We wept, as anyone with an iota of feeling would have done. A year ago, just before Remembrance Day, our tears blended with the sudden rain, borne on a biting wind that turned our umbrellas inside out.

The raindrops raked the near-deserted Gloucester Hill Battle Monument where we stood. Their ferocity evoked the gunfire that turned the mountain above us – Hill 235, 'Gloster Hill', in the Glorious Glosters' annals – so bloody in April 1951.

Defending freedom

As the afternoon light faded, we arrived at the memorial park, with its giant sculpted double-badged beret and patrol of lifelike soldier statues, to remember the Gloucestershire Regiment’s Imjin River heroes. Mrs H – it seemed fitting for she has the Freedom of Gloucester – had carefully brought our poppy wreath thousands of miles by plane, train, bus and car.

Now she laid it gently on the shiny wet memorial stone and we silently remembered 700 men of the 1st Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment and other British soldiers who died or were taken prisoner here. Surrounded and outnumbered by 11,000 Chinese troops, they held on fearlessly for four days to defend Seoul – and freedom – during the Korean War.

For three weeks, with that wreath safely packed, we’d enjoyed Jeju Island’s warmth, then Seoul’s cooler days. Now, after a day’s driving, after visiting Korea’s ominous Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) and the nearby Gloucester Heroes suspension bridge, we completed our mission in a gale.

We’d honoured the Glorious Glosters, who famously ‘held on where they were’, for friends, family and others back home. We’d also remembered Jan’s grandfather, a member of the Gloucestershire Regiment during WWI.

A poignant hour

The unexpected soaking only heightened our poignant hour at Gloster Hill in the mountains north of Seoul. The huge stone Glosters beret, curving memorial wall and life-sized soldiers were heart-wrenching. So was seeing the three-metre tall replica of the tiny Celtic Carne Cross carved by Lt Col James Power Carne, VC DSO after his capture on Gloster Hill.

“Thank you so much,” said our young Viator guide, Juni, close to tears herself, when we’d met in Seoul that morning. “If not for Gloucestershire’s soldiers, we’d be a communist state today.”

Now, with the storm intensifying, she told an old South Korean man, the memorial’s only other remaining visitor, about us. Silently, he took two wrapped chocolates from his raincoat and, deferentially, his hands cupped, presented them to Jan. Then he bowed and quietly left us with our thoughts before we got back into our car and returned to Seoul.