Graves of four fallen British soldiers identified and honored in Busan after 73 years

After a six-year investigation that concluded with the identification of the four service members, the British Ministry of Defense held a ceremony at the UN cemetery on Tuesday to rededicate their graves in the presence of their surviving kin.

Sgt. Donald Northey's son Michael Northey, second from right, stands in front of his father's grave at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan as a member of the Gloucestershire Regiment lays a wreath of red poppies on his rededicated headstone. His wife Linda Northey stands next to him on the right. [PARK SANG-MOON]

BUSAN — For over seven decades, the inscriptions on the headstones of four unidentified British Army soldiers who fell during the 1950-53 Korean War read that their names were "known unto God" alone.

Buried at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan — the only graveyard in the world dedicated to troops who fought as part of a UN force — their final resting place had long remained a mystery to their families in Britain and all over the world.

But after a six-year investigation concluded with the identification of the four service members, the British Ministry of Defense held a ceremony at the cemetery on Tuesday to rededicate their graves in the presence of their surviving kin.

The four previously unknown soldiers are Cpl. William Adair and rifleman Mark Foster of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles, who were killed holding off Chinese forces at the Battle of Chaegunghyon in January 1951, and Maj. Patrick Arthur Angier and Sgt. Donald Northey of the 1st Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment, who fell holding UN defense lines at the Battle of the Imjin River in April the same year.

Tuesday's ceremony took place a day after Remembrance Day, Nov. 11, when Britain and many Commonwealth countries hold annual commemorations for their war dead, and included the traditional laying of wreaths of red poppies at the graves of the four now-identified soldiers.

In his remarks on the lawn of the cemetery, British Ambassador to South Korea Colin Crooks said the ceremony represented “an inexpressible privilege” to “add their immortal names alongside their comrades, among whom they have lain for so long, and to do full honor to their service and their memory.”

Bringing comfort to pain

Over three days from April 22 to 25, 1951, about 400 men from the Gloucestershire Regiment, also known as the Glorious Glosters, fought to defend Hill 235 against more than 27,000 men of the Chinese 63rd Army during the Battle of the Imjin River.

Although the battle was a defeat for the UN forces, the Glosters’ actions gave UN forces time to regroup and block the Chinese advance on Seoul.

Among those killed holding Hill 235, later known as Gloster Hill, was the 30-year-old Maj. Angier.

His widow Diane Angier, who died in 2013, composed a farewell poem describing his absence that was read aloud at the ceremony by his daughter Tabby Angier and her son Guy Puzey.

Maj. Patrick Arthur Angier's grandson Guy Puzey, center, gives a reading at the ceremony to mark the rededication of the graves of his grandfather and three other previously unknown British soldiers at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan on Tuesday. Maj. Angier's daughter Tabby Angier stands next to him on the right. Reverend Alan Cobain, who conducted the ceremony, stands behind the pair. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Angier, who was accompanied by Puzey and other family members to Busan, described the identification of her father’s grave as “quite a shock and surprise after so long” because she “was always told that [her] father’s grave would never be found” after he was killed during the battle.

Her father’s death, which occurred when she was just three years old, was not discussed in her youth “because it was so devastating for the family,” according to Angier.

While noting that the rededication itself could not bring closure regarding her father’s death, Angier said, “The important thing in a hundred years’ time is that his name still stands and he is remembered in the country where he lies,” adding that she looks forward to telling her younger brother and older sister about the rededication ceremony upon her return home.

Her sentiments were echoed by Puzey, who called the identification of his grandfather’s grave a “real privilege” that gives his family “comfort that his name is recorded above his body” as well as the knowledge of where to pay their respects.

However, Puzey noted the tombstone rededication itself “doesn’t undo all the hurt” or “take away the trauma or pain of all those years of sadness” endured by Maj. Angier’s family while the whereabouts of his body remained unknown.

A senior lecturer in Scandinavian studies at the University of Edinburgh, Puzey was closely involved in the process of trying to find his grandfather’s remains by comparing burial records from the cemetery with materials kept by his family.

Having spent the past ten years writing a book based on his grandfather’s personal letters from Korea, Puzey said the final chapters of his project have taken “a very unusual turn of events” due to the identification of Maj. Angier’s grave.

Sgt. Donald Northey's son Michael Northey, first from right, is accompanied out from Tuesday's rededication ceremony at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan by Brig. Gen. Andy Lamb, the British defense attache in Korea, and British Ambassador to Korea Colin Crooks, second and third from right. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Michael Northey, who was two years old when his father Sgt. Northey was killed in the same battle, said he was “relieved” his father’s remains had finally been identified.

“Seventy years is a long time to not know anything,” he noted.

His wife Linda, who traveled with him from Portsmouth, Britain, read the anonymously penned poem “In Your Honour” on his behalf at the ceremony.

“Freedom was the gift that you unselfishly gave, pain and death was the price that you ultimately paid,” she read.

Giving thanks

Cpl. Adair was two months shy of his 32nd birthday when he was killed while withdrawing with the 1st Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles during the Battle of Chaegunghyon.

According to Maj. J.K.H. Shaw, the “darkness of the night and considerable confusion” that marked the retreat made it impossible “to state definitely what happened to any one man.”

Cameron Adair, who traveled from Scunthorpe, Britain, to Korea as the representative of Cpl. Adair’s family, said learning about the fate of his great-grand uncle and attending the ceremony was a “surreal” and “beautiful” experience.

“We had absolutely no idea about Cpl. Adair until six or so months ago, when we were contacted by the [British] Ministry of Defense,” he said, noting that his great-grand-uncle had died childless.

Cpt. William Adair's great-grand-nephew Cameron Adair, fourth from left, stands next to Brig. Gen. Andy Lamb, fourth from right, in front of the cenotaph at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan on Tuesday. They are flanked by members of the Royal Irish Regiment and the Gloucestershire Regiment. [PARK SANG-MOON]

According to Adair, the ceremony “brought a lot of mixed emotions to the surface” because he had never met Cpl. Adair before “coming and standing in front of his headstone, which is now immortalized in the Korean soil.”

However, he also said his family’s confusion had gradually given way to a “proud feeling to know that we have a relative who did so much fighting on behalf of other people in Sierra Leone, the Second World War and in the Korean War.”

Adair also joined the Northeys, Angier and Puzey in expressing thanks to British Ministry of Defense detectives Nicola Nash and Tracey Bowers for working to identify the four British soldiers.

Nash, who has cooperated with the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), the British Embassy in Seoul and the South Korean Defense Ministry’s Agency for KIA Recovery and Identification to research and identify any potential British casualties that were killed during the Korean War since 2018, said the work was not easy, but eventually gathered “clear and convincing” evidence that allowed the rededication to go forward.

Bowers, who previously worked mainly on British remains from the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars, said the focus on British soldiers in Korea is recent.

She noted that the identification process was greatly aided by the large quantity of paperwork retained by the UN cemetery and relied on burial reports, casualty files, eyewitness accounts, service records, personal letters and medical records.

British Ambassador to Korea Colin Crooks, third from left, presents military funeral honors for rifleman Mark Foster to British Ministry of Defense detective Nicola Nash, second from right, at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan on Tuesday. Nash said she plans to deliver the honors to Foster's surviving kin upon her return to Britain. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Some 81,084 British soldiers fought under the multinational United Nations Command to defend South Korea following the North Korean invasion that began in June 1950, making Britain the second-largest contributor of combat troops after the United States.

Of the 1,106 British troops who died on the peninsula, some 300 remain missing and unaccounted for. Seventy-two lie unidentified in the UN cemetery in Busan.

In his tribute to the four British troops whose headstones were rededicated on Tuesday, Ambassador Crooks said, “So many of those who knew and loved them did not live to see this day. I hope it is some measure of comfort and closure to their families and descendants that this void in history has now been filled, and they now know where they rest.”

The ambassador also noted that “the ideals of freedom and democracy that could have perished in Korea in 1951 […] lived on” thanks to their sacrifice and promised that “their names will live forever more” at the UN cemetery.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]