Inside Michael Caine’s secret life fighting in ‘forgotten war’ which killed more Brits than Iraq & Afghanistan combined
NOT a lot of people know that Hollywood superstar Michael Caine served in Britain’s “Forgotten War” – the conflict in Korea.
In three years of fighting the Chinese on the dividing line between North and South Korea, 1,106 British soldiers were killed — more than in the Falklands, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
But hardly anyone remembers their sacrifice between 1950 and 1953.
Now, after 70 years, the brave UK troops who put their lives on the line are finally being honoured at a national commemoration in London this week.
Sir Michael was plain Maurice Micklewhite of the 1st Royal Fusiliers when he was sent to fight on the front line for his country, at age 19, as part of his two-year national service.
He was one of 60,000 sent into battle in 1952 to fight Communist troops in the first-ever United Nations War.
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Over the years Sir Michael has tried to blank out the horrors of the conflict which claimed the lives of 40 of his comrades.
He always turned down invitations to military reunions, telling one old soldier: “I did my bit for Queen and Country. I want to forget it.”
But last month, aged 90, the Hollywood legend joined 15 of his old comrades from the Royal Fusiliers at a memorial service in the regiment’s church in London.
The A-lister, who attended with wife Shakira, 76, didn’t want to make a speech or be given any special treatment.
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Korea veteran former Fusilier Mike Mogridge, 89, told The Sun: “Sir Michael was a frontline soldier in Korea who went out on patrols. He was in the thick of the action.”
When Shakira asked the war hero-turned-actor what he wanted for his 90th birthday, he told her simply: “I just want to go back to the Tower of London to see my old mates I was in Korea with.”
‘Bodies would pile up’
Sir Michael — famed for blockbusters such as Kingsman and Batman — was determined not to be the centre of attention.
He simply wanted time to reflect on the conflict and bond with those fellow former Fusiliers well enough to attend the service at the Holy Sepulchre church in Holborn, central London.
Former national serviceman Mike, of Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, says: “He spoke to everybody and he wrote a letter after to say how moved he had been by it and that he had enjoyed being with all us guys again.”
Like all British soldiers in the conflict, Sir Michael arrived in South Korea at the port of Busan, which troops nicknamed Phew-san because of the stench from human waste spread on rice fields.
The front line was two hours north, on the 38th parallel which today remains the dividing line between communist North Korea and South Korea.
Sir Michael was billeted with Cockney comrades from the Fusiliers in rat-infested bunkers known as “hoochies”, which echoed those in World War One.
The enemy was less than a quarter of a mile away across no man’s land.
One night, as Fusilier Caine was idly dreaming of becoming an actor, a brassy fanfare sounded and flares turned night into day.
Led by trumpeters, thousands of Chinese soldiers stormed across the valley as machine guns opened fire among the British and American troops holding the line.
In his memoir, What’s It All About?, Sir Michael reveals: “I joined in with the machine gun spraying the valley floor.
“There were so many Chinese down there we had to hit someone, but we couldn’t actually see if we were getting results. The Chinese just kept charging through the most withering fire. Eventually, they retreated across the valley as the artillery chased them right back to their positions.
“The first sequence of advancing troops had obviously been suicide squads, their task to blow up the mines by running through them.
“Anyone who made it without striking a mine had his next chance at glory by throwing his body on to the barbed wire.
“Eventually enough dead bodies would pile up to form a bridge over the wire to leave a free path for their young crack troops. The dead bodies had to stay on the wire until the next night because the Chinese would open fire on anybody going to collect them in daylight.
“When I saw the bodies that they picked off the wire, I wondered again about the benefits of Communism — the suicide squads were all old men and boys, some as young as 12.”
Mike, then an 18-year-old apprentice printer, joined Sir Michael’s infantry regiment with two East London brothers who somehow seemed to dodge basic training by going for walks around the Tower of London.
Mike recalls: “One day they said, ‘We decided we’re bored with the Army so we’re going home’.
I just want to go back to the Tower of London to see my old mates I was in Korea with.
Sir Michael Caine
“They were Ronnie and Reggie Kray.”
In early 1953, Mike was deployed to Korea as a Bren machine gunner.
He would remain there until a ceasefire was signed on July 27 that year.
He was at the third Battle of the Hook at the end of May 1953, when the British and US Army fired more than 37,000 shells, 10,000 mortar bombs and half-a-million rounds of small arms ammunition to defend a crescent-shaped hill near the Samichon River.
He says: “It was called the Bloody Hook because more soldiers were killed there than in any other position in Korea. It was being held by the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, who were under heavy attack. It’s said more poundage dropped on the Hook that night than at the Battle of El Alamein in the Second World War.
“If the Dukes were having hand-to-hand fighting in the trenches, if they didn’t hold firm, we would have to go in and reinforce them.”
Despite 20 being killed in action, 86 injured and 20 missing, The Dukes held their ground.
It is estimated 250 Chinese fighters were killed and 800 wounded.
Mike says: “The Duke of Wellington’s magnificently held the line so we weren’t needed — but they had suffered heavy casualties.
“We went up in daylight and relieved them, which was unusual. Normally it was done at night. There were virtually no trenches left — the whole place had been demolished. Going up there it was raining and very slippery.
“There were three guys coming down with a lad on a stretcher. I grabbed the spare handle and could see he had a bullet hole in his leg.
‘It’s so easy to die’
“I thought medics at the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital — made famous in the long-running Seventies US TV show MAS*H — would take the bullet out, put a couple of stitches in it like they did in the films and he’d be walking around straight away.
“But when we got down to the bottom of the hill he was dead. He had internal bleeding. That’s when you realise it is so easy to die. It’s been 70 years but I still remember that day.”
Mike added: “The Chinese had vowed to take the Hook before the Queen was crowned on June 2, 1953. So we stayed up there for the next three weeks and then we were shown a film of the Coronation.”
After his Army service ended, Fusilier Micklewhite became actor Michael Caine and got his big break as technical adviser on 1956 war film A Hill In Korea — in part because he had been there.
He went on to star in 1964 movie Zulu, which depicts the 1879 Battle of Rorke’s Drift during the Anglo-Zulu war, alongside Stanley Baker.
On Thursday, as few as 200 surviving Korea veterans — all aged around 90 — will attend a commemoration at Horse Guards in London, organised by the Royal British Legion, to remember the “forgotten army”.
Sir Michael — D-Day veteran Bernard Jordan in forthcoming big-screen true story The Great Escaper — is not expected to attend as he is on holiday.
Alan Guy, who was a field hygiene specialist with the Army Medical Corps in Korea, says 20 years ago there were 5,000 surviving veterans. Now there are only a few hundred.
The 90-year-old, of Byfleet, Surrey, said: “It was the Forgotten War. While serving in Korea at the time when Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, every soldier back here in the UK was awarded the Coronation Medal.
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“But those of us who were fighting did not get the medal and even now we’re not entitled to it.
“Thankfully, after 70 years, people are at last making Korea a big thing — and I’m sure that the whole country will finally know that we exist.”
2.5m dead in divided country
Korea became the Forgotten War because the world had tired of conflict by 1950.
The country, which had been ruled by the Japanese, was divided by Russia and the Allies at the end of the Second World War five years earlier, cutting it almost in half through the 38th parallel.
North Korea had communism imposed on it by the Soviets while the South was capitalist. It is still the same today.
But on June 25, 1950, 75,000 troops from North Korean People’s Army, backed by Russia, invaded the south, capturing pro-Western capital Seoul. North Korea’s invaders pushed almost as far as Busan on the southern coast.
The United Nations – led by the US and Britain – immediately sent forces to support South Korea.
Three months after the takeover, UN forces under US General Douglas MacArthur staged a surprise invasion, pushing into North Korea and taking the capital Pyongyang.
In November 1950 the Chinese intervened and re-took Seoul, which would be captured four times during the conflict, never officially declared as a war.
In April 1951, 1st Battalion the Gloucester Regiment made a three-day stand at the Imjin river.
Surrounded and down to just 100 men they held out so valiantly that they stopped the communist advance in its tracks.
By the end of May the Chinese had been forced back to the 38th parallel – but the war continued for two more years until July 27, 1953.
During the conflict, 2.5million civilians and military personnel lost their lives, including 1,106 British soldiers, 37,000 US servicemen, 400,000 Chinese troops and 46,000 South Korean fighters.
