History writer and journalist Andrew Salmon will run a tour to one of the Korean War’s most notorious battlefields next week under a Royal Asiatic Society tour.
Salmon will guide the group around the hills that surround the Imjingang River, where the British Gloucester Regiment was wiped out holding back a Chinese assault.
The attack was part of the largest communist offensive of the war, and though the Glosters were eventually overrun, their actions blunted the assault sufficiently for U.N. forces to repel the Chinese before they could take Seoul.
The battle has since been compared to the battle of Thermopylae because of the extent to which the British regiment was outnumbered.
Two of the Glosters were awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military medal for their actions in the battle. Salmon will look at where one of them, Lt. Philip Curtis, died in actions that would later see him honored and suggest an explanation for why he acted in the way he did.
The tour will finish at Gloster Memorial Park, which was set up in the area to memorialize the unit and its actions.
Salmon has written two books on the Commonwealth soldiers’ actions during the Korean War, “Black Snow, Scorched Earth” and “To The Last Round.”
The tour will run on April 9 from 9 a.m., and reservations are required. Visit raskb.com for more information.
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paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)
