Korea - Colonel Guy Wathen

·37 min·2 clips

At over 50 degrees of frost, whisky crystallised in the bottle while Centurion tanks had to be moved every two hours.

The interview opens in Korea. It sits within a season of conversations with veterans of the Korean War, and the date and place are Friday the 26th of July 2013 at Brancash Estate in Norfolk. Colonel Guy Watham leads the account. He says he was called up into the army in September 1943, joined the Coldstream Guards, was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in May 1944, and served with the 5th Battalion in Poland in 1945. When the battalion was disbanded at the end of the war, he transferred to the Interskilting Dragoon Guards and joined the regiment in Itzehoe in Schleswig Holstein in March 1946. The story keeps widening. The later material reaches Libya, where the regiment's Air Squadron is described as six Sioux American helicopters that replaced the ageing Auster light aircraft, with all six pilots coming from within the regiment. He says the squadron gave life-saving flights over the city during the riots of the Six-Day War, provided the only means of getting quickly to and from Benina Airport, and served as the regiment's air support to the army. When Henry Woods is summoned to Garrison headquarters, Watham says he organizes the defence of the camp while the perimeter is surrounded by the army, so armoured cars are placed inside the perimeter with their guns facing outwards and ammunition allowed for use on the desert ranges. Order returns. A delegation of senior Libyan officers comes to the gate, and one of them is understood to be Colonel Gaddafi, after which Henry Woods is promoted and posted home to the Ministry of Defence. Cyprus comes next. There, the squadron is tasked with keeping Greeks and Turks apart, and the families in the village of Ziggy are left exposed because they are the only British troops in Cyprus with families with them. He then turns to Blackburn. On the way from Fort Knox to Libya, he had already visited Wheaton Camp near Blackburn and imagined that the Blackburn landladies would welcome the families at the end of the summer season. His closing view is blunt. He says prison can leave many people better off than outside, calls the army an excellent and structured career that is wildly diversified, and says the armed services are well worth undertaking.

As heard by us

A Korean opening that widens into helicopters, camp defense, and the practical work of command.

Military Histories tracks Colonel Guy Watham from the first eight minutes on Korea into a wider army career, and its best quality is the steady weight of concrete detail.

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Why you'd press play

You start in Korea, then follow Colonel Guy Watham through a wider army interview.

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