Page 3 Murchison Baron Of Han

"Operation Han" really began when the Little Ships, 30 miles in from the Yellow Sea, reached a point where the river widened into a bowl, about four miles in diameter, between the Communist-held north bank and the south bank, which the South Koreans controlled. Along these banks the country was brown and fairly flat between grey mud-hut villages in the centre of green paddy fields. But, behind the river flats, the land lifted quickly into hills, grey and rugged and scarred with pale outcrops like gigantic bird droppings. The few trees on the flatlands were stunted, twisted and widely-scattered. The hills were mostly bare.

The bowl where the Little Ships anchored came to be known as "Fork", because it was the central point for long range bombardment on a wide arc and because from it radiated channels, between mud banks, which the frigates used for reconnaissance and close attack. From this advanced anchorage, eight miles west of the "Truce Talk" city of Kaesong, the ship's guns dominated a large area of the north bank of the Han. To the east, attack was limited by the neutral zone. But, to the west, troop concentrations, dumps, gun positions, tracks and the railway, as far inland as the big city of Yonan, were within range.

Before the Little Ships moved into the Han, there was danger that the Chinese might cross the river and attempt to occupy islands south along the coast. But when the frigates moved in and almost immediately began to plaster the country for miles around with shells, the Chinese were taken by surprise. They promptly pulled back from the river into the hills and most of them stayed there, with their heavy armament, during the early weeks of this daring occupation. This was, of course, a blunder and just what the Little Ships wanted, because it gave them time to explore, chart and buoy the channels which flowed into Fork from almost every direction. Day after day, during this early period, boats' crews and survey parties from the frigates, helped by Korean patrol craft, moved along the channels—sounding, map- ping and marking them so that the gun ships could use them later.

Sea Fury's and Fireflys on deck HMAS Sydney - Winter in Korea

Men in the survey boats often worked under fire, for the Chinese soon realized what was going on and sent patrols right down to the river bank. When this happened the frigates had to blast the north bank to cover their own men and to force the Chinese back. At low tide the resurrected mud banks gave the survey parties some protection, but often, when these banks were covered, a machine-gun burst lashing the water around them was their first knowledge that they were in the sights of a Chinese soldier hidden among the coarse grass or the tall reed clumps at the river's edge.

For weeks, on the steaming river under a cloudless sky, the charting went on, and on the frigates Allen names that meant nothing to a Korean peasant or a Chinese soldier began to appear on the new charts of the Han— Picadilly and Woolloomooloo, Lambeth and Pall Mall. That twenty-six miles of winding channels were charted, that 85,000 soundings were made, that thirty-three navigational buoys were anchored, means nothing unless you can relate these statistics to those sweating men in the small boats who worked for weeks knowing that a machine-gun burst or the crack of a sniper's rifle from the north bank could, at any moment, mean their extinction. But, all the time, the cunning enemy on the Han was the river itself, its rocks and tide rips, its sudden shallows and stinking mud. If a spirit of the waters lived in the Han he was a malign spirit who hated and rejected man, both white and yellow.

From time to time. Little Ships went down the river and out to the cleanness of the sea and back to their bases while others replaced them in the bowl called Fork, for in the long months of this Korean summer and autumn the occupation of the Han was as permanent as any naval occupation can be. H.M.A.S. Murchison, pioneer of the Han, was one of those which moved out for replenishment and rest, but she returned and slowly built up her record until in time, with sixty days up the river, she became the veteran of all those Little Ships which fought this very personal war.

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