Calder Mills

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Bio

Calder Mills was born on 15 December 1929 in Glasgow, Scotland. He served as a Private and Fusilier in the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. As a radio operator with the 1st Battalion, Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, Mills was selected in mid-1951 for a covert mission into North Korea called Operation SPITFIRE. Only a handful of British officers and men were chosen for this operation.

Operation SPITFIRE was a U.S.-led partisan effort to send a scouting and raiding team behind enemy lines to direct air strikes on Chinese troop movements. Mills parachuted into North Korea at 1:30 a.m. on 26 June 1951 as part of a thirteen-man “Lightning” element. His group included British officers Captain David C. Hearn and Second Lieutenant Leo S. Adams-Acton, as well as ten Korean partisans. They joined a pathfinder team that had jumped in a week earlier.

Attempts to resupply and reinforce the team exposed their position, and by early July, enemy troops had closed in. On 6 July, an ambush forced two men to fight a rear-guard action, allowing the others to escape, but both were lost. In the following days, Mills and several Korean partisans also disappeared. Of the eighteen men involved, only nine made it back to UN lines. Mills was reported missing in action on 7 July 1951 and is remembered on the UN Wall of Remembrance in Busan, Korea.