Role Armed force officer Allegiance United Kingdom Service/branch British Army | Years of service 1925-1957 Rank Colonel Name James Carne | |
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Born 11 April 1906
Falmouth, Cornwall ( 1906-04-11 ) Battles/wars Second World War
Korean War
Battle of the Imjin River Died April 19, 1986, Cheltenham, United Kingdom Awards Victoria Cross, Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Service Cross Battles and wars World War II, Battle of the Imjin River, Korean War Similar People George Grogan, Robert Henry Cain, Raphael Zengel, Walter Norris Congreve, Eugene Esmonde | ||
Place of cremation Cheltenham Crematorium | ||
Colonel James Power Carne (11 April 1906 – 19 April 1986) was a British Army officer a Korean War recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
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Early life
Carne was born in Falmouth, Cornwall on 11 April 1906 the son of George Newby Carne and Annie Emily Le Poar Carne (née Power). His father was a brewer and wine merchant. A career officer, he attended the Imperial Service College in Windsor and later passed out from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Gloucestershire Regiment on 3 September 1925. He was promoted to lieutenant on 3 September 1927 and to captain on 1 October 1935. Seeing service in the Second World War, he was promoted to major on 3 September 1942. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 7 February 1949.
Victoria Cross
Carne was 45 years old and a lieutenant colonel commanding the 1st Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment during the Korean War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC:
On 22/23 April 1951 near the Imjin River, Korea, Lieutenant Colonel Carne's battalion was heavily and incessantly engaged by vastly superior numbers of the enemy. Throughout this time Colonel Carne moved among the whole battalion under very heavy mortar and machine-gun fire, inspiring the utmost confidence and the will to resist among his troops. On two separate occasions, armed with rifle and grenades, he personally led assault parties which drove back the enemy and saved important situations. His courage, coolness and leadership was felt not only in his own battalion but throughout the whole brigade.
Prisoner of war
Carne fell into Chinese captivity after his 700-man battalion's astonishing resistance against an estimated 11,000 attackers was finally overcome. As the senior British officer among hundreds of prisoners kept in appalling conditions in camps in communist-held Korea, he was singled out for special treatment. While the other ranks were "re-educated" by the communist commissars at their camps, Carne was kept in solitary confinement.
According to documents held at the National Archives in Kew and not made public until 2006, when Carne was released in September 1953 he told Sir Esler Dening, the British ambassador in Tokyo, "an extraordinary story" of brainwashing. "He says that between January 1952 and August this year he was kept in solitary confinement by Chinese communists and subjected to a softening-up process including the use of drugs, [the] result of which was, as he put it, to make his brain like a sponge, capable of receiving any kind of information put into it," Sir Esler told the Foreign Office in a "top secret" category telegram.
The note, which was sent straight to Sir Winston Churchill, in his second term as Prime Minister, went on: "In March of this year, (i.e. about the time when the communists displayed a new interest in concluding an armistice) various thoughts were put in to his mind, and he remains convinced that he was meant to retain these and pass them on to Her Majesty's Government." The thoughts comprised a peace deal not just to end the war in Korea, but to reach a settlement covering the whole Pacific region. Sir Esler opined: "The whole thing might be pure fantasy except for the fact that Colonel Carne could hardly have invented it and does not strike one as that sort of person." The Foreign Office was sceptical about the plot, but suggested that perhaps its aim was to split Britain from its American ally.
Popular culture
In 1954 it was announced that Warwick Productions wanted to make a film The Glorious Glosters starring Alan Ladd as Carne based on a script by Max Trell. However the film was never made.