Just eighteen months later we were sent to serve with The United Nations Forces to take part in the war in Korea. We had to land first of all in Japan, where we were to be kitted out and battle trained in readiness for the role, which we were to play. Whilst in Japan I had the opportunity to visit Hiroshima where the atomic bomb had been dropped in 1946. The scenes I witnessed there were absolutely horrific. There was hardly a building standing intact. I stood at the steps of the ruins of what had been a very large church, now just a shell of twisted iron in the midst of tons of rubble. I turned and saw many crippled and horribly burned and scarred bodies of men women and children, literally crawling along on the bits of limbs that remained on their torsos. They were begging for help, food, and indeed any form of assistance to make what was left of their lives in some way bearable. I could not believe that man could have inflicted this carnage on his fellow man, no matter what his race, creed, or motive. We then went on to Korea, where the Regiment served for seventeen months, during this time I was to witness even more of the horrors of war and the suffering caused to so many hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom had no choice in what was going on around them, their families and their loved ones.

During the heavy fighting that took place sixty two soldiers from my Regiment alone lost their lives, and many hundreds were wounded. I lost a lot of my comrades, many still in their teens, and some, having served in the forces for only a matter of months before losing their lives. On my return to Hong Kong from Korea on the 22nd September 1952, I married my Chinese sweetheart Nancy who I had met on the 28th November 1950. It was love at first sight. She at the time was serving as a Naval Rating in the Hong Kong Defence Forces. She had endured four years under Japanese occupation during the war, and obviously has deeply scarred in her memory the atrocities inflicted on the Chinese people of Hong Kong during that period. I went back to Korea in the April of 2002 and I climbed the hill where our first major battle took place, leaving two dead, the first of our Regiment to lose their lives, and eleven others badly wounded. One of the wounded, being my elder Brother who, luckily survived his wounds. He is one of the fortunate ones, now in his early eighties who can still enjoy life.

Those three years in the Far East taught me a lot about life and death. Things that I could never have been taught in school and things that the average person will never learn. It taught me to understand others weaknesses and necessities and to help to relieve them whenever possible. It was a very sad and traumatic time, which to this day, causes me to reflect on my beliefs and the way I was brought up as a young boy, as a chorister in the Hereford Cathedral choir, and to realize that God has given us a life that we must appreciate, and live to the full, whilst sharing love and affection with those around us, especially friends and families of those who gave their lives in the cause of freedom for others all those years ago. It also makes me very aware that people here in England who have never witnessed such horrors, should listen, and try to understand how these people have suffered, and make every effort to show love and affection and to offer help, not only to them, but to all who suffer from any kind of illness, or whose minds are scarred for whatever reason. Bill Griffiths