The bitter fighting in the first year of the Korean War produced a vindictiveness on both sides now uncomfortable to recall. The treatment of their prisoners by the Chinese and Korean armies was appalling by any standard. Of more than 7,140 US prisoners, more than a third died in captivity; the figure for British Commonwealth prisoners was less severe but almost 5 per cent died under pressure to provide information or convert to communist ideology.

Gibbon, then a Royal Artillery captain serving as a forward observation officer with 45 Field Regiment, was taken prisoner on January 3, 1951. That morning, US General Matthew Ridgway commanding the UN force had decided to pull back behind the Han River, immediately south of Seoul. 45 Field Regiment was covering the withdrawal of 1st Battalion The Royal Ulster Rifles and their supporting tanks of the 8th Hussars. Enemy pressure was intense, making it impossible for the 29th Infantry Brigade units to break off contact. After the 8th Hussars had lost five tanks, Gibbon went forward on foot with two radio operators to find a position from which he could direct 45 Regiment’s artillery fire, but was captured in the confusion.

The murder of indigenous prisoners taken by the North Koreans during their advance south in the summer of 1950 had led British and US captives to expect summary execution. Instead, they were first harangued for fighting a “capitalist war” against the proletariat and then marched north. Food was minimal and attention to wounds generally confined to scraping out shrapnel without anaesthetic. (The Chinese treated their own wounded in the same way). The attitude of the guards was frighteningly volatile; one day verging on the humane, the next sadistically taunting the prisoners to expect death.

Conditions in the prison camps were vile, with special ill-treatment and starvation meted out to those who refused to contribute to communist propaganda or at least to attend political instruction. Those who did were warned: “Study hard, comrades. If you don’t we’ll dig a ditch for you so deep that even your bourgeois bodies won’t stink.”

The prisoners’ most daunting thought was that they might never be freed. Occasionally the guards mocked them with news that “You are going home”, only to march them to railway trucks to be taken to another camp. In May 1951 Gibbon helped three officers to escape, resulting in his “vigorous interrogation” in the camp reserved for this treatment near Pyongyang, known as Pak’s Palace after its commandant, Major Pak.

When Gibbon refused to reveal how the three officers had escaped and the route they planned to take, he was beaten almost senseless, hung by his wrists with his arms behind him and had bamboo splints pushed under his fingernails. His stubborn fortitude and flat refusal to give any information eventually convinced his tormentors that he simply did not have what they were attempting to torture out of him. After his release, he was awarded the George Medal in recognition of his long-sustained courage.

(Two servicemen were awarded the George Cross, equal to the Victoria Cross, for their fortitude under deprivation and torture. Lieutenant Terry Waters, of The West Yorkshire Regiment, captured while serving with the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, told the NCOs and men held with him to attend the political instruction to ensure that they received food and minimal medical supplies, while he, as the only officer, held out and died in consequence, receiving the GC posthumously. Fusilier Derek Kinne escaped twice but was recaptured, tortured and subjected to prolonged incarceration in a hole. He received the George Cross for his courage, determination and the moral support he steadfastly gave to his fellow prisoners.)

Acton Henry Gordon Gibbon, known as “Spud” from childhood, was educated at Wellington and Queen’s University, Belfast, although he joined the Army before graduation. Commissioned into the Gunners in 1943, he took part in the capture of Walcheren Island by the 52nd (Lowland) Division in November 1944, to complete the clearance of the Scheldt estuary by the 1st Canadian Army.

He took a regular commission after the Second World War, serving with the Arab Legion under Glubb Pasha and qualifying at both the Army and RAF staff colleges. He left the Army in his early forties to run the family farm near Enniskillen. He was a Deputy Lieutenant for Tyrone from 1974 to 1999.

His wife Rosamund, née Lowry, whom he married in 1956, predeceased him. Their two daughters survive him.

Major A. H. G. Gibbon, GM, Korean War veteran, was born on June 7, 1924. He died on October 4, 2008, aged 84