News-Info-Alerts

Re: National POW-MIA Recognition Day

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: October 26, 2003

"Relatives Visit Korea War Graves for First Time

By Jude Sheerin, PA News, in Pusan

When Sergeant Hector Danes was reported missing presumed dead in Korea, his wife clung on to the hope that he might still be alive.

Sgt Dane, from Plymouth, was on the Imjin river with a Royal Artillery mortar battery, which was attached to the Gloucesters, when he died.

The 29-year-old was last seen alive amid the carnage of the battle, scrambling up a hill to dismantle a gun to prevent it falling into enemy hands.

His devastated wife Mary, now aged 90, believed he was being brainwashed in a PoW camp somewhere as a Marxist ’student of the truth’.

Sgt Dane’s wife was too frail to travel to Korea this week but their daughter, who was a new-born baby when he died, made the journey instead.

Valerie Peirce, 52, from Locking Stump, Warrington, was joined by her husband Ian, 60, on the emotional trip to her father’s grave in Pusan.

She said: “I’m here to see the father I never met. I was only three-weeks-old when he died and it’s the first time I’ve ever been close to him.

“I’m glad I came because I think I was uncomfortable not knowing where he was and what the surroundings were but now I’ve actually been here I’m very content that he’s well taken care of.

“I’ve said my hello and I’ve said my goodbye and he’ll always be in my thoughts.”

Paddy Kelly, from Huddersfield, died in one of the most bitterly fought battles of the entire Korean conflict – the Battle of the Hook.

It occurred on May 28, 1953, on a ridge a few miles from the west coast of Korea and began with a night-time attack by the Chinese.

Of the British regiments on the flanks of the Hook, the Duke of Wellington’s men took the brunt of the communists’ intense mortar and artillery bombardment followed by all-out infantry assault.

Paddy, a 19-year-old private with the Wellingtons, was guarding an ammunition dump that night when it blew up – he died instantly.

The teenager was one of 29 soldiers from the Wellingtons who died in the battle. The regiment incurred another 120 casualties that night.

It is estimated that the Chinese suffered 250 dead and 800 wounded. Despite their numerical superiority, the communists were so badly mauled they gave up the ridge and withdrew.

Paddy’s brother, Mick Kelly, from Fartown, West Yorkshire, can still remember the day someone came to the family home to tell them his brother was dead.

The 57-year-old decorator and father-of-four said of his trip to the cemetery in Pusan: “It’s all been very, very emotional and moving.

“I can’t describe it really. All of a sudden you get this feeling of relief.

“Relief because none of my family have been here in 50 years and it makes me feel as if my brother thinks someone has come to see him at last.”

Billy Keating was only three-years-old when the police came to his family’s home in Dublin to tell them his father, Paul, had been killed in Korea but he can vividly recall his mother, Nora, fainting from shock.

The 24-year-old gunner with the Royal Artillery was hit by a shell on June 12, 1953, just two weeks before the armistice that ended the conflict.

His widow died last year and it fell to his son Billy, now 53, to make the emotional journey to his father’s graveside.

The forklift truck driver, who lives with his wife and four children in Ballyfermoy, Dublin, said it was “fantastic” to finally see his father’s resting place.

He marked the occasion by planting an Irish tricolour beside the Union flag at the graveside.

“It’s very emotional, unbelievable,” he said. “I scattered some earth from my mother’s grave on his grave and I’ve taken some earth from his grave to put on my mother’s grave back in Dublin.

“He joined the army because there was no work at home, lots of Irish did the same.

“So I planted an Irish flag on his grave because, although he was in the British Army, he was Irish, he was always Irish in his heart.”

Allan Sumner remembers feeling an inexplicable agonising pain in his neck on the day his identical twin brother was killed in Korea.

Years after the official confirmation of Derek Sumner’s death, Allan met a comrade of his twin who told him his brother had died when he was struck in the back of the neck by a shell.

The 73-year-old from Dorking, Surrey, said: “I’m not superstitious at all but it is a strange coincidence, you do hear these things about twins.”

His 20-year-old brother was a private in the Middlesex Regiment, attached to the Gloucesters, when he died on September 15, 1951.

Derek had opted to become a regular soldier after his two-year National Service stint.

Mr Sumner recalls how the news of Derek’s death literally paralysed his brother’s wife with shock and grief.

The devastated widow, who was left to rear a two-month-old baby girl, lost the use of her legs and remained in a wheelchair for months afterwards.

Mr Sumner remembers how his sister-in-law would not answer the door to him because she found his strong resemblance to her late husband too upsetting.

Standing at his brother’s graveside, the great-grandfather said: “For 50 years you wait hoping one day that the dream will come true and it has.

“Words can’t express what it feels like to be finally reunited with my brother after all this time.

“He was not just my brother, he was a very special friend who I shared everything with and it makes me very glad and proud to be with him again.”

Ronald Sharman was an ambitious exports clerk in Manchester who was being groomed for promotion when he received his National Service call-up and was sent to Korea.

The 21-year-old private conscript with the Leicesters was killed a couple of months later on the front-line, fighting the Chinese, on November 17, 1951.

His younger brother, Thomas Sharman, who is now 73, still becomes emotional when he recalls the last time they saw each other.

The retired shipping clerk, from Knutsford, Cheshire, said he wishes that he had tried to dissuade his older brother from going.

“It’s a real, real honour to be here,” he said. “I often think: ’What would Ronald have become if he had survived?”’

He broke down as he added: “That’s a question I can’t answer, I just wish I could. The only thing I do know is that I can’t go round to his house and say, you know, ’Do you fancy a pint?’

“It just wasn’t to be and I can’t do anything about that now.

“We have photos of him but it’s not the same as being here in his presence.

“This day will stay with me forever.”

©The Scotsman"