I READ with interest Michael Russell’s piece in the Sunday National on the Korean War (The folly of Westminster’s ‘me generation’, February 21).
I am surprised he made no mention of 1st Battalion the Black Watch (RHR) and the VC won by Private William Speakman; I think this must have been the battle of The Hook. To my knowledge Speakman had been in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers but had volunteered to serve in the Black Watch during the Korean War – no doubt the KOSBs took him back.
I did my national service with the Black Watch in Kenya; the battalion had been in Korea but were transferred to Kenya with the emergence of the Mau Mau. The vast majority of the battalion had been in Korea, but nobody spoke a lot about it. There was one song we all sang with gusto: “The US Marines coming up at a run, Picking up the medals that the Black Watch won, but we’re moving on, we’re getting too close to the listening post, so we’re moving on.” There were other ribald verses.
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It was rumoured that when the Black Watch troop ship arrived there were crowds on the quayside to see the famous Black Watch and were somewhat miffed to find they were white! I never saw this in print.
Footnote: I was lying on my bunk at battalion HQ in Gilgil – deep in the heart of Kenya (in late 1954) – when a wee corporal appeared and said “I’m looking for Jimmy Lynch.” When I said that was me, he said: “Harry Hannan sends his regards. I have just left him in Japan.”
Harry was one of my boyhood chums, and had joined the Royal Army Medical Corps; the last I had heard of him was that he was at the British military hospital in Cowglen, Glasgow!
When I got married Harry was my best man; we drifted apart after that when I left Dundee to take up a promotion to Peterhead. Harry became a Labour councillor in Dundee.
Jim Lynch
Edinburgh
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