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Curious motorists driving through a gentle valley northwest of Seoul last Wednesday would have seen an unusual sight. On a patch of cleared ground at a crossroad, local soldiers mingled with a group of frail foreign veterans and foreign troops in dark green uniforms.
Clearly, a Korean War memorial event was underway, but the flag on the banner was not that of a UN Command member state from 1950-53: It was the Irish tricolor.
Who were these men? What was going on?
Jan. 3, 1951. The U.N. line is disintegrating. Massed Chinese forces converge upon Seoul. A key corridor of advance near the village of Goyang, northeast of the capital, is a valley leading directly into Seoul.
Occupying a critical ridge guarding the valley are the Royal Ulster Rifles, or RUR, and the King's 8th Royal Irish Hussars. Though most of their personnel are Irish, from both northern and southern Ireland, these units are British regiments. The RUR hold the ground; Hussar tanks provide mobile firepower; both units are backed by Royal Artillery.
At dawn, the battle commences. The Chinese charge. Fuelled by rum, the RUR counterattack. All day, the RUR hold. Morale soars: They have withstood this feared enemy who has previously driven all before him. Soon, events will take a grimmer turn.
The overall U.N. front is collapsing; Seoul is to be abandoned. The RUR will be the last U.N. unit to disengage.
After dark, the RUR silently abandon their positions, and a long snake of men and vehicles proceed cautiously down a frozen river bed, under the noses of the unsuspecting Chinese who are occupying the ridgeline. Then ― disaster. A U.S. aircraft mistakenly drops a line of flares, silhouetting the column against the snow.
The Chinese open fire, then swarm down the hillside. The valley becomes a witch's cauldron, lit by flashes, explosions and the flames of burning vehicles.
The RUR's commander is killed in action, leading an assault through a blazing village. Over the radio, the Hussar commander reports, "It's bloody rough!" They are his last words: He, too, is killed.
The Chinese emplace an ambush under a rail bridge; desperate RUR soldiers overrun it. Firefights flare up all along the iced river as small groups try to fight out. Dawn illuminates a scene of carnage; of frozen corpses and wrecked tanks.
The RUR lost 157 men during that hideous struggle, but their day-and-night fight was not in vain: They bought time for thousands of Korean refugees to cross the frozen Han during the "January 4th exodus."
In May 1951, the RUR erected a Korean granite memorial on the battlefield they dubbed, with grim irony, "Happy Valley." But after local peasants dismantled the memorial base for construction materials and overturned the obelisk, the memorial was relocated to Northern Ireland in the 1960s. Today, refurbished, it stands outside Belfast City Hall.
In the valley, a blackthorn hedge sprouted on the memorial site. Koreans believe blackthorn keeps supernatural forces at bay; the thicket was planted by locals, a Korean historian believes, because they feared their abuse of the memorial might raise angry Irish ghosts.
Ireland did not join the U.N. force that fought for South Korea's freedom but many Irish individuals fought in the British Army, and also in Commonwealth and US units.
Last week's visit by Irish Korean War veterans, accompanied by troops of Britain's Royal Irish Regiment (the successor to the RUR), was partly enabled by recent Anglo-Irish amity, symbolized by Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Ireland in 2011. The "Happy Valley" remembrance ceremony was a joint Anglo-Irish-South Korean event.
An eerie coincidence provides a strange footnote to this tale.
Late on Saturday evening, during a reception at his residence for the veterans, Irish Ambassador Dr. Eamonn McKee was presented with a traditional blackthorn fighting stick as a gift from the Royal Irish Regiment; Irish soldiers have carried such sticks for centuries.
After most guests had departed, a few diehards were enjoying a final midnight drink with the ambassador, when the story of the blackthorn hedge at the valley memorial site came up.
Koreans are sometimes called "The Irish of the East," and it seems there are some shared superstitions. On hearing the story, McKee ― slightly startled ― noted that in Ireland, too, blackthorn is customarily believed to ward off supernatural entities.
But the ghosts of "Happy Valley" may now rest easy: a new memorial is planned for their old battlefield. And the grim irony implicit in its name no longer applies: Today's valley is a truly happy, peaceful spot.
And that is the central point. For the old soldiers who fought that savage war, the peace and prosperity of today's South Korea truly spells "mission accomplished."
Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.
