Former British POW tells little-known side of Korean War
By Byun Duk-kun
SEOUL, April 15 (Yonhap) -- "When we were captured, they (the North
Koreans) had very little food to give us," said a British veteran who
was taken prisoner in the 1950-53 Korean War and spent 32 months at a
prison camp near the Yalu River. More than five decades after he was
released from the prison camp, George Newhouse, now 85 years old,
vividly remembers being handed communist books and newspapers, with
which the North Koreans tried to indoctrinate him and other Western
prisoners of war (POWs).
"But after six months they got fed up with us refusing to do it, so they
brought what they called a lenient policy," he said in an interview with
Yonhap News Agency.
Newhouse was taken prisoner on April 23, 1951, when his British Army
medical platoon was fighting a battle near the Imjin River in what is
now South Korea's northernmost city of Paju, just south of the
inter-Korean border.
Recalling his release from the camp, Newhouse said, "Discussions for
exchanging POWs had been going on for about two years and they finally
got through and they sent a few first, the wounded and the sick, and
then the main body of us left in November 1953." The British veteran
said that he had already fought in World War II in Burma and had retired
from active service by the time the Korean War broke out, so he didn't
feel very well about being deployed to Korea.
However, he said it feels "great" to be back.
"It's fantastic what they have done since the war. We've been abroad
quite a few times and this is one of the best countries I've been into,"
he said. Newhouse and his wife Dorothy are here on a program hosted by
Seoul's Patriots and Veterans Affairs Agency and the Korea Veterans'
Association as a token of appreciation for those who fought in the
Korean War. Still, his first "official" trip back to Korea comes as
tension between the divided Koreas is heading toward its highest level
since the war's end, amid North Korea's continued nuclear ambitions.
"I think what they should do is talk before they pick up any guns. There
should be no other war," he said. "Nobody could gain anything out of a
nuclear war. There will only be world destruction if there is a nuclear
war, so all that should be forgotten." Newhouse is one of 153 Korean War
veterans from Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand visiting the
country this week. The group will also go to the United Nations Memorial
Cemetery in Busan, where 885 British soldiers are buried and honored
along with some 1,500 others who fell during the three-year Korean War.
The Newhouses just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, but they
say they are far from letting Korea out of their lives -- or South Korea
letting them out. Their 25-year-old granddaughter, Jennifer Frost, just
began a two-year program at Seoul's Yonsei University on a scholarship
hosted by the Korea Veterans' Association and the country's largest
conglomerate, Samsung.
"I was happy because she was coming to a place where I had some
relationship," said George, also remembering to thank the people here
who are "looking after the graves" of his fallen colleagues.
Yonhap News