INTRODUCTION

It has been an honour and a labour of love to examine once more the magnificent war histories by Robert O'Neill and Bob Breen and others mentioned below. While no book can really acknowledge the courage, determination and mateship of the Australian infantryman in Korea, these go a long way towards doing so. Battlefield Korea is a modest attempt to gild what is already quite a spectacular lily.

This volume was prepared from the Battle Honours records held by the Australian Army's Directorate of Infantry. The maps and references were taken from Robert O'Neill's war history. The citations were reproduced from photocopies of citations held in the Australian War Memorial which were then digitally reproduced. This was a painstaking process. There are currently no digital records of Australian citations for the Korean War held by the Australian War Memorial or other known sources. Citations are prepared in the field by clerks at battalion headquarters, under hazardous conditions and using various abbreviations, spellings, pencilled corrections and grammatical constructions, depending on the clerical staff available. Rather than duplicating these citations as written, I have taken the liberty of standardising format, abbreviations, grammatical construction and spelling to facilitate the understanding of these events by the non-military reader. I have taken the same liberty also with the Battle Honours of the Regiment. The content and implicit meaning of the honours and citations have not been changed.

Australian soldiers stand solemnly around the graves of three of
their mates as a funeral service is performed.
(AWM HOBJ1650)