For Kirkcaldy veteran David Cruickshank, Christmas cakes always remind him of his service in South Korea.
David, who is 86, has diabetes-related sight loss. David receives support from us at Sight Scotland Veterans. We provide support to Armed Forces veterans who experience sight loss, regardless of the cause of their vision impairment.
David started his National Service in 1954. Rather than doing military exercises in Britain, he was posted to South Korea - soon after the Korean War ended in July 1953.
David said: “People back home thought the Korean War had ended, and so the British Army was no longer in South Korea. But we were still there, guarding the border between South Korea and North Korea.
“It was a six-week trip to South Korea. We were only 18 years old, you know. We were just young lads, and we didn’t have a clue what was going on.
David served as a Lance Corporal with the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders.
David said: “I was put in charge of three RP’s (Regimental Police) at a base near the Korean city of Tokchon. The RPs had the same power as the military police."
David said: “What was happening on the DMZ was, they were on one side, and we were on the other, patrolling.
“But you could meet the North Koreans there on a Monday and shake hands. We up there right before Christmas. There were cigarettes exchanges, but their cigarettes were rubbish, like, so I couldn’t do anything else but stub it out.”
As Christmas approached, a senior officer noticed David’s experience in a bakery before his National Service.
David said: “He asked me, ‘You were a baker’s confectioner, right? You’ve been seconded to me for the next three weeks. I want you in the bakehouse’.
“He said to me, ‘The South Koreans only know to do buns and rolls. We want you to do Christmas cakes, shortbread, and mincemeat pies for all the troops. If you’ve done time in a small bakehouse, you’re going to love this’.”
David joined the bakehouse and began with a new type of oven.
“The electric ovens they had were built into the back of lorries. They worked off big batteries and were first class,” he said.
“We’d make big slabs of Christmas cake. We’d spend a day making mincemeat pie pastry, and fill them in the next day. We made anything and everything relate to Christmas."
"They would say, ‘How can you not feel the cold?’
"I would say, ‘I was brought up in the cold’.”
“The winter was one of the hardest things for a baker though, because all your butter and margarine was frozen. You had to whip it up by hand to get it to cream.
“By the time Christmas came, I was a fully-fledged bakers’ confectioner.”
The cold Korean winter didn’t give David too many chills though, as he grew up near Aberdeen.
He said: “I originally came from the North East of Scotland, so I was accustomed to winters. But their winters were a dry cold – it wasn’t damp, like here. They would say, ‘How can you not feel the cold?’
"I would say, ‘I was brought up in the cold’.”
David left Korea and completed his National Service in 1956. He returned to Keith near Aberdeen and continued his bakery apprenticeship at Luis McPherson’s bakery.
“The army put in that I was a fully-fledged to be a baker. I said, ‘That’s not bad’.
“Luis also said, “It’s no’ bad. We’ll have to pay you as a baker’.”
David visited South Korea many years later, in 1985.
“There were four busloads of us. We were bused all around Korea and they were desperate to show us how well they were getting on – and they were getting on, definitely. We went to a war museum and saw tanks and all the rest of it.
“They couldn’t do too much for us, during our visit. It didn’t matter where you went,” he said.
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