Bill Speakman, VC obituary
(The Guardian South Korea)

Soldier awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery and leadership during the Korean warAs a rank-and-file professional soldier, Bill Speakman, who has died aged 90, won the Victoria Cross in the Korean war with a sustained display of indomitable personal bravery of a kind no writer of fiction would have dared to invent. He spent much of his later life trying with varied success to live down the resulting fame.War broke out in divided Korea in June 1950, when the communist north invaded the western-backed south by crossing the 38th parallel of latitude which was (and remains) the provisional border between them. Korea, occupied by Japan during the second world war, was divided in 1945 between the Soviet Union in the north and US forces in the south. Continue reading...