Scotland's Forgotten War BBC Scotland Investigates

Hidden in the hills near Bathgate lies a war memorial.

It's scarcely visited and falling into disrepair.

And yet, it commemorates the lives of young men,

many of them Scots, in their teens.

There were quite a few boys killed in our company.

And we used to go down and see them and, you know,

they got buried the way they were,

with their boots sticking out the bottom of the bag,

in the body bag. Still in their boots, and all their...

That's how they got buried.

GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

This forgotten war, fought halfway across the world,

was one of the biggest, most brutal conflicts of the last 100 years.

Where's Korea? You didn't know where Korea was. You soon found out.

EXPLOSION

Thousands died in a war few now remember.

When I came back home, I would never speak about the Korean War,

simply because it was so soon after the Second World War,

that if you said anything - "Och, that was nothing, son.

"What we suffered in the Second World War was..."

So you never spoke about it.

BAGPIPE MUSIC PLAYS

60 years on, the young Scots who survived Korea are now old men,

and their quest for acknowledgement of what they sacrificed

has become more urgent as their numbers dwindle.

For this generation, time is running out.

Here in Korea, the legacy of the war between North and South

is evident, yet British veterans say their sacrifice

has been largely ignored by people at home.

Yet more British soldiers were killed in Korea

than in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Falklands combined.

So why has it become the Forgotten War?

# If I knew you were coming I'd have baked a cake... #

60 years ago, Britain was a country of rationing and poverty.

It had recently emerged from the ravages of World War II,

and hadn't the stomach for another.

# Had you dropped me a letter I'd have hired a van... #

But in a distant Asian peninsula, over 60,000 British soldiers

were already embroiled in a savage conflict...

..during a harsh environment of brutal cold and searing heat.

In 1950, Communist North Korea had invaded

the American-backed and strategically crucial South.

With Russia pulling the strings of the Northern army,

and later China providing massive manpower,

America was forced to call for help from the United Nations.

The Korean War was the moment in the Cold War

when it became a hot war, and for the first and only time

in the confrontation between East and West,

the two sides actually fought against each other.

We wanted to stand shoulder-to-shoulder

with the United States, just as we did in Iraq,

and then, of course, again in Afghanistan.

'Free men will fight for freedom.'

It was very much like a war their fathers had probably fought in,

during the First World War. Soldiers found themselves

having to defend their positions with a bayonet.

'Back in England, Argyll and Sutherland reinforcements,

'complete with new type tin hats, prepare to fly to Korea.'

Among the thousands of British soldiers sent to Korea

were huge numbers of Scots infantrymen,

from the Argylls, the Black Watch

and the King's Own Scottish Borderers.

But look around the official war memorials in our towns and cities,

and the 1,090 UK troops who died in Korea don't rate a mention.

I grew up in this house in Hamilton,

all the while living next door to old Mrs McCafferty.

When I told my dad I was researching Scots in Korea,

he told me that Mrs McCafferty had lost her teenage son Danny in Korea.

She never spoke of him,

and no-one in the family really knew what happened to him.

It seems that Danny's sacrifice

has become yet another forgotten story in this forgotten war.

Danny's parents had originally come to Scotland from Ireland,

in search of a better life.

His mother had been widowed when Danny was a boy,

but most of this large, close-knit family died

without knowing what happened to their brother.

I tracked down one of Danny's few surviving relatives.

His niece, Jackie.

Well, all I know is that he was in the Royal Artillery

and that he was killed when he was 19.

He was just easy-going, you know, a very happy, happy young man.

Very light-hearted.

Erm...she didnae speak much about him,

because it was very raw for years and years.

She never spoke in company about him,

because I think it would have upset her too much,

and she always kept a photograph of him in her bedroom.

And that never moved, that never moved at all since 1952.

It stayed in her bedroom right till she died.

'Despite trying to find out what happened to him,

'Danny's brief army life and the nature of his death

'were as much a mystery to his family as the war itself.'

'Could I help them tell his story and maybe in doing so,

'discover why so few of us know anything about the Korean War?

Bill Hall, husband, father and Korean veteran.

He was working as a baker's apprentice in Midlothian

when he was conscripted and shipped 5,500 miles away.

But he was one of the lucky ones. He came home.

We were on the machine guns and I was just learning them at the time

when I was sent there. I wasnae even fully learned on that machine gun.

Then he said, "We don't want you to use machine guns.

-"We want you to use bayonets."

-Yes.

-That's First World War stuff.

Yeah, so the next thing we knew was, the sergeant came to John and I,

John was a corporal, and he said,

"C Company wants a corporal, they might want two."

He said, "Would you like to go?" And I says, "Oh, yes, I'll go."

Where else could we go?

So, anyway, we went there and it was a toss of a coin...

HE SOBS

Do you want to stop?

'For so many veterans, memories of Korea,

'far from fading with the years, have grown more intense.

'They're haunted by experiences they still haven't resolved.'

Right. It was a toss of the coin that, erm, actually,

John and I...you know, it came down, and I said, "Heads."

It came down heads, I says, "Och, I'll stay here, with C Company."

John...

'That toss of a coin meant John went to his death

'and left Bill with the lifelong guilt of a survivor.'

It's a feeling that when somebody dies there, were killed there,

and you come back and say, "Why me? Why not them?"

The Korean conflict meant conscription was extended

from 18 months to two years.

As much as 85% of the Korean fighting force

were young National Servicemen.

I had to go to Pitlochry to register.

It used to come over the wireless and be in the paper,

"Aged between so-and-so and so-and-so to go and register."

There were a lot of young guys,

I mean, I was 24, nearly 25 and, erm...

they were 18, just turned 19.

You were attacked with a lot of emotions.

I suppose excitement was one of them.

A young man, 19 years of age, the world's your oyster type of thing,

tinged with a fair degree of apprehension, too.

You didnae know what you were doing.

I mean, we virtually didnae know

the right end of the gun fae the wrong end.

16 weeks and you're away...Korea! Didnae even know where it was!

You didn't even get it at geography at school! Where was Korea?

'It's all aboard for Korea...'

A year into the conflict, in 1951,

the boy whose mum I'd known was drafted for his National Service.

Sending thousands of conscripts to war meant paperwork, and lots of it.

Form-filling, as well as fighting,

were skills at which the British Army was unsurpassed.

So, in tracking down that paperwork in Danny's official military record,

I began to see this 19-year-old not just as an image

on a faded photograph, but as a vibrant young man.

He enjoyed the cinema, dancing.

He enjoyed snooker and he read thrillers.

In terms of what he might do...

It says in terms of trying to find a role for him in the Army,

"Attitude to cooking, averse.

"Attitude to medical work, averse."

His assessment is that he's of above-average intelligence

and he was asked to list what he'd like to do in the army

and, "Number One, Tech Storeman.

"Number Two, Driver. Number Three, Signaller."

And there's a stamp, so that's clearly what he was allocated.

And in terms of personal information about his role,

this is really it,

until what's clearly the notification of his death,

which was to his mother, Mrs McCafferty, Hamilton.

And all it says is less than a year after joining, June 1952,

"Killed in action, Korea."

That's all it says, it's that stark.

Never, ever forget. Cannae get it out of my mind.

Lying beside people that were dead.

The smell of death...

It's... I get a wee bit thingummy about it,

but that's the worst.

To see your pals all killed and what have you...

no, that is the worst of it.

That was... That and how frightened you were.

# A letter to a soldier

# That I had scarcely known... #

Danny McCafferty had gone from being a sheet metal worker

in my home town to a gunner in the Royal Artillery.

'My search to find out what happened to him

'took me to London to the Regimental Archives.

'There, I discovered that every unit keeps a war diary,

'a day-to-day account of their time in action.'

-So what would Danny have been doing?

-He's recorded as a signaller.

So his role is quite specific.

What he's doing is working on radio equipment

at the forward observation post or the OP as it's known,

and he is being given data which he is sending back to the guns.

That's the inside of an observation post. That's what he's in.

If there is a target on the battlefield

that every enemy soldier wants to get, it's to get rid of the OP,

cos that means we can't control our artillery.

Whoever can see the most and can hit the most

is going to win in the artillery battle.

And Danny's in the middle of it.

And here we have, on the 18th of June...

There's his name, "Gunner McCafferty, killed."

During the shelling?

-Yeah, "Line went out."

-What does that mean?

That's the communications wire.

What's happened is, he's left the observation post,

trailing back with that wire to find where it's broken.

So he's out in the open while all these shells

are going on around him, fixing the wire.

So Danny was killed and two others were injured.

-Does it say any more?

-Yeah.

It confirmed that he's the first fatal casualty

taken by the regiment since their arrival.

-Really? Since they were in Korea?

-Yeah.

-How would they have taken a loss like that?

-Very, very personally.

Even though it was in the middle of warfare?

These are very close people.

They've spent lots of time training together, working together.

He would have known everybody around him.

He's a personal friend, not just a colleague.

If you lose a friend, you take it personally.

Danny's death was just one of tens of thousands of Allied fatalities,

and the memories of lost friends don't fade, even after six decades.

Now, fulfilling a lifetime's dream,

Bill is going back to Korea with his son David,

to see what he fought for.

It's a search for closure and a chance to lay ghosts to rest.

I'm going back to see the graves

of the boys that was killed alongside me.

That's why I'm going back.

Are you going out there not only to pay tribute to your pals

but to give yourself permission to say,

"I lived, I've had 60 great years, a wife and a family"?

I think partly that, yes.

And partly to see.

Or up there, they'll look down and say, "Well, he came back."

'Bill couldn't forget his dead friends.

'But 60 years since Danny's death, who remembered him?

'Although it was a long shot,

'I put an advertisement on the Royal Artillery Association website,

'asking if anyone remembered a young serviceman called Danny McCafferty.

'Astonishingly, it was answered, taking my search to rural England.'

-Mr Strudwick?

-Speaking.

-Hello, I'm Jackie from the BBC.

-Pleased to meet you.

-Pleased to meet you, too.

-You've had a long journey.

I'm looking forward to talking to you.

Well, thank you. Would you like to come in?

Yes, thank you very much. Thank you very much.

'Not only had Stan Strudwick served with Danny,

'but he'd taken the young Scot under his wing.'

He was a very bright guy.

In his nature and his general attitude to life.

Full of beans, always having a joke and...he was a nice boy.

I liked him a lot, we got on well.

He used to call me Struds.

'Stan then revealed the incident

'that had haunted him for a lifetime.'

You get an instinctive awareness from it happening so often.

I heard the boom, and I knew.

You've got about three to four seconds.

I heard this and I said, "Run for it!"

Danny was running, same as me, but the shell went off,

came down more or less three or four yards from him...

..and hit him in the backside and the back legs,

and just blew them away.

He said, "Struds, I've been hit!"

And I ran round, and he was laid out.

I picked him up, carried him to the First Aid post,

which was the other side of this track.

And they could see it was serious

and they called for the helicopter, which came within about ten minutes.

And I could see him going paler and paler.

We just couldn't stop the bleeding. He was...he was just blown away.

He just looked at me and he knew.

I could see the life literally draining out of him.

Still affects you to this day, doesn't it?

Tragedy wasn't reserved for the military in Korea.

As the forces from the North and South

battled for territorial control,

millions of its inhabitants suffered.

An estimated two million civilians died over the three-year-long war.

The city of Seoul bore the brunt of the devastation.

But rising from the rubble,

21st-century Seoul bears few scars from the war.

Its ten million inhabitants live freely

in a thriving cosmopolitan capital.

The past, they say, is a foreign country, and that couldn't be truer

for Bill and the other returning veterans

as they touch down in a Seoul that bears no resemblance

to the one they left.

Wow, look at that.

South Korea may be an economic powerhouse, but it's a grateful one.

Foreigners who fought for its survival are revered.

The Korean Government picks up most of the bill

for what it calls these "revisits by veterans."

When they drive through the townships,

there'll be people clapping, old veterans saluting

and so the war is remembered here.

Those who do return, and they see what's happened,

they see that South Koreans have essentially written

the 20th century's greatest national success story,

it basically justifies all their actions,

and when they return home, I think it lays a lot of their ghosts to rest.

In the national cemetery,

the scale of the South Korean losses is breathtaking.

More than 100,000 of its soldiers died.

'At the National War Museum, foreign sacrifice is also remembered.

'More than 33,000 American and 2,300 United Nations troops were killed.'

United Kingdom, United Kingdom.

'And there on a wall was the name of a boy from Hamilton.'

There's Danny. D McCafferty.

For Bill, the journey back is an opportunity to share experiences.

And a conversation with another veteran

revealed a staggering coincidence.

There was three of us manning an observation post.

There was Easton, Eastcroft and Donnellan.

That Easton, were you in B Company?

-Yeah.

-Easton was in B Company?

-Yeah.

-Rab Easton?

-That's amazing. You knew the same man?

Oh, yeah. I would like to see his grave, you know, and say...

That's where I'm going.

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old,

"and years shall not condemn them or..."

Age them.

"At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember."

To think, I had all they years and you were left here...

That's the guilt.

'As I listened to the veterans' stories, I wondered

'what Danny would have told his grandchildren, or what proud tales

'his mum, my old neighbour, might have passed on to me.

'Or would he, like many of the men on this tour, have spent

'a lifetime bottling up his memories of the war that time forgot?'

Intense, brutal, and on a massive scale.

The Chinese would infiltrate very close

and attempt to charge with what they called the human wave tactic.

A mass attack, men charging, screaming, shouting,

firing submachine guns, throwing hand grenades,

to actually just break through and overrun the position.

The Scottish regiments were pretty well represented in Korea,

they were the first battalion to land, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,

first VC of the Korean War was won posthumously

by Kenny Muir of the Argylls during the midst of a North Korean attack.

The Americans napalm-bombed the Argylls,

wiped out 70 men within seconds, he took control of the situation,

managed to get his men off the hill, but at the cost of his own life.

I can still remember it.

People coming off the hills, especially people that was burnt.

When the napalm gets on you, you cannot get it off.

It sticks to your body.

There's nothing you can do with it.

-Nothing you could do for them?

-No.

Every soldier has memories that refuse to fade.

To find the hills where he'd fought and his friends had died,

Bill and the other war veterans travelled

north of Seoul into a contemporary no man's land. 2.5 miles wide,

it cuts across the country

as a buffer zone between South Korea and the communist North.

This is where, in 1953, the war ended in an armistice

that left no side able to claim victory.

After three years of bloodshed,

the border was virtually back to where it started.

Today, the two sides continue to eye each other warily.

My search had brought me to this dangerous divide.

I was getting close to the area where Danny was killed.

This is called The Bridge Of No Return.

We've got the map references, we know exactly that Danny was killed

just over there, but frustratingly, this is as far as we can go.

Because over there is North Korea,

and this is still a frontline.

But the most moving experience for the veterans

came at the end of their visit.

The United Nations cemetery.

There's Black Watch.

On a day when the weather reflected the sombre mood, Bill's search

for the friend who'd lost his life

over the toss of a coin came to an end.

-Is this it?

-That's him. That's him.

23. Age 23.

For John Donlan, looking for the same fallen comrade as Bill,

a time for reflection.

A place like this and a day like this to find it,

I'm really pleased.

I just think, how many years did that man lose?

He could have been still enjoying life.

'My final task was to find the last resting place

'of Danny McCafferty, this young man I now knew so much about.

'The dancing, snooker-playing teenager whose mother could not bear

'to speak of his death,

'but kept his picture by her bedside for the rest of her days.'

Look at the number of flags.

It's only here that you get an idea of the scale of the loss of life.

How can it be the forgotten war?

SOMBRE HARP MUSIC PLAYS

There it is.

It's nice to do this, actually.

It's nice.

That's your boy.

'I'd never met Danny, although I'd known his mother well.

'No-one who knew him had ever been able to visit.

'No-one had ever knelt at his grave.

'He was so loved, yet I was the first person to be here.'

At that particular time, in the circumstances

we found ourselves in, we thought it was worth it. But now, on reflection,

when you become an octogenarian, you have a wee bit of history to rely on.

And I feel now, it wasn't worth it at all.

If we hadn't made the sacrifice and North Korea had taken over

the whole of South Korea, I don't think it would've stopped there.

I don't think it would have stopped. They would've tried to go further.

To tell you the truth, you never knew what you were going into,

cos, 19-year-old, you know?

Just young boys.

But I was there,

I came through it, I came home.

But a lot of the boys didn't come home.

An unpopular war in a distant land

robbed Mary McCafferty of a son,

and Danny of an old age.

Others were luckier.

'I often sit and think,

'should we have talked about it more?

'When we came back, we didn't.

'We waited too long to talk about it, but by that time,

'the Korean War was forgotten about.'

'I think it was just the fact that he was in the wrong place

'at the wrong time, but there were so many of them

'killed out there, and it's as if it never happened.'

These boys went out here to do their national service,

lost their lives, and there is nothing to show for it.

It's all about World War I and World War II,

monuments all over the place,

but where are the names of all the lads that were killed in Korea?

Our world wars are justly venerated, but history's neglect of Korea,

with its lack of a glorious victory, leads you to wonder how

current conflicts on foreign soil will be viewed six decades from now.

The Korean War has haunted veterans who lived through it.

So many young, accidental soldiers experienced horror,

but came home to indifference.

'As for those who didn't come back, the monuments tell us

'not to forget their sacrifice.

'But it seems, as far as Korea is concerned,

'that's just what we did.'

# A letter to a soldier

# That I had scarcely known

# A letter to a soldier

# With no-one of his own

# Some mail for him to open

# When others get their share

# A line to show there's someone who cares. #