The ‘Forgotten War’ recalled by Roy and Len

Sailor Roy Neep played a vital role in maintaining the aircraft that from dawn to dusk were catapulted into the air from the deck of carriers like HMS Glory.

Their aim was to offer support to the ground troops taking cover in bunkers on the Korean front line, including men like Canadian soldier Len Woodiwiss.

It was Len’s job to fight off the rats and fever-carrying fleas as he worked out the trajectories of fire for the big howitzer guns aimed at the enemy. It was Roy’s job to duck beneath a ‘ceiling’ of bodies in hammocks as he stumbled up onto the dark, freezing deck to check out the Sea Fury aircraft as they were loaded with 500lb bombs and armour piercing rockets.

Both men believe that the ferocious fighting that raged between 1950 and 1953 has become the Forgotten War.

“They only remembered to put up a plaque to us in St Paul’s Cathedral after deciding to put one up after the Falklands War,” sighed Roy, now aged 83.

Not that he’s bitter. After originally enlisting in the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm in 1947 he knows the training he received set him up for a globe-trotting civilian career as an aircraft engineer which led to him meeting his wife, Bobby, a former air hostess and ended in him specialising in maintaining helicopters.

“I don’t blame people for not wanting to know about Korea. We’d only just ended the Second World War and everyone was sick to death of war,” says Roy.

Len, aged 81, has a rather different story.

He grew up in Winnipeg and volunteered to serve with the lst Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery which eventually became part of the lst Commonwealth Division force.

He said: “I served in C Battery Command Post and the Observation Post with the infantry. There were 26,000 Canadians in Korea - all of us volunteers.

“Mostly I was involved with the technical side of firing the big guns but I’ll never forget the rats or the fleas as well as the extreme cold - even for a Canadian - and then we went on to spend 15 days under non-stop attack on Hill 355.

“I know our regiment fired 247,182 rounds of ammunition during that time.”

Both men were awarded medals and both support the work of the Royal British Legion and its welfare work with all ex-military personnel.

Len is still half-expecting to see a South Korean farmer wearing the hated “John Lennon” style glasses he was first issued with in 1951 and threw into a rice paddy field. He‘d first thrown them away in Canada only to have them returned to him in Korea.