Imjin: The Fighting Withdrawal by John Mole

A framed watercolour depeicting the Mortar Platoon of the 1st Battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles and tanks of The King’s Royal Irish Hussars firing in support of the withdrawl of the Battalion from the Imjin River position on 25 April 1951.  The artist, who commanded the Mortars in that action, was asked to develop a commission to commemorate the battle.  John Mole was unable to take the commission beyond this intensely moving preliminary work.  His sketches were passed to David Rowlands who produced a polished painting from them, but this evocative painting remains the definitive eye-witness account of the Battle from the view of The Royal Ulster Rifles.  In his notes appended to the rear of the painting, Mole says, ‘I have purposely made the picture sketchy, rough and impressionistic – because that is how I remember it.’