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EXCLUSIVE Horror of the Korean War revealed by 'forgotten' British veterans 75 years on: Bridges made from corpses, troops fighting without guns and Chinese soldiers blowing themselves up
Ken Keld is sitting in the lounge of his immaculate one-bed bungalow outside Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
Aged 91, he is a gentle and softly spoken Yorkshireman who still walks a mile a day. Given his warmth, it is hard to place him into the events he is describing.
'The shelling seemed to stop dead, you could have heard a pin drop. Within seconds they're there on top of us, we're outnumbered five to one,' he says.
'They were fanatics, they'd jump in the trenches and blow themselves up. It was hand-to-hand combat, it was practically every man for himself'.
The great grandfather-of-two is a veteran of the Korean War, a conflict which, over the course of three years, claimed the lives of 1,100 British soldiers - more than in the Falklands, Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined.
As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the war, MailOnline has tracked down Ken and two other British veterans of the war.
All in their 90s, their stories shed light on a horrific conflict seldom taught in schools and one which, despite the enormous sacrifice of ordinary British conscripts, is nicknamed the 'Forgotten War'.
Many young men who had been sent to fight were only there because of compulsory National Service; some were still teenagers.
Ken Keld, 91, is a veteran of the Korean War. He spoke to MailOnline from his home in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. He remembers how Chinese soldiers would jump in trenches and 'blow themselves up'
By the end of the war, up to three million civilians had been killed.
But historians generally view the conflict as one of the major success stories for the West in the post-War era; defending democracy and ensuring the safety of the South Korean people.
Sir Michael Caine's memories of fighting in the Korean War
Sir Michael Caine was called up to fight in the Korean War after enlisting for compulsory National Service.
He recalled his experiences in an interview with the Daily Mail in 1987.
Commenting on the tactics employed by the enemy, he told of 'attack after attack, you would find their bodies in groups of four'.
'We heard them talking and we knew they had sussed us…Our officer shouted run and by chance we ran towards the Chinese. Which is what saved us; in the dark we lost each other,' he added.
The actor, now 92, went on: 'I remember the boredom and the bull.
'I also remember the sheer naked terror of finding that I, a kid from the Elephant and Castle, actually had to go out into a paddy field, at night, while Chinese soldiers were trying to kill me.'
At the end of the Second World War, Korea – previously occupied by the Japanese – was divided along the 38th parallel, an internal border between North and South based on a circle of latitude.
Determined to bring the entire Korean peninsula under communist rule, Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea and grandfather of tyrant Kim Jon Un, invaded the South on the 25th June 1950.
With the support of the Soviet Union and later, China, whose maniac dictator Chairman Mao saw the conflict as a threat to his own security, soldiers poured over the border as a United Nations coalition of 21 countries rallied behind the South's Republic of Korea Army (ROKA).
The invaders quickly took the capital Seoul before a back-and-forth that would see both sides gain and lose territory in chaotic seesaw fashion.
By August, British naval personnel and troops were on the ground supporting the US army.
'I'd never been abroad... there was a Cockney on my ship who had never seen the sea before', says fellow 91-year-old Mike Mogridge from his home in Henley, Oxfordshire, as he recalls his eight-week journey by ship to Korea.
Peckham-born and bred, Mike had been called up for National Service by the Tower of London-based Royal Fusiliers in early 1952.
Among his fellow recruits were East End gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who Mike knew from the boxing world.
After storming out one day, the twins would go on to be dishonourably discharged from National Service.
A certain Michael Caine found himself in the same regiment as Mike, too.
In early 1953, following six weeks' training in Hong Kong and a stint at Pusan (modern day Busan) in South Korea, Mike - now aged 19 - found himself on The Hook, a strategic area near Panmunjom so named for its shape.
There, British, American, Canadian, Turkish, Thai and Republic of Korea Army (Roka) forces had been facing down the Chinese People's Volunteer Army (PVA).
Conditions were horrific. While winters plunged to -40°C, summers could hit 40C.
As the bodies of dead Chinese and allied soldiers lay on the battlefield, the rats moved in.
'When you go to sleep, it was overrun with rats', Mike, who still goes to the gym three times a week, recalls.
'At first you'd brush them off, eventually you didn't bother, they were very big rats because they were feeding off the dead bodies.'
Korea was a war fought largely at night, with fairly uneventful patrols into no-man's-land where the enemy would occasionally open up on their positions.
Days were spent dodging mortar and sniper fire, which the allies returned with devastating effect.
Artillery was the game of Brian Parritt. A 2nd Lieutenant of the 20th Field Regiment in the Royal Artillery, he had joined the Army in 1949 and passed out of Sandhurst in February 1952.
Having arrived in Korea that December, Brian was tasked with shelling enemy positions across The Hook.
Located on a back line, his artillery pummeled the Chinese with VT shells that would explode above ground and devastate units of Chinese soldiers.
Brian, now 94, was Mentioned in Despatches for his exploits on The Hook, a map of which hangs in his house.
It is stained with his own blood following a mine incident that killed three men and blew him into the air.
But Brian is keen to downplay his role in Korea.
He instead highlights his superiors, three of whom had served in the Second World War and, as luck would have it, were sent to Korea just five years after the end of the war.
'They'd tell the men, "you think this is tough, son? You should've seen Normandy"', Brian recalls.
He adds: 'There was great respect for them, there is no bull******** when you know your Sergeant Major had fought his way from El-Alamein, up through Italy and on to Monte Cassino.'
Conditions were tough, Brian admits. 'It was bloody cold. By the time you made a cup of tea and raised it to your lips, it would get stuck to them,' he said.
When a Chinese defector called Hua Hong, who had once fought against Chairman Mao's Chinese forces as a sergeant in Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalist army, was captured by allied soldiers, he revealed how a major offensive to take The Hook was being planned by the PVA.
'He knew everything, all the details of the attack, apart from the date', Brian says from an office filled with ephemera from a 37-year career in the Army.
The Chinese, who had already been practicing the attack, had tried twice in the autumn of 1952 to seize The Hook but failed after being held back first by the US Marines, then by the legendary Scots of The Black Watch.
It was during those battles where the allies witnessed the true horror of Chinese 'human waves', sent forward in their thousands to be mowed down before more elite units would follow through.
Some of those in the first waves were unarmed and, when killed, were used as corpse bridges over barbed wire by the units which followed behind.
'When the Chinese attack, they come in three waves, one to destroy, one to take and one to hold, with tremendous numerical strength, and our artillery start to shell them... They lost hundreds before they even got to us', Mike grimly remembers.
Following Hong's revelation of a third planned offensive, the allies were prepared for what was to come.
It is estimated that around 9,000 PVA shells hammered allied positions on The Hook between May 19th and 28th.
The allies returned as many in a volley of artillery which devastated the land.
Ken Keld and his comrades from the Duke of Wellington's Regiment had been sent up to the frontline to relieve the Black Watch earlier that month.
In position, he was the forward most platoon at The Hook.
'We were the ones going in first', he says.
At around 8pm on May 28, 1953, following days of shelling by the PVA and the allies, the battlefield fell silent.
In the distance, the sound of Chinese bugles rang out. That only meant one thing.
As Ken, then 19, looked up from his position, he could see wave upon wave of Chinese soldiers coming towards him.
Moments later, 'all hell broke loose'.
'There were just waves of them coming... The tanks would put on their spotlights and you could see Chinese running down hillside, so they started on them with the machine gun', he says.
'The Chinese didn't all have weapons, they picked weapons up from someone who had been killed.'
At the back of the battle, Brian was pounding the Chinese positions with artillery fire.
'It was a most intense battle', says Brian, 'the barrels of the guns were red hot.
'Someone put a damp towel over a gun and it caught fire, it was an exhilarating experience'.
As the Chinese edged closer, the fighting became more and more vicious.
Ken, while holding them off, was running out of ammunition. Within moments, the Chinese had stormed his trench.
'We were in the trenches and they were just dropping in, they're blowing themselves up and whoever's with them... our number two Bren gunner Mick Connor was just mowing 'em down until he was killed himself.'
'It was practically every man for himself, it was more or less back-to-back, covering up for your other man, it was chaos.'
Ken was pushed back into the tunnels which had been dug by the Black Watch before the Chinese ordered their surrender, promising good treatment.
Recounting what the Britons replied to the surrender demand, Ken laughs and says: 'The second word was "off".'
'We were in there when they blew the ends in, all you could hear was thumping of things, Chinese voices, all you are thinking about is how long we're going to be here, are we going to be eating rice three times a day as prisoners!'
With Ken and his comrades buried alive in the tunnel with just a Sten gun and one grenade, the Duke's outside launched a heroic counter offensive on the Chinese trenches.
By 3.30am, they had taken control of The Hook.
It was a resounding victory but one which had come at a devastating cost.
By the end of the Battle of The Hook, just 17 out of 45 men in Ken's Duke of Wellington's platoon had survived.
Among the dead was his friend from back home in Yorkshire, Dennis Smith, aged just 19, whom he points out in his 'In Memoriam' book.
Around 2,000 PVA soldiers had been killed or wounded in just seven hours of human wave attacks and suicide missions.
The Hook was a 'mess', Ken says, adding: 'We were offered a meal but there were so many bodies we didn't want it.
'The worst of all was the stench, buried, decayed, limbs and bodies. There had been so much fighting, it was like being sent to death row.'
Ken was sent to a rear position following the battle of The Hook and Mike's Royal Fusiliers - who had been at the battle but in a rear position - took over.
A month later on July 27, the truce, now known as The Korean War Armistice, was signed at Panmunjom, where the modern-day Demilitarized Zone now stands separating North and South Korea.
When news of the truce got out, Brian heard the Fusiliers in their trenches singing Vera Lynn's 'There Will Always Be an England'.
The rest of the battlefield soon joined in.
As well as the 1,100 British dead, there were 3,000 wounded, and more than 1,000 missing or taken prisoner.
For all of the horrors of Korea, the three men hold no hatred towards their former enemy.
For Ken - who in 2023 received an MBE for his work with Korean War veterans - he respects the bravery of the Chinese on the battlefield, noting that on balance they were 'good soldiers'.
For Brian, humanity shone through when, towards the end of the war, he met two Chinese soldiers in no-man's-land. They shook hands and took photos.
He says: 'Having seen the consequences of war, I believe in jaw jaw before war war".'
For a former Brigadier who spent nearly four decades in the Army, and whose service in Cyprus and Northern Ireland with the Intelligence Corps earned him an MBE and CBE respectively, it is a seismic comment.
Korea, for Brian, was a resounding success and a victory which is still appreciated by South Koreans to this day.
But it was the reception that met British soldiers on their return to Britain in 1956 that all three men struggled with.
Mike, whose TV presenter daughter Fiona McLean starred in Grange Hill and whose son later joined the Army, explained: 'When I got back my father took me for a pint at our local, I remember one of his mates asking me "where have you been?"
'I told him I'd been in Korea, and he said, "oh, did you have a nice time?" And that was that.'
Ken feels much the same about the 'forgotten' nature of Korea and the sacrifice made by ordinary Brits, many of whom were teenagers on National Service.
He says: 'We had to pay for our own memorial, £40,000. You can't understand it. We've had to fight for everything to get recognition. I was getting shot at for a quid a week.'
It is accepted among the three men that Korea became a forgotten war in part due it's sheer distance from Britain - 5,600 miles - but also thanks to a fatigue present amongst Britons so soon after the fight against Hitler.
'The appetite for more war was just not there', Mike admits.
Brian, who is the only British soldier to be awarded the Order of Civil Merit (Moran) medal by South Korea, concludes: 'You'll go round the world looking at gravestones, a lot of them young National Service boys and there's a feeling, what the hell were we doing there?
'In historical terms it is not recognised what the army did in the post-War period.
'I do feel that in this period that the British Army tried to move from Colonialism to independence. I don't feel that is recognised.
