Harold Maples
Rank and Basketball
Harold missed the deadline to apply for rank so that all of his peers went up in rank without him. They joked with him about how he didn’t have his “stripes” which you can see in the black and white photo. So he filled out the paperwork and went about his business. He was asked to go play basketball in Seoul for a good will trip over one weekend. When he came back, he found his whole “team” was in trouble for leaving without permission. It turned out to be a mix up but he was threatened with worse punishment because he outranked his team. He was so confused until he realized that they had jumped him two ranks over the weekend while he was gone. They all had a good laugh about it. The color photo shows his new “stripes”.
Korean War - Key Events
April 25, 1951
Vastly outnumbered UN forces check the Chinese advance on Seoul at the Battles of Kapyong and the Imjin River. Two Commonwealth battalions—the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Regiment and the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment—rebuff an entire Chinese division at Kapyong, and 4,000 men of the British 29th Brigade stage a successful delaying action against nearly 30,000 troops of the Chinese 63rd Army at the Imjin River. Some 650 men of the 1st Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment (the “Glorious Glosters”), engage in a Thermopylae-like stand against more than 10,000 Chinese infantry at Imjin. Although the overwhelming majority of the Glosters are killed or captured, their sacrifice allows UN forces to consolidate their lines around the South Korean capital.
These events are taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica
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