27,000 Chinese troops attacking in massed waves. Carne's leadership was instrumental in allowing the Gloster's to hold their ground during the attack during which the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC: By the morning of 24 April, Carne and the surviving Glosters gathered on Hill 235 where he received orders from 3rd Division commander General Soule that the Glosters were to hold their ground and await reinforcements. These reinforcements, however, were forced to retreat just 2,000 yards (1,800 m) short of the Glosters' position, leaving the Glosters alone in trying to hold Hill 235 against an entire Chinese division. Both sides fought fiercely throughout the night for control over the hill and by the morning of 25 April, the Glosters still held the hill but had very little ammunition, no hope of relief and no artillery support. Carne requested permission to attempt a breakout and ordered his men to split into small groups and make as best they could back to the British lines. Only 63 of his men would succeed in doing this with the rest of the battalion, including Carne, being either killed, captured or wounded. Despite the battalion's effective annihilation, the Gloster's stand earned them worldwide fame as The Glorious Glosters and had enabled the rest of the British and American forces to retreat before they too were overwhelmed. Prisoner of war Carne fell into Chinese captivity after his 700-man battalion's astonishing resistance against an estimated 11,000 attackers was finally overcome. As the senior British officer among hundreds of prisoners kept in appalling conditions in camps in communist-held Korea, he was singled out for special treatment. While the other ranks were "re-educated" by the communist commissars at their camps, Carne was kept in solitary confinement. According to documents held at the National Archives in Kew and not made public until 2006, when Carne was released in September 1953 he told Sir Esler Dening, the British ambassador in Tokyo, "an extraordinary story" of brainwashing. "He says that between January 1952 and August this year he was kept in solitary confinement by Chinese communists and subjected to a softening-up process including the use of drugs, [the] result of which was, as he put it, to make his brain like a sponge, capable of receiving any kind of information put into it", Sir Esler told the Foreign Office in a "top secret" category telegram. The