Hello and welcome to Battleground Korea with me Saul David and Roger Morehouse.

Well, last time we ended with the sacking of MacArthur and the stabilization

of the lines under General Ridgeway, MacArthur's successor. And today's episode is the War of

Wills and the Grind for Peace. So we ended last week's episode, Roger, with UN forces advancing

to the so-called Kansas line, and that's north of the 38th parallel. They've got

Seoul back under their control again, and it looks as if things have turned in favor of UN forces

once again, but of course the Chinese aren't finished yet. And in April 951, we get the so-called

fifth phase offensive, which shows you they've already attacked four times,

when three field armies, 700,000 strong attack, and the first thrust of the offensive falls upon

the first core, which is fiercely resisted at what becomes one of the most famous battles of the

Korean War, and that's Imjin River, and also the

neighbouring battle of Capillon, both take place from the 22nd to the 25th of April.

Yeah, it's sort of tempting to see this phase of the war, as you'd almost use the phrase

of desultory warfare, but it's not quite that, is it all? Because certainly the grand movements of the

front that we'd seen in the year or so prior to this are much less in evidence in this phase,

but the fighting is no less bitter. And you can see that in the example of Imjin River,

which of course is one of the most famous or infamous engagements in British military history,

really, isn't it?

The result of this allied effort to hold that Kansas line, as you described, against the Chinese

offensive, the fifth offensive, and it involves both the Gloucester Regiment and the Northumberland

fuseliers, and it's most famously the Gloucesters that are involved at Imjin holding their position,

which was Hill 235, which was sort of the pivot of the Allied line, effectively, wasn't it?

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