades exploded close to me, followed by a third, the blast knocking me over and concussing me. I regained my feet and blundered into Bill Chapman, who was wounded in the leg. I told him to stay put and I’d find John Wells, our radio operator and get him to request support and stretcher bearers. In the pitch black this proved to be impossible. The fireworks were still in full spate as I resumed a firing position. Suddenly my right leg collapsed under me. I had copped a bullet through the femur, just above the knee. Shortly after that Brian Hipperson and John Wells spoke to me and Brian bent down to make me more comfortable. He turned me onto my side, I think, but I don’t remember any more. (Brian has told me since, that another grenade exploded nearby. That must be where the ironworks in my back came from).

It was quiet when I woke up, not quite so dark, and I could see the outline of the hill, faintly, above me. As I lay there I got the idea that if I tied my legs together, I could crawl to safety. What a thought! I couldn’t grip my belt to tie it and when I tried to use my field-dressing it bowled away on the slight breeze, like an Andrex puppy’s toilet roll. Eventually some Chinese soldiers emerged from a trench in front of me and came over to where I lay. They picked me up in the ‘chair’ position with their hands under my knees and my arms. I shouted in pain and one of them administered an anaesthetic. A clout under the chin with a rifle butt!

It was daylight when I came to. I was in a semi sitting position with my back against a crawl-trench wall. My right leg was at a peculiar angle and I remember feeling strangely detached from my surroundings. A Chinese soldier appeared in front of me, with a not too friendly look on his face, pointing his burp gun at my chest. I closed my eyes for an eternity and when I opened them he had gone. Some time later, they carried Mr Wormald past me. He was unconscious and, in retrospect, I think, dead. They had removed his belt and equipment, and the waistband of his trousers was gaping at the back, which caught my foot as they went by dragging my leg sideways. One of them disentangled my foot and un-ceremoniously bundled it back to approximately the correct position.

My recollection of the next few days is rather disjointed. I was very weak from loss of blood and, I think, still concussed. I recall being moved on a stretcher with a bicycle wheel at either side, and being spoken to in English from time to time. My response on being spoken to was always the same: ‘ Am I in hospital?’ I didn’t realise at that time that the Chinese did not have hospitals as we knew them in North Korea. The ones that were called as such, were not as well equipped as our dressing stations, let alone our or the American field hospitals.

Pt 2 - in B&C 107 Dec 06

We eventually arrived at an aid station, a collection of bunkers dug into the side of a hill, staffed by a doctor and nursing orderlies. I was taken into one of the bunkers, laid on a straw covered log bench, hooked up to a saline drip and given an injection of anti-gas gangrene serum. The doctor spoke some English and he showed me the labels on the bottles. They were written in English and I think had been captured from the Americans. It was here that I had my first operation in another bunker that boasted a rexine covered flat couch, white sheets attached to three walls and a tilley lamp suspended from the log ceiling. I was placed on the couch and an orderly, with a gown over his uniform and a mask on his face, rubbed vaseline onto my face and covered my cheeks with gauze. A tea strainer with cotton wool in the bowl was produced. It was held over my face and ether dripped into it until I was anaesthetised.

I awoke in the first bunker where a candle was burning with an orderly in attendance. As I gradually became more aware of my surroundings I realised that I had another drip running and my leg was bandaged and splinted on either side. My nose felt very stiff and I pointed to it. The orderly produced a pocket mirror. I had a strip of plaster up the length of my nose, from my top lip almost to my eye. It seems the tip of my nose had been sliced through and had been hanging down, so they stuck it back. I also had a hole through my left ear, one through my cheek, and a bullet through my right shoulder which had entered my chest near my armpit. My face was freckled with dust that had been forced under the skin. Some time later, when I left the aid station, I counted the wounds that were being treated and dressed. They numbered 32.

A few days later I was loaded on to a stretcher on a cycle-wheeled frame and portered by two Chinese in a northerly direction. I can’t remember much about that journey. I must have slept a lot of the time. I do recall one of the men calling out ‘Ingua-salla-mee’ as we approached a small village. Apparently it meant ‘English soldier’ and the villagers shook their fists in my face as we passed by. I also remember having my wounds dressed under a tree, having difficulty with bodily functions lying flat on my back and being covered by a thin quilt. I had no clothes.

At one stopping place, where I stayed for a few days, I met George Empson. George came from Hull and was in the Leicestershire Regiment. George gave me a lot of moral support, helping me to feed and perform basic functions and I think he cleaned me up a bit as well. I met George again later, whilst in transit, and we eventually finished up in the same camp, which I will relate later. I was transported on again for about half a day. Out in the open air, I was wrapped in a plaster of paris hip-spiker, from the toes of my right foot up to my chest, leaving my left leg free.

My first long stay was in a North Korean farmhouse built on an elevated platform around a rectangular yard. It consisted of about ten rooms around the perimeter, plus a couple of open-ended stable-like enclosures. The walls were of wattle and daub and there were sturdy posts at the corners and at regular intervals along the walls. The eaves extended about a yard beyond these walls, making a covered walkway both around the perimeter and also around the internal yard, which was about two feet below the walkway. The roof was covered with grey tiles.

There were also a couple of small huts a little way away. The farmer and his family were still in residence, occupying about five rooms and still working their farm. The family consisted of Mum, Dad, a girl of about six or seven and a boy of five. There was also a young woman in her twenties and, occasionally, an elderly man would sit on the threshold of a doorway and smoke his pipe, but he seemed to be a visitor. There was no animosity shown towards me from the family, but they kept themselves to themselves. Once the young woman dropped a greenish tomato into my hand as she passed my doorway. Alas I didn’t get to eat it. I got an orderly to put it on a ledge in the sun and it disappeared, I think, inside the little boy! The children used to play a game in the yard. They caught a large beetle and tied a long cotton around its thorax and the other end they secured to a stick which they stuck upright in the earth. The beetle was goaded into flight, which would be in ever decreasing circles until it reached the stick buzzing angrily, whereupon the children would unwind it and, clapping their hands in glee, would goad it into flight again.

The remainder of the building housed a doctor, one or two orderlies, probably about eight PoW and the same amount of Chinese patients. Other orderlies and nursing personnel came in from elsewhere. The PoWs were kept strictly apart, their roommates being Chinese, and were forbidden to call out to each other or communicate in any way. I was put in a room occupied by a Chinese soldier named Chang Yung. My bed was a chaff filled palliasse on the rush matted earth floor and a covering blanket. I had been given some soap, a small towel, toothpaste and toothbrush.

Pt 3 - in B&C 108 Jun 07

I had been deposited here after a long journey on the back of an open lorry, travelling mostly by night, so as to avoid being spotted by aircraft. Also travelling on the lorry were a number of soldiers. If an aircraft was heard, the cry of ‘fiji lela’ would be shouted, a rifle would be fired as a warning, and the lorry would stop and the lights doused with more shouts of ‘fiji lela’ would be heard echoing out of the darkness. The ride in the truck was uncomfortable, my movement restricted by the hip-spiker cast and subjected to every jolt transferred through the frame and stiff canvas of the stretcher, and these were many, as in places dried river beds substituted for roads. One of the soldiers sensed my obvious distress and placed his pack under my neck and shoulders, taking the handles at the foot of the stretcher and absorbing some of the jolts over the rougher terrain.

When I lay on the stretcher waiting for the truck just outside a small village, the soldiers had to restrain a poppasan and young women from getting near me. Each carried one of those Korean reaping hooks and, obviously, I was the one they wanted to reap. Who knows? Perhaps they had lost loved ones and had reason to feel bitter and angry.

It was at the hospital/farm I met ‘Fingers’. He was an English speaking officer, full of the Red Flag and Mao Tse Tung, whose job it was to interrogate PoWs, which he did with great pleasure. In my case it lasted hour after hour, day after day, for many weeks. He got the name of fingers from the habit of making his hand disappear up the leg of his shorts whilst interrogating you. (I didn’t learn his name until I met George Empsom again). The format of the interrogations took a predictable pattern: name, rank, number, military strength and establishment, (of which I obviously knew nothing). Then he would drone on asking about my political beliefs, the political beliefs of my father, my mother, sister, brother, uncle, cousin, old Uncle Tom Cobblers and all. The knack in answering, was to remember the lies you had already told previously. In any case, regarding politics I told him: ’What do I know? I left England before I was old enough to vote’.

I was liberated from my ’spiker’ during my stay here and at last I could scratch the bits that had been denied me for so long! My second operation followed shortly after to remove fragments of bone still in my leg and also to combat the osteomyelitis infection that had taken hold on the still unhealed areas of my femur. The operation was carried out in a small room. I lay on a bench covered by a rubberised cloth (a groundsheet?). I watched the doctor and the surgeon scrub up outside under a lean-to straw roof, in enamel bowls with water apparently drawn from a water trough. A spinal anaesthetic was administered. I was fully conscious and felt no pain, but aware of the effort and very conscious of the scraping, chipping and crunching as the diseased bone was removed. After the op, the doctor gave me the bone fragments, which I still have.

During the ensuing days I was given penicillin injections every three or four hours, receiving in all about 140 injections. I also took about 80 M & B tablets and due to communication difficulties, swallowed them with insufficient water, resulting in blood in my urine from damaged kidneys. Fingers came by again and it was he who told me to drink plenty of water and the problem cleared. One day, Fingers brought in a PoW who I immediately recognised another Royal Norfolk by the name of Burroughs. We didn’t betray any recognition and I remember thinking, I hope his story tallies with mine, or we’re both in the compost!

My wounds were pretty well healed by now, except for my leg and the one on my shoulder. The tissues around the exit wound kept ‘granulating’ or growing outwards instead of closing the orifice. The doctor would trim it every few days with scissors and eventually it healed. My leg wound closed over and, after dusting it with sulpha powder, the Chinese put another plaster cast on, but this time, only to the top of my thigh. I was moved into one of the outside huts. It was about eight feet square, seven feet high, with a low-pitched roof, an open doorway and a paper window of about two feet square.

Pt 4 - in B&C 109 Dec 07

Within half an hour two Americans were brought in, Albert Chicckine from New Jersey and Arthur Gregory from Mt Vernon, Illinois. Both were wounded, but on the mend, although the horrific injuries Greg had received would certainly prevent him from being fit again. I suppose this would be about mid September. Time was meaningless and none of us had any idea of the date. The first time we got a date fix was the First of October. It was a special day in the Chinese calendar and we got the same food as the Chinese, sharing the best meal we had ever had in captivity. That day was of special significance to me, because it was fiancée Thelma’s birthday on that date and my Mother’s on the third.

We used to get an issue of tobacco to make ‘roll -ups’ but the supply of paper was always insufficient and old newspaper was often used. I recall asking an orderly for a piece of paper. I was in a small room on my own at the time, and he nonchalantly tore a strip from the paper window. This became a regular occurrence and I smoked that window before I was moved elsewhere! I was with Chic and Greg for quite a while and then I was off again, this time to a camp. I think it was what became known as the Mining Camp, but I’m not sure. I was only there for a few days before I was moved again, but I’d renewed my acquaintance with George Empsom.

Travelling northwards, again on the back of a truck, at an overnight stop, I met Peter Booth. Peter had been wounded in the back of the head which had rendered him blind. We struck up an immediate friendship and we stayed together until our release. (I recently learned that Peter died a couple of years ago, but he did marry and have a family). It was also here that I met Capt Phillip Greville, Australian Engineers. I’d had my plaster removed before I went to the Mining Camp and I still couldn’t walk. Phil carried me when we were shepherded to another hut and also to the lorry next day, but he did not travel with us.

The truck finally arrived at the Yalu River. We drove onto a raft-like ferry and were rowed across to Pyoktong. It was getting dark when we disembarked and we were served a bowl of noodle soup, sitting at tables under a corrugated roof. It was dark when we finally arrived at the temple-type building on the low hilltop above the town. We were settled into an annexe for a few days and moved into the larger one which housed sick and wounded PoWs, all of them Americans. The food here was much better, a vegetable stew was the usual evening meal, with a little pork in it. Breakfast was rice and beans with an occasional fried egg! The cooking was done by a Bostonian named George, assisted by a large Texas Negro named Johnny Mathis, but known generally as ’Moto’. George found me a pair of crutches and I became a bit mobile for a while, then my leg flared up and developed a sinus in the wound area. I had osteomyelitis again, and the sinus, which is like a tube that forms from the surface down to the infected area, to drain the infection. The orderlies, under the guidance of Dr Yae, packed the sinus with ribbon gauze every other day, but eventually I was operated on again. This again was done using a spinal anaesthetic on a desktop in a room in a school down the hill. A few small fragments were removed and the bone re-trimmed. To my delight it healed quite quickly. I got some practice in with my crutches and took a few steps unaided on Christmas Eve. Just below us, but not in view was Camp 5. That evening some PoWs were brought up from the camp and they sang carols. Among them was a Mexican named Dillion, who played the guitar and sang. He was very good and I understand he used to broadcast on Radio Mexico City before he joined up.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, the Chinese asked us if we would like to record a message home, on a wire recorder, to be broadcast over Radio Peking, obviously a propaganda exercise. I battled with my conscience and decided to comply. I was certain that my folks did not know that I was alive, I had written letters, but the Chinese had never intended them for posting. So here was a chance to let them know and I would face any repercussions when I returned home.

(My parents did receive my message, via a radio ham from the West Country, who forwarded it to the War Office, who in turn passed it on. The War Office had informed my parents that a broadcast from Radio Peking would take place. My parents and fiancée were invited to listen in on a very powerful receiver at a radio dealer’s in Luton. Unfortunately, the man at the WO had not allowed for the time difference between Peking and London, so the trip to the dealers was a disappointment. However, all’s well that ends well and after seven months of uncertainly, they knew I was alive. There were no repercussions !)

Pt 5 - in B&C 110 Jun 08

Christmas Day was quite a surprise, with each man in the hospital receiving a bottle of beer and a packet of tailor-mades. George had been given extra rations and the Chinese cook that cooked for the staff sent up some extras, one of the dishes being a ’Lions Head’ which is a Chinese cabbage with the leaves removed, stuffed with pork and bread, tied and then simmered in gravy. I think Doctor Yae had something to do with that. Although he believed fanatically in the New China and Mao Tse Tung, he had certain sympathies with us, though not declared. He had served with the ’Flying Tigers’ against the Japanese in China, that was where he learned to speak English.

Over to the oblique left of us was ’Boot Hill’ where so many PoWs were buried and below was the town. The weather was extremely cold, the yalu was frozen solid and lorries were seen driving across the ice. One day it looked as if the whole populace of the town had turned out on the ice, but for what reason I never knew. Another day, I walked back from the ’little house’ which was a hole in the ground screened from view, and the biting wind, by sacking. I removed my padded glove from one hand and purely out of habit blew through my fist as I mounted the steps to the doorway. I grasped the ring to open the door and my hand stuck to it. On pulling my hand away little bits of skin were left adhering to the metal.

Some Americans had been moved in to one of the outer buildings. Shortly after my 22nd birthday, 6th Jan, they, Peter and myself were taken to PoW Camp 3 ’Annexe’ (Reactionary) at Sonsadong. (The name of which I have only recently discovered). The camp consisted of half of a one-street village with the villagers still in residence in the other half. In fact, occasionally a villager would pass through our half, but we made sure we avoided them. Once, ’Bird’ (the nickname of an American called James Oliver) ran out of his billet to attend muster and bumped into a passing Korean woman. He was locked in solitary for fourteen days for attempted rape!

The billets were typical Korean houses, wattle and daub with a tiled or thatched roof, two or three rooms in line, with a small lowered ’kitchen’ at the end, containing two or three cooking pots built into a clay and stone range. We used to heat water in the pots for washing, and the flue from the fire used to meander under the earth floors of the rooms and provide a little warmth. Cleanliness was difficult but very necessary. Some of the prisoners got body lice and were seen trying to rid the seams of their clothing of them with the aid of a lighted cigarette end. I’m glad to say I never suffered from them, but I think it was touch and go! We slept direct on the rush-matted floors on blankets, two to a man, and usually fully clothed.

Our billet was the one nearest to the Koreans. As we were unloaded from the trucks and led towards the accommodation, we were watched by a group of PoWs with guards in attendance to prevent contact with us. There in the middle was George Empsom. We exchanged grins of recognition and I pointed to my leg and indicated that it was intact and working after a fashion. He gave me the thumbs up sign. We were put in our billets, six men to a room of about 9ft square, and isolated from the rest of the camp for about 24 hrs.

When we were let out we proceeded to greet the other prisoners, renew old acquaintances, and make a tour of the camp. There were only about 218 men so we gradually got to know everyone by name. One of the first I got to know was Sam Mercer, the now Honorary General Secretary of the British Korean Veterans Association.

Sam and I both had dodgy legs so we would sit and natter quite a bit. Now and again we would stump up the road together, doing a dot and carry in unison. Poor old Sam had to have his leg amputated when he returned home, but he made sure he got it home, tenacious old sod, wasn’t going to let the Chinks have anything belonging to him, not if he could help it!

The camp had no wire fences, but there were guards around the perimeter, but if any of us had escaped, where could we have gone? Geographically, I for one, and probably everyone else, perhaps with the exception of Tom Studenmyer, who was a flyer, hadn’t a clue where we were, and we would be hard pressed to pass as natives. Camp life was pretty boring and we had to try to keep ourselves amused. Some of the British lads would get a game of soccer going and the Americans organised games of softball, which is like grown up rounders. There was a guitar and later on a violin was brought in, very ably played in true hill-billy style by a diminutive American known as ‘Mousy’. I also palled up with George Hodkinson, a Royal Fusilier, later awarded the DCM. We would amuse our fellow captives, and confuse the guards, by dragging a noosed piece of rope up and down the road as if we had dogs, which would jump puddles, stop to pee etc. There were packs of cards, so card games would always be going on. There was a small library but the reading material was a bit predictable. The food was cooked by fellow prisoners, supervised by Ricky Penman, a Royal Navy photographer. Parties of men would be taken out daily to gather wood to use in the cookhouse. The menu was also quite predictable, beans for breakfast, rice with vegetable stew with a little pork thrown in was served in the evening. We also had steamed bread, which was given some days instead of rice. It had to be eaten straight away as it very quickly got stale. About once a week we had ‘Boldsa’ made from onions, peppers, vegetables and a little pork wrapped into a circle of the bread dough, crimped into a ball and steamed. It was an unwritten law among ourselves, that if anyone broke wind, he must declare it, whereupon the perpetrator of the aroma would be congratulated. We were all on the same diet and it was sneaky not to own up.

Housed in the Korean side of the village were 6 or 7 officer interrogators, the senior one nicknamed ‘Piggy’. The others also had nicknames like, ‘The Beast’, ‘Phyllis’ and ‘Ferret’. Also living in the village was the camp commandant, a little man, who used to dress in jodhpur style trousers and knee-boots. He would occasionally address the assembly at muster parade, always in Chinese. This would, in turn, be relayed in an approximation of English by the attending interpreter. If the interpreter happened to be ‘Phyllis’ the resulting speech could often be quite hilarious. Phyllis would include swearwords and colloquialisms in his narratives, obviously picked up from listening to our conversations. He always managed to get them in the wrong context and would invariably punctuate the end of his sentences with ‘no doubt’. One or two of them would be present at morning muster and would occasionally walk through the camp. We were alerted to their presence by whoever saw them. He would whistle a few bars of ‘Sparrow in the Tree Tops’ when they were sighted, which would precede them as they walked through. Occasionally we would be talked to about communism, (individually mostly) and how we, the PoWs, had been duped by the rich and wicked ‘War Barons’ of the Western World, but in the main we were left alone.

Some time in March, rumours circulated the camp hinting on Red Cross visits. We had been given large sheets of stiff paper, some grey, some white, along with flour paste, to paper the walls of our rooms. We were issued with safety razors and told on muster by ‘Phyllis’ one morning: ‘You must shaving off your ‘biskers’ and make your face clean, no doubt!’ To which the assembly murmured: ‘No doubt!’ We didn’t get a visit by the Red Cross but another rumour towards the end of that month went round the camp suggesting repatriation of the sick and wounded. This started through one of the Chinese officers letting slip to one of the wounded men that maybe very soon his wounds would be attended by his own people.

On 16 Apr 1953, the day I should have been demobbed, I, along with other sick and wounded, was put on an open truck, after being given new uniforms, and driven southwards. Four days later, I limped through the ‘Gate of Freedom’ into ‘Freedom Village’ at Panmunjon.
I was going home.

Postscript by the Norfolk Editor:
The obituary for Bob Guess was in B&C 103 Dec 04. In summary: he died on 29 May 2004 aged 73. Fifty two years earlier to the day, Bob, a National Serviceman LCpl, was serving with 1 R Norfolk in Korea. On 29 May 1952 he was 2IC of the assault group of a fighting patrol lead by 2Lt Wormald. In a sharp fire-fight with the enemy, where Mr Wormald was killed, Bob was severely wounded and taken prisoner. At that time their fate was unknown to the unit and both were posted missing. It was not until Christmas 1952 that Bob was notified as a PoW. Bob was married to Thelma for over fifty years.

In conclusion, rarely has the Norfolk Editor read anything as moving as Bob’s account.

This appeared in the print copy of B&C 106, Jun 06 and onwards

Editorial Rule
 To qualify for inclusion in the B&C there is only one rule - something described must have been said to have happened. 
The authority is the Editor, British Army Review No 114 Dec 96, `If the facts don`t fit the legend, print the legend’.

However, the rules of good taste, respect and confidentiality are always applied.

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