Graves of four fallen British soldiers identified and honored in Busan after 73 years
Published: 14 Nov. 2024, 09:00
Updated: 14 Nov. 2024, 19:45
- MICHAEL LEE
- [email protected]
BUSAN — For over seven decades, the inscriptions on the headstones of four unidentified British Army soldiers who fell during the 1950-53 Korean War read that their names were "known unto God" alone.
Buried at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan — the only graveyard in the world dedicated to troops who fought as part of a UN force — their final resting place had long remained a mystery to their families in Britain and all over the world.
But after a six-year investigation concluded with the identification of the four service members, the British Ministry of Defense held a ceremony at the cemetery on Tuesday to rededicate their graves in the presence of their surviving kin.
The four previously unknown soldiers are Cpl. William Adair and rifleman Mark Foster of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles, who were killed holding off Chinese forces at the Battle of Chaegunghyon in January 1951, and Maj. Patrick Arthur Angier and Sgt. Donald Northey of the 1st Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment, who fell holding UN defense lines at the Battle of the Imjin River in April the same year.
Tuesday's ceremony took place a day after Remembrance Day, Nov. 11, when Britain and many Commonwealth countries hold annual commemorations for their war dead, and included the traditional laying of wreaths of red poppies at the graves of the four now-identified soldiers.
In his remarks on the lawn of the cemetery, British Ambassador to South Korea Colin Crooks said the ceremony represented “an inexpressible privilege” to “add their immortal names alongside their comrades, among whom they have lain for so long, and to do full honor to their service and their memory.”
Bringing comfort to pain
Over three days from April 22 to 25, 1951, about 400 men from the Gloucestershire Regiment, also known as the Glorious Glosters, fought to defend Hill 235 against more than 27,000 men of the Chinese 63rd Army during the Battle of the Imjin River.
Although the battle was a defeat for the UN forces, the Glosters’ actions gave UN forces time to regroup and block the Chinese advance on Seoul.
Among those killed holding Hill 235, later known as Gloster Hill, was the 30-year-old Maj. Angier.
His widow Diane Angier, who died in 2013, composed a farewell poem describing his absence that was read aloud at the ceremony by his daughter Tabby Angier and her son Guy Puzey.
Her father’s death, which occurred when she was just three years old, was not discussed in her youth “because it was so devastating for the family,” according to Angier.
While noting that the rededication itself could not bring closure regarding her father’s death, Angier said, “The important thing in a hundred years’ time is that his name still stands and he is remembered in the country where he lies,” adding that she looks forward to telling her younger brother and older sister about the rededication ceremony upon her return home.
Her sentiments were echoed by Puzey, who called the identification of his grandfather’s grave a “real privilege” that gives his family “comfort that his name is recorded above his body” as well as the knowledge of where to pay their respects.
However, Puzey noted the tombstone rededication itself “doesn’t undo all the hurt” or “take away the trauma or pain of all those years of sadness” endured by Maj. Angier’s family while the whereabouts of his body remained unknown.
A senior lecturer in Scandinavian studies at the University of Edinburgh, Puzey was closely involved in the process of trying to find his grandfather’s remains by comparing burial records from the cemetery with materials kept by his family.
Having spent the past ten years writing a book based on his grandfather’s personal letters from Korea, Puzey said the final chapters of his project have taken “a very unusual turn of events” due to the identification of Maj. Angier’s grave.
“Seventy years is a long time to not know anything,” he noted.
His wife Linda, who traveled with him from Portsmouth, Britain, read the anonymously penned poem “In Your Honour” on his behalf at the ceremony.
“Freedom was the gift that you unselfishly gave, pain and death was the price that you ultimately paid,” she read.
Giving thanks
Cpl. Adair was two months shy of his 32nd birthday when he was killed while withdrawing with the 1st Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles during the Battle of Chaegunghyon.
According to Maj. J.K.H. Shaw, the “darkness of the night and considerable confusion” that marked the retreat made it impossible “to state definitely what happened to any one man.”
Cameron Adair, who traveled from Scunthorpe, Britain, to Korea as the representative of Cpl. Adair’s family, said learning about the fate of his great-grand uncle and attending the ceremony was a “surreal” and “beautiful” experience.
“We had absolutely no idea about Cpl. Adair until six or so months ago, when we were contacted by the [British] Ministry of Defense,” he said, noting that his great-grand-uncle had died childless.
However, he also said his family’s confusion had gradually given way to a “proud feeling to know that we have a relative who did so much fighting on behalf of other people in Sierra Leone, the Second World War and in the Korean War.”
Adair also joined the Northeys, Angier and Puzey in expressing thanks to British Ministry of Defense detectives Nicola Nash and Tracey Bowers for working to identify the four British soldiers.
Nash, who has cooperated with the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), the British Embassy in Seoul and the South Korean Defense Ministry’s Agency for KIA Recovery and Identification to research and identify any potential British casualties that were killed during the Korean War since 2018, said the work was not easy, but eventually gathered “clear and convincing” evidence that allowed the rededication to go forward.
Bowers, who previously worked mainly on British remains from the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars, said the focus on British soldiers in Korea is recent.
She noted that the identification process was greatly aided by the large quantity of paperwork retained by the UN cemetery and relied on burial reports, casualty files, eyewitness accounts, service records, personal letters and medical records.
Of the 1,106 British troops who died on the peninsula, some 300 remain missing and unaccounted for. Seventy-two lie unidentified in the UN cemetery in Busan.
In his tribute to the four British troops whose headstones were rededicated on Tuesday, Ambassador Crooks said, “So many of those who knew and loved them did not live to see this day. I hope it is some measure of comfort and closure to their families and descendants that this void in history has now been filled, and they now know where they rest.”
The ambassador also noted that “the ideals of freedom and democracy that could have perished in Korea in 1951 […] lived on” thanks to their sacrifice and promised that “their names will live forever more” at the UN cemetery.
BY MICHAEL LEE [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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