Here is quite an interesting look at the last day of the Korean War as remembered by a British lieutenant:

Gazing over No Man’s Land from his hilltop position, 2nd Lieutenant Brian Parritt, a Royal Artillery observation officer with the Commonwealth Division, spotted movement. Down in the valley, two Chinese soldiers were laying wire: a perfect target. Over the radio he requested a troop barrage: four guns. Word came back that he would get a battery: eight guns. Those orders were countermanded: It would be a regimental shoot, 24 guns. No, a divisional shoot 48 guns. Finally, orders confirmed a corps shoot: 250 guns. Parritt was mystified – and astounded. An express train shriek overhead heralded a hurricane of explosive.

“The whole front just disappeared in smoke,” Parritt, now a retired brigadier visiting Korea for the first time since the war, recalled Friday. “I was later told this was the last day of the war, we were going to sign [the armistice] at midnight, and this was to be a demonstration of resolve.”

Midnight. Would the truce hold? From enemy lines, came a plopping sound: mortars. Night turned into day. Flares! The Chinese were launching a celebratory display. The British responded. “All our chaps furiously disobeyed orders and sent up smoke and flares,” Parritt said. “A great shout went up, then all went quiet.” Next, from the trenches curving around the pulverized British-held hills, a song echoed through the darkness. “There’ll always be an England.”

July 28, 1953. Across the cratered peninsula, the guns lay silent. Parritt and a comrade ventured cautiously down into the valley. Suddenly, two Chinese popped out of cover. “They looked to see if we had weapons; we did the same,” said Parritt. “Then it was all smiles and shaking hands, and we took a photo.” With a start, Parritt realized that the two Chinese were the targets of his massive barrage the previous day. Neither had a scratch. “I’ve been thinking how strange war is ever since,” Parritt mused.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

The rest of the article goes on to talk about the Battle of Kapyong that has been featured here before on the ROK Drop with Hero of the Korean War Lieutenant Colonel J.R. Stone.  That battle saw the British Commonwealth Forces fight their most important battle of the Korean War.  The author of the article Andrew Salmon recently released a book about the British forces during the Korean War that is worth checking out.

A number of British Korean War veterans have returned to Korea over the past week to attend a memorial ceremony to remember the battle.  This is what the British Ambassador Martin Uden (who by the way has his own blog) had to say about the UN forces becoming involved in Korea:

Yet although UN forces did not win the war, South Korea has clearly won the peace. “Sometimes, politicians get it right,” said British Ambassador Martin Uden of the decision to defend South Korea .

I wonder if Mr. Uden thinks the same thing about the intervention in Iraq?

At the time of the Korean War the conventional wisdom was that the intervention in Korea was a mistake and no one including the leaders who got the UN forces involved and the soldiers that fought in it could have imagined that South Korea would be what it is today.  Someone in 1952 saying that South Korea would one day be a Top 10 global economy and a global leader in a number of areas would have probably been laughed out of the building.

US President Harry Truman who was responsible for the intervention in Korea was so unpopular that he didn’t even bother running for re-election in 1952 and remains the only US President less popular then George Bush when he left office.  Truman was replaced by Dwight Eisnhower who was elected on a platform of ending the war in Korea, which he did a few months after he took office with the signing of the Armistice Agreement.

So to say the politicians got it right with Korea would be about the same as saying that the politicians got it right in Iraq and how many people agree with that?