“Hand-to-hand fighting” is often a misnomer for close-quarter battle, but for the 20-year-old Second Lieutenant Tom Henson in Korea in March 1952 it was exactly that: bayonets, rifle butts — and fists.
North Korea attacked the Democratic Republic of [South] Korea (ROK) in June 1950 and pushed back ROK and United States garrison troops to a tenuous bridgehead at Pusan in the southeast of the peninsula. A masterly amphibious counterstroke at Inchon, west of the capital, liberated Seoul and with reinforcements from Britain, the Commonwealth and elsewhere, the UN-mandated force drove the North Koreans back to the Yalu river, the border with China.
In October, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) crossed the Yalu, in turn pushing back UN and ROK troops and retaking Seoul.