Book documents Canadian heroic moment in Korean war

TheStar.com: Book documents Canadian heroic moment in Korean war

They came from rough-and-tumble lumber camps, humdrum offices and the pot-holed streets of post World War II Canada.

They turned into crack troops who could take on a force many times their size in terrain that was half a world away.

When it was over they went quietly back to their lives, forgotten and unsung.

Few would think of the 1950-53 Korean War — if they think of it at all — as a Canadian victory. And as Canada enters a new conflict in Libya, and ends a bruising confrontation in Afghanistan, the now-obscure war fought under the UN flag is lost in the vapour trails of history.

Kapyong was one battle in that dirty, drawn-out war, and its 60th anniversary on April 24 was largely unmarked.

But says Dan Bjarnason, a veteran CBC correspondent and military researcher, it was a pivotal moment that could have altered the political and geographical landscape of East Asia.

Bjarnason’s book, Triumph at Kapyong, documents an extraordinary moment in Canadian and Korean history that was as unlikely as it was unknown.

“Kapyong was the gateway to Seoul,” he says. “If it had fallen Seoul would likely have gone under. Then it would have been a free-for-all and anything could have happened.”

By “anything,” Bjarnason suggests the American use of a nuclear weapon, and a communist takeover of South Korea that would have exploded the Cold War into the hottest conflict since World War II.

But in the beginning, Canada was an unlikely participant.

“(Prime Minister) Mackenzie King was suspicious of getting involved in Asia,” he says. “Canada was run by Atlantic-oriented people and the whole DNA of North America, Britain and France was to keep an eye on Europe and the Soviet Union. When Korea happened we didn’t have much of a stand, but the Americans were worried that it could get out of control.”

The war, in which up to 1.5 million people died — most from China and the two Koreas — resulted from the carve-up of the peninsula by the victors of World War II.

Formerly ruled by Japan, it was divided along the 38th parallel, with the U.S. occupying the south and Soviet troops the north, where the communist government of Kim Il-sung took power.

But escalating tensions between Kim and autocratic nationalist Syngman Rhee became full-scale war when North Korean forces invaded the south in June 1950.

With the Soviet Union boycotting the UN Security Council, and unable to cast a veto, the council quickly condemned the move as a “breach of the peace,” and a 15-country UN military force assembled to beat back North Korea.

King, who would have opposed it, had retired in 1948 and Louis St. Laurent succeeded him. Along with external affairs minister Lester Pearson — who later won a Nobel Peace Prize — he committed troops to Korea.

But from the start it was an irregular operation, conducted off to the side of the regular military.

“Canada created a special Korean force, and guys volunteered specifically for that,” said Bjarnason. “They were a real ‘people’s army’ with no ideology or military ambitions. The army brass was skeptical and the chief of staff implied that they were adventurers. They were even called mercenaries.”

Some, like 19-year-old B.C. lumberjack John Bishop, did join for adventure. Or, like 20-year-old Guelph cab driver Don Hibbs, for military action he’d been too young to see in World War II.

One of the most stellar recruits, Mike Levy, joined after his Vancouver restaurant business failed. As a teenager he was already a distinguished World War II veteran and escapee from a Japanese internment camp.

For some 700 Canadians who fought at the Kapyong hill northeast of Seoul — a fraction of the 22,000 troops Ottawa sent to Korea — the battle came as a shock.

Thousands of Chinese soldiers who had joined the North Koreans began to withdraw from the south side of the dividing line, pursued by Canadian, Australian, South Korean and British soldiers.

Troops from the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry were about to take a well-earned break, when the tide of battle unexpectedly turned.

Equipped with aged sniper rifles — and whatever else they could buy or barter from the Americans — they found themselves mano a mano with about 5,000 charging Chinese troops who had turned around and attacked British and Australian units on nearby hills, causing heavy casualties.

“Our guys were flung in at a moment’s notice,” said Bjarnason. “They were sent in to plug a hole in the line. All the other units were driven back. The British were almost annihilated, and the South Koreans virtually wiped out. Our guys could see that, and they knew what was coming.”

It was horrifyingly close combat — with firing at 50 metres, hand grenades rolling down the hill, and battles with rifle butts, shovels and bayonets. Night, and darkness, heightened the danger.

Levy, a “natural leader” in command of the last platoon to be attacked, made a life-or-death decision: he radioed a New Zealand artillery unit and called in fire on his own position.

“It was an act of desperation. He figured they might get killed — but without that they would be killed. He won the bet. The Chinese were driven off, and they didn’t attack them again. At the end of it there were only 10 Canadians killed.”

Thousands of Chinese died in the skirmish, although their numbers were never verified by Beijing.

The against-the-odds victory won almost no recognition for the Canadians.

“When we came back we got no bands, no medals,” Hicks told Bjarnason without bitterness. “The only people who wanted to meet us were gangsters who wanted to buy our weapons.”

Ottawa largely ignored their feat, and in bureaucratic fashion, refused to let them accept a rare presidential medal from Washington because the “correct protocol” for the award had not been observed.

It was only five years later, with the intervention of honorary colonel Lady Patricia Mountbatten, that they received it. To this day members of the Manitoba-based battalion wear blue patches on their shoulders to commemorate the award.

Other reminders of Canada’s role in Korea are hard to find.

In Brampton there is a memorial wall to commemorate the 516 soldiers who died in the campaign, but their remains lie in South Korea. An annual ceremony sponsored by the Seoul government to thank the survivors is sparsely — if ever — attended. “Stuff happens,” is the motto of those who shrugged and went on with their lives.

“Korea was a meat-grinder of a war,” says Bjarnason. In nearly a decade in Afghanistan, he notes, there are 155 Canadians dead. “In Korea we were there for 2 ½ years, and lost 500.”

But he says, barring a few historic battles, time and distance often obliterate the memory of past wars. Only the blank pages of family scrapbooks tell their silent tales.

“There is no chance of resurrecting the Korean war now. And in 2030, we may be reminding people what happened, years back, in Afghanistan.”