john🇺🇦🇨🇦🇲🇽

When you hear about the Imjin River and the Gloucesters' famous last stand, there is a piece almost always left out. On the far side of that river, holding the most dangerous position of all, stood a battalion of Belgian volunteers, and fighting right alongside them, a tiny platoon from Luxembourg, one of the smallest nations to send men to the war. Yes, Belgium and Luxembourg both answered the call. The Belgians raised a volunteer battalion for Korea, and little Luxembourg, a country you could cross in an afternoon, sent a platoon of its own, attaching it to the Belgians. Together they were part of the British 29th Brigade, the same brigade as the Gloucesters, and in April 1951 they found themselves in the path of the massive Chinese Spring Offensive at the Imjin River. The Belgians and Luxembourgers drew the worst spot on the board. They were holding the north bank of the Imjin, the far side of the river, out ahead of everyone, with the water at their backs. When the Chinese offensive crashed down, tens of thousands of them pouring toward the river, the Belgians were in immediate danger of being cut off entirely, trapped on the wrong side with the bridges behind them threatened. They held anyway. Over days of intense, close fighting, the Belgian battalion and its Luxembourg platoon fought off the Chinese assaults on the north bank, and then conducted a hard, disciplined fighting withdrawal back across the river, refusing to break and run even as they were nearly surrounded. Having gotten across, they did not go to the rear to rest. They took up a new position in the center of the brigade line and fought on through the desperate, doomed attempts to relieve the surrounded Gloucesters, until their ammunition, food, and water were nearly gone. Their stand on that exposed flank was a crucial part of the whole brigade's effort at the Imjin, the battle remembered as the one that saved Seoul. For their conduct there, the Belgian battalion was awarded both the United States Distinguished Unit Citation and the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation. It is one of the least known threads of a famous battle. Alongside the British on the Imjin were Belgians and a handful of Luxembourgers, men from small European countries who had volunteered to fight for a Korea most of them had never seen, holding the far bank of a river against an army, and earning a place in the story that they are almost never given.