Sir Michael Caine: A Korean War Veteran

[Bill D.]

If he looked appropriately like a combat veteran in the film "Zulu", it's because he was. Maurice Micklewhite, aka Michael Caine, served in combat in Korea with the Royal Fusiliers.

Some info:

Veteran British actor SIR MICHAEL CAINE is still haunted by his experiences in the Korean War - insisting his life totally changed on the day he narrowly escaped death on the battlefield.
The Get Carter star was called up for national service in the British Army when he was aged 18 and was deployed to South Korea to help in the aftermath of the North Korean invasion.
Caine, who served as part of the Royal Fusiliers, admits he came close to losing his life during the conflict.
He says, "I was nearly killed. There were four of us on patrol in a valley in the middle of the rice paddies. The Chinese were closing in on us and the officer said, 'Let's run towards their line - they won't expect it because they'll be expecting us to run away towards our lines.' So we did that and we ended up going right around them. They couldn't find us because they were looking in the wrong place and we got away. But we'd faced that moment that we thought was the end.
"That night we went back to our bunkers and celebrated with a beer. We were just happy to be alive... I faced a moment when I knew I was going to die and I didn't run, I wasn't a coward, and it affected me deeply. I was at peace with myself and that's guided my life, not just in terms of whether someone's going to kill me, but in everything."

[Bill D.]

And more:

After almost 12 months, Maurice and his mates were offered a choice - an extra year of this or a stint of active service in Korea, the Brits having joined the Americans there in 1950. The sheer boredom of life at Iserlohn made their minds up, they were sent to London and the Royal Fusiliers and soon found themselves in Liverpool, boarding the Empire Halladale, a ship that had been sunk and salvaged twice in WW2 and was thus especially vile. Fortunately, the soldiers did not have to spend much time below deck, being ordered to sunbathe all the way to Korea in preparation for the conditions. Being so pale, poor Maurice managed only to turn an eye-catching shade of red.

After a 6 week trip featuring a fight with French Foreign Legionnaires in Colombo and a brush with the edge of a typhoon near Hong Kong that saw 680 out of 700 vomiting uncontrollably (Maurice was fine until he had to shovel up everyone else's sick), they landed at Kure on the southern tip of mainland Japan for 2 weeks' training before moving on to Pusan, South Korea. This was a hellish place of rats and mosquitos, with the human dung used as manure on the fields quickly turning to dust in the heat and blowing all over everyone. Maurice and his mates were very soon sent up to the front line, the 38th Parallel dividing north and south Korea where they found themselves stationed on a trench-fortified hill about a mile from the Chinese lines. The Chinese had joined their North Korean brothers in their assault on the south, so this unruly pack of south London kids were now the West's first line of defence against the encroaching Communist empire.

On his first night of guard duty, Maurice witnessed a Chinese attack on positions to his left. It was immediately apparent that they were not afraid to die and were thus unlikely to be defeated. He settled down to life in a 2-man bunker where rats ran over him in the night. The troops' R&R was taken in Seoul, then a shanty town of bamboo bars and whore houses, with a 100% rate of gonorrhoea and constant rucks between the different international forces. As the best-educated member of his platoon, "Mick" (as he was known) was treated as a sage, reading and writing letters for his comrades and, because of his refusal to visit prostitutes, becoming an accepted expert on venereal disease, patiently inspecting his friends' genitalia and delivering a diagnosis that, with a 100% rate of gonorrhoea, really required little expertise.

Maurice's second tour of duty coincided with a major Chinese offensive. At one point he and his buddy were firing a machine-gun into a solid wall of men. There must have been fatalities. Then, patrolling No Man's Land at night, his patrol were cut off from their own lines by Chinese soldiers and spent horrible, endless hours in the darkness waiting for the sound of their deadly enemies and the tell-tale scent of the garlic that all the opposing army habitually chewed (for years afterwards, even in Hollywood, the smell of garlic would give Michael Caine the fear).

[Terry OToole]

i wasn t aware of any of these facts about Michael Caine , very interesting thanks Bill

[shadwell1944]

I remeber flicking through his biography in my old school library many years ago, not really expecting much because at the time to me he was 'Just the bloke in the 'Italian Job'' then I noticed photo's of him during the filming of 'A hill in Korea' and the caption mentioned he had actually served out there so I then started reading the main text properly! It talked about him stagging on at the docks, manning an American .30 cal machine gun and coming face to face with a huge snake inisde his bunker one night. I had a new found respect for the man after that, he wasn't just another luvvy actor type and now I always think of him as a Korean War veteran rather than a double Oscar winning actor, strange really.

[SLIM]

This is new on me as well... Heck i never knew his real name was Maurice Micklewhite , no wonder he changed that ...sorry mr caine...

[Top Buzzer]

hi

Very interesting....I never knew his old name or the fact that he served in Korea. Thanks for the info.

"not a lot of people know that" as Mr Caine would say

[SLIM]

Very interesting....I never knew his old name or the fact that he served in Korea. Thanks for the info.

"not a lot of people know that" as Mr Caine would say

[Paul Jones]

Interesting read Bill - very imformative. Maurice Micklewhite? What on earth were his parents thinking?

[Si1964]

Bill, thankks for posting as already mentioned above most interesting, I hadn't realised that MM/MC had served with the RF's or had been in Korea.

At least I knew why he changed his name lol

[Paul B]

Michael Caine in Korea

Interesting stuff....Caine also did his National Service in the Royal Fusiliers at the same time as the soon to be notorious London gangsters Ron and Reg Kray. Whilst Caine went to Korea, the Kray Twins spent most of their time in Shepton Mallet Military Prison before being dishonourably discharged.

Caine used his military experience in several roles -in "Zulu" he originally tried for the role of Hook, the cockney private, but was actaully cast against type as the aristicratic Bromhead. His portrayal of Bromhead he said was influenced by officers he'd served with. Conversely, the role of Hook went to another actor, James Booth, who had been an army officer himself.

In the film "The Whistle Blower" Caine actually wears his own medals (British Korean War, UN Korea) in the scene set on Rememberance Day.

All the best

Paul.

[Michael Fay]

thanks

I appreciate this thread's information. Michael Caine as an actor had been a force in my child-hood life from his Zulu and Hitchcock movies I used to watch on 70's tv re-runs. It is good to know his back story.

[leigh kitchen]

Two other "famous" R Fus - Leslie Grantham & Dennis Nielson (well, I think Nielson was actually ACC attached RF).