Ulsterman who as a young infantry officer was awarded one of the first Military Crosses of the Korean War and who was involved in the building of the RUR Memorial Chapel at Belfast Cathedral and the presentation and design of the Dean’s Insignium
The Times – 18th February, 2013
An archetypal Ulsterman, Mervyn McCord was energetic, resourceful and brave, despite his sepulchral tone of voice suggesting that he was less optimistic than was the case. As a second lieutenant, he won one of the first Military Crosses of the Korean War. He was later to become deeply involved in the Northern Ireland Troubles of the 1970s and 1980s.
The invasion of South Korea by the Army of the communist North on July 25, 1950, caught the Western world unawares and ill-prepared to halt the southwards surge. The whole weight of the initial assault fell on the two American divisions garrisoning the south and seven South Korean divisions. Despite the overwhelming air superiority of the US Air Force, all but the southeastern corner of the country around the port of Pusan was in communist hands by mid-September.
Britain despatched the under-strength 27th Infantry Brigade from Hong Kong in August to join the United Nations force being built up in Korea, where it was joined by 3rd Battalion the Royal Australian Regiment from troops occupying Japan. McCord sailed from Liverpool with 1st Battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles (1 RUR) — part of the reinforcing 29th Infantry Brigade — on the troopship Empire Pride on October 1, arriving in Pusan harbour six weeks later.
By that time, General Douglas MacArthur, commanding the United Nations force, had landed two US Marine divisions at Inch’on on the west coast of the peninsula close to the South Korean capital Seoul, broken out from the Pusan perimeter and driven the North Koreans back beyond the 38th parallel frontier. But the war was far from over. The dynamics of the conflict changed abruptly when the Chinese Peoples’ Volunteers — in fact 18 divisions of the communist Chinese Army — intervened in mid-October to halt the advance of the UN Force as it approached the Chinese frontier. Using overwhelming force and oblivious of casualties, they had pushed the UN and South Korean armies back to the Imjin River, 30 miles north of Seoul, by mid-December. It was there that 1st Royal Ulster Rifles — nicknamed “The Stickies” from their motto Quis Separabit (Who Shall Separate) — began digging their defensive positions on New Year’s Eve, with McCord commanding a platoon.
During the night of January 1-2 the Chinese pushed two divisions across the Imjin and made their first attack in the 1 RUR sector, but it was not pressed home. As a result of intense enemy pressure on the flanks, the American field commander, General Matthew Ridgway, decided to withdraw behind the Han river to the south. McCord and his platoon were ordered to take up a position on the main route from the north in an effort to cover the battalion’s withdrawal. It proved impossible for the battalion to break contact with the enemy and conduct an orderly withdrawal in the dark. Heading south with his platoon at the time ordered, McCord ran into the melée. After clearing a Chinese blocking position, extricating some of his battalion’s vehicles from ambush and gathering the survivors under command, he led them to safety. The citation for his MC ended with the touching understatement, “In his first action, which took place at night, McCord showed great powers of leadership and disregard for personal danger”.
Mervyn Noel Samuel McCord was born in 1929, the elder son of Major G. McCord of the Royal Ulster Rifles and educated at Coleraine Academical Institution, Queen’s University Belfast, and RMA Sandhurst. He was an outstanding athlete, captaining the Sandhurst cross-country team and representing the Academy at athletics. He was commissioned into the Royal Ulster Rifles in 1949. After the Staff College, Camberley, course in 1962, he took up an exchange officer post with the Canadian Army, becoming a logistics staff officer at Eastern Command headquarters at Halifax Nova Scotia. Towards the end of this assignment he was responsible for organising the first Canadian contingent to join the UN Force in Cyprus, with which he later served.
In 1970, he was promoted lieutenant-colonel to become the Chief Operations Officer at HQ Northern Ireland as it expanded to deal with the escalating Troubles. Appointed OBE after this assignment, he found himself the centre of a debate as to whether the award was appropriate for an officer of an Irish regiment that was itself — at the time — barred from service in the Province. He commanded 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Rangers, into which his own regiment had been absorbed, with success in Germany and with the UN Force in Cyprus.
Promoted brigadier in 1976 at the age of 46, he was given command of the Ulster Defence Regiment, then comprising seven battalions, rather than a regular brigade. Raised in 1971, the UDR was manned by part-time volunteers, predominantly Protestant, and used in small groups to man vehicle checkpoints and similar security duties to relieve the burden on the regular army. Aggrieved by what they perceived as their secondary, largely defensive role in the conduct of counter-insurgency operations, the morale of these battalions was often not high.
As an Ulsterman steeped in the history of the Province and recognising the slight felt by many of his volunteers, McCord worked hard to get them accepted into larger-scale operations and appropriately appreciated by the regular units with which they were working. His advance to CBE in the Northern Ireland operational awards list in 1978 indicated his success.
He was subsequently Deputy Commander Eastern District in England from 1978 and an honorary ADC to the Queen from 1981 to 1984. He was Colonel of the Royal Irish Rangers from 1985 to 1990 and devoted much of his restless energy to the completion of a regimental chapel in St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast. He retired to Sussex from where he concerned himself with civilian care homes in England and was director of Sussex Housing and Care Committee from 1994 to 2001.
He married Annette Thomson in 1953, who survives him with two sons. Another son predeceased him.
Brigadier Mervyn McCord, CBE, MC, Korean War veteran, was born on December 25, 1929. He died on February 8, 2013, aged 83