Finding Private Glass

For the past few months I’ve been meaning to visit the UN memorial cemetery in Busan and never found the time to do so. With it being on my list of things to do for so long I grasped the nettle a week or so ago and looked up how to get there on the web. What happened in the next few minutes was quite astounding, for me at least and made my visit to the UNMCK more of a personal pilgrimage.

I noticed while looking at the list of those interred at the cemetery that The UK had the largest number of graves.  In fact the number stands at near 900 of my fellow countrymen who are buried in Korean soil and never made it home. Statistically the USA lost many thousands of soldiers, sailors and airman in the Korean War but all bar 36 were repatriated back to their home country.

However, up until the 1960s The UK didn’t repatriate our war dead but instead buried them near to wear they fell. This explains why there are British war cemeteries across the globe from Uruguay to Thailand.  

Back to my discovery on the UNMCK website. After seeing the layout of the cemetery and wanting to pay my respects to the British dead. I then saw the little box which said ‘find a grave’ and beneath there was some search criteria including surname etc. I nonchalantly filled in the surname field with ‘Glass’, my surname of course and hit enter. Now at this juncture it’s pertinent to point out that the only people I’ve ever met with my surname during my 38 years on this planet are blood relatives.  There are a number of people called Glass on Facebook ( I got really bored one day honest) and there’s quite a famous American lawyer called Ben Glass funnily enough but that’s about it.  

What I wasn’t expecting was a 19 year old British soldier called JT Glass to be buried here in Korea as a result of being killed in the Korean War. Quite a shock indeed and me being me decided that fate had threw me a hand and I had to visit his grave and pay my respects. I realised that the chances of anyone from the UK making a special visit to this lad’s grave were very slim. Not least somebody whom he shares a name with.

Is he related to me? That I’m still working on but the war records office is slow and I’ve yet to hear back from them. Once I find out his full name then I can get to work and try and find some of his relatives and take it from there. I do know he served with REME (Royal Mechanical and Electrical Engineers) as a Craftsman so I have some info to work on in the meantime.

My video at the bottom will show everything else you need to know but on arrival at the cemetery one is amazed at the quietness of it. Busan is a huge city and Korea is very much a 24 hour country that is always moving. So to be just a short walk away from the hustle and bustle into such a still, quiet zone was a pleasant surprise.

Wall of Remembrance 

I was greeted by two unarmed Korean Soldiers at the main gate and they saluted me and asked where I was from. I gathered later on that they don’t get too many westerners visiting the place and I was the only one there during my 90 minutes on site.  I wandered around for a time in the cemetery and visited the memorial hall to watch the introduction video which was quite moving. 

They kindly played it in English for me and during the film a group of elderly Koreans came in and sat next to me. They seemed impressed to see me and even more so when I told them my name and where I was from in their language.

On the whole it was a very humbling experience to wander through the graves of so many of my fellow countrymen, so far from home. Most of them were younger than I am now and to think they never saw our beautiful green and pleasant land ever again.