Received this email this morning.

Dear Chris
Sorry to have been so long in replying to your previous email, various commitments got in the way. I tried phoning you a few minutes ago but was directed to voicemail. I will have another shot at a call shortly. I have an unlisted phone number and would like to keep it private and I hope you won’t consider me rude in doing so.

I suspect your service with the regiment was longer than mine. I was National Service and of course the OCTU at Mons took up a fair bit of time and my regimental service was the one year in Korea as a one pipper I did make full lieutenant after a year but in true army style I was never informed of it until I got back to Woolwich just in time for discharge. I did serve in the reserves until that was axed in 1956 and only got in one camp with 750 Light Regiment, but a long enough stay to learn something about 4.2in mortars.

I came to Canada in 1959 so although I was nominally on the army reserve list for some years after that, I never had any more contact with them.

Good of you to offer to send the particulars of the Korean trip. I would have liked to go back to see the unbelievable changes there and there have been trips from here organized by the Canadian Korean veterans association but a health problem has severely curtailed my travelling now and an overseas trip is out of the question. It is now 63 years since my service in Korea and at that time the place was pretty well flattened. Seoul was devastated with acres of rubble. The progress made there is really incredible.
I believe I may be the last survivor of the 68 battery officers who were there at the time. There were nine of us there the whole time and of them I know 6 are gone and the other two, one the other national Service subaltern who was best man at my wedding, I haven’t been able to contact for at least two years, so I may be the last one standing.

I am a little surprised that no one else from the Korean deployment has come forward from 68 battery but I guess many of them are gone. I am not surprised that Jim McDougal and I never crossed paths. As he may have told you the battery lines were quite far apart and almost felt like separate units. We were closer to the Royal Scots camp than 179s..We never paraded together as a regiment after the troopship until the regiment moved to Hong Kong, and I was back in the U.K. at that time. We did join together for the big annual exercise and once for a calibration shoot with all the guns line up wheel to wheel. Quite impressive and perhaps Jim was there with the guns from 179.

At any rate those days are as clear in my memory as if they were yesterday although I now frequently can’t remember what I actually did yesterday!

That may fill you in as much as a chat, I am not a big fan of phone conversations these days anyway I am afraid.

Meanwhile, thank you for getting back to me re the photo and my very best wishes to you. Also please pass on my best regards to Jim McDougal.

Ivor

I have requested the names of the Officers for the site.

.

Very interesting, not many of us left!

Jim, Ivor prefers not to be contacted by Phone and will when able, email me with any more info for public display.