The Korean War Goes to the Oscars

The Oscars are almost here.  South Korea’s submission as best foreign film is The Front Line …

For heart-pounding combat, it’s tough to beat. It’s sort of a Private Ryan Goes to the Korean War.

The Front Line is a version of the Korean War we rarely reflect on: the story of  South Korean and Chinese/North Korean  troops battling to control a hilltop during the final hours before the ceasefire. (The 1959 Hollywood movie, Pork Chop Hill, starring Gregory Peck dealt with the same theme.)

But in  Front Line, several nail-biting subplots tick away in the background.

After a South Korean officer gets fragged, a young Lieutenant is sent up from Seoul into the war zone to investigate. He finds mysteries.

Some of  the men, he discovers,  wear Communist winter uniforms —  for warmth, we’re told (Yeh, sure). And the unit has worked out a very  unauthorized local arrangement with the enemy in which mail is exchanged between North and South families.

There’s a lot going on this vital but useless hilltop on the edge of nowhere. The men are in a ROK unit called  Alligator Company because like baby alligators they have a low survival rate. Don’t pin your hopes on a happy ending.

I have no idea if the acting is Shakespearean or Saccharine (it’s in Korean with English sub-titles). But the combat sequences are convincingly harrowing. There’s an anti-war undercurrent running throughout the depiction of the savagery of combat.

Movies are a big deal in South Korea (their first cinema opened in 1903). Google “South Korean movies” and you’ll get 52 million results. So, apparently South Korea has a thriving movie industry and Front Line was a blockbuster on the home front. Around 2 million movie-goers bought tickets in just ten days.

Here’s a promo (in Korean) to give you a feel of the thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n63Lfrs4UsI

And here’s another, in English:

http://www.thefrontlinemovie-us.com/

Here’s the New York Times glowing verdict: “On the long list of international films depicting war as a hellish, senseless enterprise “The Front Line” is one of the more compelling.”

The New York Post says it has “breath-taking battle sequences.”

Hollywood Reporter says it’s first rate, having  “the right measure of humanist anti-war sentiment and personal heroism, turning the fates of a small company of men confined to one hellish location into an expose of how impersonal military operations literally makes mountains out of molehills.”

Its full review can be found here.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/frontline-film-review-220991

Near the end, there’s an Alamo-type battle to control The Hill. Kapyong must have looked and sounded very much like this and it would be interesting to hear what Kapyong vets make of it.

The Forgotten War ? Well, definitely NOT forgotten in the land where it was fought. It was a desperate struggle for national survival.

ROK infantryman

South Korean casualty estimates vary wildly. The “low” calculation is around 50,000 while the high hovers at 400,000 (!).

ROK infantryman 1950 approx

Front Line  is a chilling reminder that  while Canadian and American and other UN troops  were killed defending South Korea, South Koreans themselves also died in staggering numbers, fighting for their country.

ROK bazooka crew

Quietly reflect on that on Oscars night.

Ernest Shackleton … and other thoughts on leadership

Ninety years ago this January marked the death of one of the most remarkable leaders of modern times. And believe me, no one noticed the anniversary.

Ernest Shackleton died January 5^th, 1922. His lonely grave in a remote, godforsaken whaling station in the South Atlantic is seldom visited, but he once had the fame of  an international rock star. However, Shackleton’s fame was not based on a hyper-ventilating PR machine. He was real-life hero; a figure of  real substance and character.

Ernest Shackleton

In 1914, he launched an expedition to cross the Antarctic coast-to-coast, via the South Pole. He never made it. But he did make a legend.

Sailing to his base camp, his ship became trapped in the ice. He ordered it abandoned. For the next two months, Shackleton and his men lived on a series of  drifting, shrinking ice floes. He finally ordered everyone into their lifeboats and after five harrowing days, the exhausted crew landed on the deserted ice-covered Elephant Island, having drifted 350 miles. And this saga is only beginning.

He then selected five men, and set sail in one of the lifeboats (an event actually photographed) to try to make it to South Georgia, an isolated island in the South Atlantic where he knew there was a whaling station.

Launching the "James Caird"

It was 800 miles away. Six men. In the open boat. For two terrible weeks. Exposed to freezing storms and in constant danger of capsizing.

Finally, reaching South Georgia, in a storm, they barely made it ashore. Shackleton and two of his crew then climbed and crossed a mountain chain and after 36 hours made it to the whaling station on the north shore. Then, he sent a boat to rescue the men who’d remained on the south shore. Then he appealed to Chile to loan him a naval vessel to return for the rescue the 22 men still back there on Elephant Island. He never abandoned his trusting crew who’d been patiently waiting for him for almost five months.

It is a tale almost beyond belief. Shackleton lost not a single man. It seems like something out of the Viking sagas. A century on, the impact is with us still.

A crater at the Moon’s south pole now carries his name. Kenneth Branagh played him in an award-winning movie on the A&E network. A string of  books on Shackleton has been published.  A BBC poll ranked him 11^th in a list of  100 greatest Britons.

In the international corporate world,  he’s viewed as a perfect leadership model. Among his admirers, the Estee Lauder cosmetics company. The US Navy studies his ability to bring unity out of chaos.

One author writes, “Shackleton resonates with executives in today’s business world. His people-centered approach to leadership can be a guide to anyone in a position of authority.”

Nancy Koehn, an historian at the Harvard Business School, is struck by “Shackleton’s ability to respond to constantly changing circumstances … he had to reinvent the team’s goals. He had begun the voyage  with a mission of exploration but it quickly became a  mission of survival.”

Ms Koehn wrote recently in the New York Times that Shackleton realized he had to embody the mission to save it. Each day his presence had a huge impact on the men’s mind-sets, not only in what he said and did, but in his bearing and the energy he exuded.

He understood human nature; the importance of keeping his men’s minds focused on the future.

“The ship was gone; previous plans were irrelevant,” she writes. “His goal now was to bring the team home safely, and he improvised, adapted and used every resource at hand to achieve it.”

It is a remarkable story of the power of a single personality; a story studied by the world. But we too have such a real-life object lesson that from anything I can gather, is ignored.

The 700 Canadians prevailed at Kapyong in Korea against thousands of Chinese when by the sheer arithmetic of battle, they should have perished. Outnumbered and outgunned, they were however, not outfought — in large part because of  the Shackleton style of leadership of Col. Jim Stone. Stone was battle-smart, exuded confidence (which is different than bravado) and convinced his men of 2PPCLI if they just stuck together, they could make it. Sounds like the spirit of Shackleton to me.

Kapyong veterans I’ve talked with tell me if Stone felt they could pull it off, well then they’d pull it off.

You’d think if the American Navy (just for starters) studies Shackleton for insights into successful leadership, and if young American Army officers study Gettysburg– and I’ve seen them there – for the lessons it still contains today, then you’d imagine the Canadian Army would surely study Kapyong. Amazingly, it apparently doesn’t.

This is not the same as studying the last war to fight the next. And it’s not to say that leadership can be taught, exactly. But leadership can be developed and enhanced in soldiers with the genes of  leadership already in their DNA.

But I could find not a single retired or serving Patricia who remembered being taught about Kapyong, either for tips on tactics or insights into leadership.

One very senior, now retired, Patricia, wrote me that he thought Kapyong : “…  was used at one time within the PPCLI as a ‘lessons learned’ battle, largely related to leadership, but I think even that has gone by the way. It is disappointing that only ‘major’ and better known battles are used for leadership (but) it is largely battles like Kapyong that bring out the best of leadership, especially at the levels where it is most important – the platoon, company and battalion levels.”

I wrote the head of the “Department of Military Psychology and Leadership” at the Royal Military College, Canada’s West Point. Presumably future officers would be getting their first insights into leadership from him. I asked for his thoughts on RMC courses or lectures that deal either with Kapyong or imaginative leadership in general. That was a month ago. I still have no answer. Writing RMC, it seems, is like writing to South Georgia. Replies apparently do not come from such places.

No one now lives in South Georgia. It was abandoned decades ago. Shackleton was buried there after he died of a heart attack 90 years ago this month while he was preparing another Antarctic expedition. His pretty little grave overlooks the deserted whaling community of  Grytviken. Ironically this final resting place of  one of the world’s most admired heros is at the edge of the world, visited by virtually no one.

Shackleton's grave: South Georgia

Nancy Koehn says of him, Shackleton had “a deep sense of loyalty and obligation to his fellow crew members. The men themselves understood this and most, in turn, offered him their commitment.”

Which echoes what Jim Stone said after Kapyong: “They were just a wonderful group of men.  I believed in them. They believed in me.”

Sorry, but I don’t get it. If the US military today can still find leadership lessons in Shackleton’s drama in the South Atlantic of a century ago, or in Gettysburg in 1863, then  why can’t the Canadian Army find value in studying our own Korean experiences sixty years ago. Just asking ….

“Kapyong” gets Thumbs Up from American military historian

The Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies — a think tank at Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, devoted to military and conflict studies — has just published a flattering review of Triumph at Kapyong.

It was written by Cord Scott, a military scholar at Loyola University in Chicago..

Here’s the link:

http://www.canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/a-review-of-dan-bjarnasonss-triumph-at-kapyong-canadas-pivotal-battle-in-korea-by-cord-scott/

The text is below … but a visit to the Centre’s website will pay off for anyone with an interest in military history. It contains a treasure trove of reviews on military history.

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Dan Bjarnason’s fast-paced book Triumph at Kapyong is a tribute to not only an oft-neglected war, but also Canada’s contribution to peacekeeping and active countermeasures against Communist incursions. The release of the book was timed to coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the battle. The date of release was important, but so too was the story.

While the book centers on the Battle of Kapyong, a small series of hills northeast of Seoul, Bjarnason also takes the time to describe the events that led to Canadian involvement in the war, the formation of the combat unit needed to fight this new war, and the courage displayed by key leaders in making sure that this command was part of the wider UN effort, but independent of direct American control.

The troops utilized at Kapyong were the 2nd Battalion of the vaunted Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, who had earned their reputation at Vimy and Ortona. Given their past accomplishments, it was not surprising that they were the first to participate in the fighting in Korea. Bjarnason discusses the importance of leadership on the PPCLI, from the brigade commander, Brigadier John Rockingham, a decorated and respected combat veteran who wished to get the job done professionally, to the various subordinates who made the defense of Kapyong possible. Of special interest was the role of Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Stone, commander of the 2nd Battalion of the PPCLI, who trained the troops to the extent that they were ready for their first trial by fire in a hostile land against a well armed enemy that preferred to attack at night. In light of these Chinese tactics and after seeing the massacre of a US patrol that had been caught in their sleeping bags, Stone ordered that the men on patrol would only have a blanket to keep them warm on missions. It would not keep them as warm, but it would not hinder the soldiers from mounting a counterattack while trying to get out of sleeping bags, or sleep soundly and be caught unaware.

The attack on Kapyong was part of the Chinese “Fifth Phase” offensive that took place in April 1951. While many historians may not be aware of Canada’s role in this battle, they most likely have heard of the desperate fighting that engulfed the Gloustershire Regiment of the British Army further to the west, or even the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment that also retreated following the bitter fighting. Where these units were turned back, the Patricias held their ground and prevailed. Bjarnason compares the defense, and more importantly, the victory, to fabled stands: notably Custer at the Little Big Horn and the Spartans at Thermopylae. While not as widely known as the British part of the battle, the PPCLI held out against an onslaught of roughly 5000 Chinese “volunteers”, thwarting the attack at a loss of ten of their own.

The book offers an engaging and fast-paced read. Bjarnason notes that the book was not meant for military historians per se but for a wider audience that would appreciate the sacrifices of Canadian soldiers. By providing a brief history of the formation of the unit after the Second World War, Bjarnason allows the reader to appreciate the sacrifices and conditions in which the troops fought and died. He does an admirable job of adding a personal dimension to the battle by mentioning the men and their history before, during, and after the war. Some of the personal stories include the actions of Wayne Mitchell, who was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for providing fire support with a Bren gun during the attack. He was wounded twice while saving several members of his platoon by providing covering fire. Similar bravery was demonstrated by Lieutenant Mike Levy, who was in the thick of the fighting at Kapyong, and often called in both artillery fire (from the nearby New Zealand artillery regiment) as well as mortar fire from his own teams, all while yelling insults in Cantonese at his opponents. While his immediate superior officer, Captain Mills was awarded the Military Cross for this action, he did “little more than pass information between the platoons and the support units” while Levy was in the line of fire. (pp. 135-136). Mr. Bjarnason tries to correct the historical record by noting how valiantly Lieutenant Levy performed, and how proper recognition of his actions was denied based merely on his faith in Judaism. This sort of anti-Semitism was prominent in the 1950s but by today’s standards it seems petty. Mr. Bjarnason’s discussion of the Allied effort, from American badgering to get the Patricias into the line (and Lieutenant-Colonel Stone’s refusal to do so until they had acclimated themselves to their new environment), as well as the efforts of New Zealand gunners and the Indian medical unit, illustrate effectively that this was truly a United Nations effort. It is also interesting to note thatLieutenant-Colonel Stone fought for training, acclimation, and patrols in the sectors before being placed on the line, which greatly helped the Patricias survive the worst phases of the battle.

One weakness of the book is noted Bjarnason himself: it is not a comprehensive military history. The maps were sufficient to complement the story, but better tactical maps showing locations and movements of both the Chinese attackers and Canadian defenders would have improved the clarity of Bjarnason’s narrative. The book provides the reader with a sample of other histories of the battle in the bibliography as well as a listing of the official histories of Canada’s role in the Korean War. These works illustrate the “big picture” aspect of the war in toto. Nonetheless it is important to remember that this book was never meant to serve as a definitive history of the war, rather, it draws attention to the first major battle of the Canadian army in Korea, and how that battle was far more critical than one might imagine.

Korean veterans, regardless of their nationality, have reason to feel slighted by the lack of knowledge about “their war.” Few know or appreciate what horrible conditions were encountered on the Korean peninsula: the mountainous terrain similar to the conditions in Italy during the Second World War; the constant patrolling and static nature of the war that meant conditions not terribly different then at Vimy or Passchendaele, and finally, the problems of unequal fighting materiel. Bjarnason notes that in the face of the human wave attacks by the Chinese, the bolt action Lee-Enfield rifle issued to the Patricias, essentially unchanged since its introduction in the British Army in 1895, was too slow. However, it was not the weapon, but the man wielding it that ultimately made the difference. This one example brilliantly captures the thrust of this fine book: to recount the contributions of these Canadians on a small hill in Korea, and the need to remember their sacrifices.

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This generous review is a return visit for Kapyong. Last November, the Laurier Centre invited me to write a guest blog, explaining how the Kapyong book came to be written. Here’s a link to that essay:

http://www.canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/the-motivation-behind-triumph-at-kapyong-canadas-pivotal-battle-in-korea-by-dan-bjarnason/

Books: They Never Went Away After All.

So much for the theory that the internet would kill off books.

That idea has ended up in the same trashcan as the 1950s brainstorm that: “TV would finish off movies.”  And then there was the fantasy from the 2000′s  that Ereaders and Kindles and such would close down all the book stores. Not quite yet.

It turns out books are  more tenatious than all those wet blanket theorists ever dreamed.

The non-death of book stores recently grabbed the attention of the New York Times.

 

At Barnes and Noble, says the Times, the US’s (and therefore presumably the World’s) largest book store chain, Thanksgiving sales skyrocketed more than 10% over 2010. And sales at independent booksellers jumped 16 per cent in the week before Thanksgiving. Similar reports from all across the US suggest reports of the death of books are exaggerated, as Mark Twain once famously said about himself … and fittingly a new biography of  Mr. Twain has become one of the season’s  surprise best-sellers.

Far from being the enemy within, it turns out the internet has given books a new life. Amazon.com attracts more than 65 million customers each month  just to its US website alone; and in the History section alone almost 8,000 new books are listed for the last month. As for the theory that Iraq and Afghanistan have pretty much killed off interest in military history …  well, almost 600 of Amazon’s new titles last month are about military history.

And over at Canada’s Indigo.ca, if you type in “Canada Military History” more than 500  hits spring up.

Much of this is for a small niche market about exotic weapons systems or obscure studies on re-organized command structures for a new era. But much of it is not. Some fine new books are out on Canada in Afghanistan. Amazon lists almost 60 of them.

And already, a new generation of books is appearing on the War of 1812, timed for the 200th anniversary this year. More 1812 books are on the way and interest will surely heighten thanks to the Federal government’s determination to make this a pivotal event in the telling of the Canadian Story.

I have a vested interest in the well-being of  the continued good health of history, reading and books.

The Winnipeg Fress Press asked their book reviewers to list their favorites for 2011 … “Triumph at Kapyong” was on the list, and I’m very flattered, or course. Here’s the link:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/sentimental-favourites–4-5-136470323.html

For those who missed the Free Press review last spring, here it is again:

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/sights-sounds-smells-capture-kapyong-story-120533399.html

So I am delighted that history and books about history are in good health. The American historian and eloquent man of letters, David McCullough, often reflects on the value of history.

History is not about the past, he says.

“If you think about it, no one ever lived in the past. Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, and their contemporaries didn’t walk about saying, “Isn’t this fascinating living in the past! Aren’t we picturesque in our funny clothes!” They lived in the present. The difference is it was their present, not ours. They were caught up in the living moment exactly as we are, and with no more certainty of how things would turn out than we have.”

That’s what makes history exciting: events that seem so clear to us, were not back then. We know the ending.They did not. The people in history have no idea what will happen next. If you think history is musty and full of cobwebs, it is not.  You’ve simply been reading the wrong books. This should be a good year.

Tommy Prince: We’re Breaking His Heart

The rash of  news stories on the disgraceful housing of native people in Northern Ontario got me thinking of Kapyong. There’s a link between the two. Bear with me.

It’s been almost  61 years to the day (Dec. 16, 1950) that the first batch of Canadian soldiers – members of the 2^nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry arrived in Pusan. They were met on the dock by US military band playing: “If I’d Known You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a Cake.” Two months later they were in combat.

The 700 or so Canadian volunteers arrived aboard the American troopship USS Joseph P.  Martinez. It had been a stomach-churning crossing in dreadful weather and the Martinez was a wretched excuse for a naval vessel. The only thing keeping the water out was the rust.

USS Joseph Martinez

The real Joseph Martinez deserved a better memorial. He was a GI in World War 2, who fought in the Aleutian Islands, a campaign, sadly, little remembered by history. But men still died there. One of them was Martinez, the son of dirt-poor farm people from New Mexico. He was shot in the head by a Japanese sniper as he led an attack on the island of Attu. Martinez was the first Hispanic-American to get the Medal of Honor.

Joseph Martinez, Medal of Honor

Also in  the Aleutian campaign was a remarkable Canadian soldier – Tommy Prince, a native from the Scanterbury reserve , north of Winnipeg. Prince was a member of the so–called Devil’s Brigade, a joint American-Canadian unit of what we’d now call special forces. Their first mission was the Aleutians.

Probably Martinez and Prince never met but it’s ironic that a Canadian native, a war hero and an Aleutian veteran was carried to Korea on a ship named after an American hero, also an Aleutian veteran and also a minority member.

Prince went on to become one of the most decorated Canadian soldiers ever. After Alaska, he fought later in Italy and in southern France. After the Nazis were beaten Tommy Prince volunteered – again – this time for Korea. He had unparalled skills as a marksman and in irregular warfare. And like so many citizen soldiers in history with no formal military education, he was a natural leader. He had a calming effect on those around him and a knack of inspiring trust. People would follow him anywhere.

Tommy Prince, about the time of Kapyong

Tommy Prince was at Kapyong in A Company, the unit on the northern most position in the battle. But his years at war had taken their toll on his body and a month after Kapyong he was shipped home with bad knees. His health slowly improved, and unbelievably,  he volunteered for a second tour in Korea, this time with 3PPCLI, was wounded yet again and was in hospital when the armistice was signed.

He lived out his final sad years in Winnipeg in poverty and loneliness. I met Tommy a year or so before his death in the late 70s . We chatted for an afternoon on a park bench. Even at this lowest ebb-point in this life, he had great dignity and spoke with melancholy, but not bitterness. The army, he said, was the best thing that ever happened to him. In the army, Tommy was judged simply by what he did and little else. His buddies at Kapyong had pretty much figured out what really matters. Ironically it was in this strict hierarchical world and of rank and place that he found equality and brotherhood; where lives depended on what the Victorians quaintly called “character” … the stuff people were made of. That’s the real “Right Stuff.”

It was later, in civilian life, Tommy told me, that he encountered that other stuff: prejudice and discrimination.

But through it all, he retained great affection for his country. Heaven only knows what he would make of  it now.

How in the world, he might ask, in a country of such wealth and generosity … how on earth  have we allowed our fellow citizens to live so desperately, up there at Attawapiskat… and the other Attawapiskats across the country?

My Road to the Epic at Kapyong

Every journalist anywhere is always asked: “Where do you get your ideas, anyway? Where do your stories come from?”

In truth, stories rarely spring full-blown from our imaginations. They usually, shamelessly, come from someone else: often a person you’ve never met — a reader, a listener, a viewer — sometimes even another reporter. It’s someone else who plants the seed of an idea and you just let it germinate. And then run with it.

The Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., is a remarkable research gold mine, idea factory, and think-tank concentrating on the study of warfare, defence and peacekeeping. The director is Terry Copp, one of this country’s leading military scholars. The Centre’s wonderful archives includes tens of thousands of aerial photographs taken at immense risk by RCAF aircrews over the lethal skies of Nazi Germany.

The Laurier Centre invited me to contribute a guest blog to their web site, explaining how I came to write Triumph at Kapyong, a book on Canada in the Korean War. It was that old question: where do your ideas come from?

I wrote Kapyong during the summer of 2010. But I’d been crafting it in my mind for over half a century.

In 1961, I was an 18 year-old Officer Cadet at the School of Infantry at Camp Borden, an hour’s drive north of Toronto. Our training instructors were seasoned soldiers of the line, most of whom had harrowing experiences in real combat. They were tough as nails. We worshipped those guys. We’d have walked off a cliff if they’d but asked.

Our platoon commander, Lt. Don Ardelian, was raised on a Saskatchewan farm and fought in  Korea as a sergeant; was an expert in night patrolling (a harzardous specialty, fraught with peril) and went on to have a highly distinguished military career as an officer. It was from Ardelian we learned the thrilling tale of Kapyong, fought in the Korean hills only ten years earlier. There was not an atom of bravado in the telling. But there was intense pride. How very Canadian, I think today.

A lifetime ago, in 1961, this is what we looked like: That’s me in the upper left. The geeky looking fellow in glasses. Adrelian is the steely-eyed figure in the front row, second from the right, in the light shirt.

Camp Borden, School of Infantry, 1961

Camp Borden, School of Infantry, 1961

(They were wonderful leaders, Ardelian and those NCO`s, though I remember but a handful of names, after a half century. The sergeant on the left in the front, wearing a Scottish tam was R.J. Curran, a veteran of  the terrible fighting against crack Nazi troops in the Scheldt Estuary along the Belgian-Dutch coast. The chunky utterly unheroic-looking staff sergeant on the right was Gerry Enright, decorated in Korea for great bravery in a dreadful hill fight at Kowang-San that was even worse than the battle at Kapyong.)

These were the men who drew the images of Kapyong in my memory and in my imagination that have stayed with me over the decades.

Here then, is my guest blog, describing how I got one of my ideas, maybe the best idea I ever had in almost 40 years of  journalism:

http://canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/?q=Dan-Bjarnason-The-motivation-behind-Triumph-at-Kap-Yong

Ardelian, Enright and Curran are gone now, sadly. But I`ll be remembering them on Remembrance Day.

TV Update — “Triumph at Kapyong”

Just a little update … a couple of TV interviews about  ”Triumph at Kapyong” are coming up in the next few days, tied to Remembrance Day..

On TVO (TV Ontario), Allan Gregg’s interview with me will run this Friday Nov 4th at 10 pm … for those outside the TVO Ontario viewing area, Allan’s interviews are to be found on the TVO website at:

http://allangregg.tvo.org/

And on Peter’s Mansbridge’s “One-on-One,” his interview with me on CBC Television will re-run this Saturday, November 5th on News Network (Newsworld) at 5:30 pm Eastern Time; and again at 9:30 pm Eastern time … and on Sunday the 6th on the main CBC network at 12:30 noon local time.

Here’s the link to Peter’s first broadcast last spring:

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/Mansbridge_One_on_One/1455754065/ID=1853612345

The re-broadcast will have a new updated intro from Peter. Here’s the link to the One-on-One home page:

http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/mansbridge/

Hope you enjoy these programs if you get a chance to watch them.

Peter Mansbridge / “Triumph at Kapyong”

This weekend, on Peter Mansbridge’s “One on One” on CBC Television, the topic is “Triumph at Kapyong.” Peter and I chat about this little-known, but ferocious battle and how this book came to be written.

Peter and I have been friends and collegues for over 40 years and have long shared an interest in military history. (His father was a distinguished bomber pilot in World War 2 and took part in the raids on Pennemunde).

We’ve covered together such events as the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the D-Day landings and 50th anniversary of the Liberation of Holland.

Peter has an intense personal interest in military affairs that continues to the present day and he has made several visits to Afghanistan and to the Middle East.

So Kapyong sparked his natural curiosity. Like most Canadians he didn’t know much about it, but it took his interest. and he quickly brought himself up to speed on the Korean War. I  was delighted when he agreed to write a foreword to my book, as did Adrienne Clarkson, our former Governor General and now Colonel-in-Chief of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. (It was the PPCLI’s 2nd battalion that fought at Kapyong)

I can relate from personal experience she was extremely popular with our troops during her service as GG. She still is, in fact. Whether with the infantry in Afghanistan or submariners at sea, our people in uniform felt she had a personal stake in their wellbeing. Her attachment to the men and women in the armed forces is real and long-standing. As a young school girl, the brother of her best friend was a PPCLI rifleman who was killed in Korea. So her interest in the distant war there, and in Kapyong in particular, is genuine and deep.

But back to Peter. Over the years we’ve spent many hours relating to each other stories of veterans we’ve met, exchanging tips on books we’ve been reading and sometimes lamenting the lack of much public interest in the story of our nation’s military heritage.

So I hope you’ll watch and enjoy us talking about Kapyong on Peter’s One On One program. It’s an informal conversation between two friends who find a fascination with Canadian stories and Canadian heroes. Kapyong is about the Few against the Many. And when they should have been annihilated, instead they triumphed.

Kapyong is full of  heroes who were for the most part the guys next door. Peter and I found this a compelling tale and I hope you will too.

The program will air this weekend, March 19 and 20 at the following times:

On CBC News Network (formerly called Newsworld):
Saturday 9:30pmET
Sunday 12:30amET, 3:30amET and 11:30pmET

And on the main CBC Television network
Sunday at 12:30pm (local time)

For those without access to TV or the CBC, after the airing  the program is available on CBC’s  One On One website at:

http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/mansbridge/

April: when the past is heaviest

For  students of  the Korean War and of Canadian military history, April  is a month heavy with the weight of  the past. It is the month of Kapyong.

As the 60th anniversary of Canada’s most famous battle in Korea draws closer (April 24th), there is increasing attention focusing on this remarkable encounter in which outnumbered and surrounded Canadian troops helped save Seoul from capture by the Chinese.

This article appeared in today’s edition of the National Post newspaper:

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/kapyong+forgotten+moment+Canadian+Heroism/4565631/story.htmll

Last Monday,  a new look at the battle, “Triumph at Kapyong” by Dundurn Press was released.

On Friday morning, April 15 a ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa will honour what Canada did at Kapyong.

Within the next week, an Australian TV documentary on Kapyong will be broadcast that was filmed in several international locations, including the Kapyong site, and also in Canada with interviews with several Canadian veterans. The docu-drama includes portrayals of the Patricias and Lt Mike Levy calling in artillery fire on his own position. 

A Canadian television documentary team from Bloc 4 is soon heading to Kapyong to film the anniversary ceremonies at the site of the battle for inclusion in a Canadian telling of the Kapyong story. Accompanying them will be Kapyong veteran Hub Gray, who commanded a heavy machine gun unit that saved the unit’s headquarters from being swarmed. 

At Camp Shilo, Manitoba, the home of  2PPCLI (The Kapyong Patricias), a series of … well, not  celebrations exactly, but of commemorations and memorial services will be held on the last weekend of April.

With surviving veterans of Kapyong now in their 80s and 90s, this month will be the one last chance for these aging and modest warriors to gather at the site of their triumph and reflect on their ten slain comrades who did not come down off the hill and who will remain, as they say, “forever young.”

The Man Who Saw It Coming

 Ray Croker was the first to see the battle coming.

 And he was the first to see the nature of the peril.

 And he was first to sound the alarm.

 And then when it started, he missed it all. Well, most of it. At Kapyong, a Chinese sniper almost took Croker’s foot off. And yet he’s not listed among the official casualties in Canada’s most famous battle of the Korean war.  

 Ray Croker, a kid from Stoney Plain, Alberta had just turned 20 on April 19^th, 1951 … six days later he was at centre stage in the struggle for Kapyong.

 It was Croker, a lowly lance corporal, who discovered that he and his comrades in 2PPCLI, digging in atop their rocky hill, were surrounded.  It was Croker who broke the stunning news to his commander, Colonel Jim Stone. It was Croker’s news that helped Stone map out his brilliant strategy to defend Kapyong.

 I tracked Croker down at his home in Chilliwack, BC this week, to hear his amazing story. In 60 years he’s scarcely talked about his war. Now, as the Kapyong anniversary arrives, he let me  peek into history he helped make.

Croker was a signalman, that is, a radio. operator. He was eavesdropping on messages being sent from other units  — American, British and Australian forces — in the area, to higher command back behind the lines. 

It was dawn of April 24^th.

He was hearing estimates in those scattered radio reports of enemy numbers and of weapons.

“They were giving map co-ordinates  whenever they spotted Chinese moving into positions,” he told me. “For two hours I plotted those positions with pins on my map. When the last report came in, I studied it.”

What at first seemed mere random markings slowly morphed into a meaningful shape. Croker saw the pattern of his pins was becoming a circle. And 2PPCLI was at its centre.

Croker snapped: “Get Colonel Stone!”

“Why?” someone asked.

“Never mind,” he barked back. “Get Stone! Quick!”

Stone arrived, asking what was up.

“Sir,” Croker said, “We’re surrounded!”

“What do you mean were surrounded?” Stone asked in disbelief.

Stone then double-checked the map co-ordinates himself, re-plotting them all. He didn’t say a word for a few moments and then to no one in particular, murmured:

“By God, We could get knocked off (the hill).”

Says Croker today: “We were always aware the Chinese were around us somewhere … but not ALL around us.”

Stone had yet to deploy his soldiers into a brilliant defensive layout that would be later studied as a masterpiece. That deployment would come in the hours ahead. His immediate priority was to make sure his vehicles would not be taken in a sudden Chinese onslaught.

“Take the lids of the Jerry tins (gasoline cans),” Croker remembers Stone’s sharp orders. “Get them  off the vehicles, put them in front and put matches on top of them. If you see Chinese coming over the hill, light them.”

The torching wasn’t necessary. It was a close run thing, as Wellington would say after Waterloo, but Kapyong held.

Thanks to Croker’s imagination and initiative, Stone was given an early warning of the nature of growing peril.

And with that, as Croker puts it now: “I sort of faded out of the war.” At about 7 a.m., he goes off duty, covers a few yards; and is shot in the foot by a Chinese sniper.

The Chinese mass attacks on the Patricias’ hill were still about 12 hours away, in the  night. (this April 24^th, as the sun goes down a world away, sixty years away, pause and think for a moment about what was happening at that moment to these young Canadians.)

His war ended quickly, driven in a field ambulance to a medical team from India, and then evacuated by helicopter to an American MASH unit. Unlike the lunatic MASH gang in the TV series, in real life soldiers like Croker, treated and saved  by these remarkable outfits, describe them as simply “wonderful.”

“Emergency surgery was all they had time for,” says Croker. “They were treating friend and enemy alike. Friend or foe, it didn’t make any difference.”

Recuperating in Japan, the army wanted to send him home. But Croker wanted to go back to his unit. The army won; home it was. No Canadian uniforms were available in Japan so they dressed him in Australian kit someone found, and when he finally arrived back in Edmonton, no one recognized this strange man in the strange uniform.

Ironically, Croker is not officially listed as a casualty in the battle . The figure of 10 killed and 23 wounded accounts for those hit between the evening of the 24^th and about 9 the morning of the 25^th. Croker, the man who first saw the Chinese attack taking shape, was shot a few hours before the official tally begins.

He stayed in the army for 25 years and then became an Evangelical minister. He is now 80. His health will not allow him to return to Kapyong for the 60^th anniversary.

Until recently  his family – including a daughter who’d served in the army herself — knew virtually nothing of his war in Korea. Many concluded from his silence that the war apparently had little impact on him. They are wrong.

 Kapyong, he says now, “has meant something to me all my life.” He’d simply guarded it through the decades as a private memory.

Kapyong Anniversary: Tragedy Today, Amid the History

In the invisible battle inside the Forgotten War, it’s satisfying that notice is now being taken of genuine heroes and their unbelievable saga.

My sense is that most readers are finding Triumph at Kapyong to be a thrilling tale and chock full of heroes. Canadian heroes. Here are two recent reviews.

The first is by Olivia Ward, the Toronto Star’s foreign affairs specialist.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/991365–book-documents-canadian-heroic-moment-in-korean-war

The other is in the Winnipeg Free Press by Ron Robinson, a well-known broadcaster, whose father served in the Patricias in World War Two.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/sights-sounds-smells-capture-kapyong-story-120533399.html

Such kind reflections are basically tributes to those who fought there and the story they have to tell.

And now, six decades after the event, 2PPCLI are at it again: coming to rescue people in peril. Not in South Korea this time, but only a few miles from their home base at Camp Shilo, Manitoba.

The Battalion had spent months preparing to celebrate this anniversary of their most famous battle. The Patricia’s invited me to attend and I was honoured. There was a curious combination of  emotions at Shilo: elation honouring this remarkable battle; and solemnity in paying tribute to the men slain in the fighting.

The day was the 24^th of April (it should be as well known to us it is in Australia, where it is virtually a national occasion known to every school kid. But don’t get me going on that.). At Shilo, 2PPCLI held their Kapyong commemorations with that typically Canadian knack of pride without bravado. At the main ceremony in the morning, there was the usual stuff of military ceremonies: bugles, drums, flashing swords, salutes exchanged, orders barked, and of course saluting the  colours,” the battalion’s battle flag with series of  small pieces of cloth sewn on, noting its major engagements dating back to  World War 1. Among them: Kapyong.

It’s a ritual that most civilians find mysterious, but it’s life blood to those in uniform. Tradition and a sense of  what those who came before have accomplished is what
enables soldiers to carry on when every measure of  cold logic suggests there is no hope. Every sailor hunting U-Boats in the North Atlantic felt the hand of Drake and Nelson on his shoulder. For American Marines today it is Iwo Jima. For Russians it is Stalingrad. Each Patricia on patrol on Afghanistan knew they were not alone but had the spectre of a Kapyong rifleman at their side.

At Shilo it was this sense of history that was being played out. For soldiers, tradition is not some stuffy, stuck-in-the-past notion. It is history that never ends. It is alive at this very moment. This new generation of soldiers still wear the blue patch on their shoulder, the Presidential Citation, awarded to 2PPCLI by the Americans six decades ago. The battalion will wear this honour as long as the battalion exists.

Some of the soldiers at the Shilo events – including Padre Kevin Olive — had just returned from ceremonies at Kapyong itself. On hand also were a half dozen or so of the men who were actual Kapyong Patricias, including Mike Czuboka, who 60 years ago jumped a freight train to travel to Winnipeg, and lied about his age to volunteer for the Korean Special Force. Czuboka ended up in a small mortar/machine platoon that saved the battalion headquarters from being overrun.

The Australian army sent to Shilo members of their famed 3RAR battalion, the unit that fought on an adjoining hill at Kapyong. Everyone always falls in love with the Aussies with their carefree style, khaki uniforms and dashing bush hats.

In the background of these celebrations and commemorations ticked a time bomb. The Assiniboine River was remorselessly rising. Nearby, Brandon was a city under siege, ringed with dikes constantly being expanded and strengthened and being monitored around the clock. Out at Camp Shilo, a half hour’s drive away, as the Kapyong events unfolded, everyone was on standby. Finally, earlier this week, the civilian emergency agencies could no longer cope. The Patricia’s were sent in to beef up defences.

It was a fight that had become deeply personal. The rising floods had been accompanied by unseasonal snow and freezing rain. The night of the 24^th, an SUV was carrying four young soldiers back to their homes in Brandon. Only hours earlier, as the weather worsened, I had driven on this same stretch, thinking: “I wouldn’t want to be doing this later tonight.”

Somehow, their vehicle slid out of control, in the darkness, on the ice, in the storm, and flipped over into flood waters at the road’s edge. Three young Patricias died.

It was a particularly cruel and ironic blow for a unit that has taken losses in combat in Afghanistan, only to have still more soldiers killed back in Canada, in an accident as they drove along a remote country highway to be safely in their homes with their families.

As Padre Olive told me: “Unfortunately, we have a lot of experience with death.”

Amnesia: From Barbarossa to Kapyong to Kabul

Let’s guess … how many Canadians noticed, or remembered or celebrated or mourned or commemorated the anniversary a few days ago of a great historic event in which Canada was a serious player?

Sixty-one years this past June 25, the Korean War began when North Koreans  stormed into South Korea, launching a three-year long bloodbath in which more than 500 Canadian soldiers were killed.

So back to the question: How many Canadians took note of this milestone? How many ceremonies, editorials, tributes, articles, commemorations or commentaries did you notice? Zero, would be my rough guess.

This was the war that stopped a clear-cut Communist land grab of an independent country.  This tiny nation that we and about 20 other countries under a UN banner, helped save from destruction, has become a prosperous, innovative Asian economic wunderkind that now makes automobiles and hi-tech computer gizmos while its anaemic, arthritic
Stalinist friendless cousin makes mostly famines and is ruled by firing squad.

A half century later “our” Korea is thriving and democratic. The other Korea meantime is an economic black hole; a human black hole also, to push the astronomy comparison, where people simply vanish. The Korean War was fought by Canada and its allies in part to give South Korea a fighting chance to make it. It seems to have been worth the fight. How often can you say that about various other recent military interventions?  Libya, anyone?

You’d think some major public official, an MP say, or a Mayor somewhere would have noted the Korean  anniversary that’s just passed.  Think again.

As usual, the Australians, who take the their history seriously, took notice of the Korean anniversary:

http://www.koreaherald.com/lifestyle/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20110626000256

The story points out Australia’s state radio broadcaster was there … you know, state broadcaster as in public broadcaster, whose job,  is to “inform, educate and entertain all Australians  …” what a concept.

The 60^th anniversary of  Kapyong, Canada’s defining battle in Korea, was just this past April.

I’m naturally flattered by the media attention to my own account of Kapyong. Most recently, on TVO, Ontario’s own public broadcaster, Steve Paikin’s “The Agenda”
recently noted this Canadian military milestone:

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=109171&ts=2011-05-3020:00:00.0

And this fall, around November 11^th, also on TVO, “Allan Gregg in Conversation” is scheduled to deal with Kapyong.

But you can bet your last pfennig that neither the April 24^th  anniversary of Kapyong nor the June 25^th anniversary of the Korean War were mentioned in any Canadian classroom. Please: someone prove me wrong.

Not every battle or war, of course, merits eternal commemoration. But some do. At least for a while. Korea and Kapyong, I would argue, were dramatic and important events and should be remembered for at least a few decades. But it seems impossible to generate much public interest in the significance of  the military events that shape history.

Just a few days ago,  June 22, was the 70^th anniversary of  a truly epochal event: Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s invasion of the USSR.

This is the salient event that led (eventually) to the destruction of  Nazi Germany. It was a signal landmark in history. And it’s anniversary was virtually ignored in the West.

Pearl Harbor’s 70th  anniversary is also coming up this December 7^th and it will be much commemorated in the US. But Pearl Harbor’s significance is vital in comprehending the course the entire war would suddenly take. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor inexplicably prompted Hitler to declare war on America. Suddenly America was in the fight against the Nazis. If America remained out, Hitler may have been able to fend off the Soviets. But he had not a hope with America in. But don’t hold your breath waiting to see much mentioned in this country this December about Pearl Harbor.

December 7, 1941

And certainly – if you’ve any pfennigs left – don’t bet on much attention being paid to another December anniversary, the 70^th  of the fall of Hong Kong, which was attacked by the Japanese only eight hours after Pearl Harbour. More than 500 Canadians died in the fighting or were later murdered by the Japanese.

During the valiant but hopeless battle, John Robert Osborne of Winnipeg threw himself on a hand grenade to save his buddies, just like Smiley Douglas did at Kapyong. Douglas survived but lost an arm. Osborne lost his life. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, the only VC in the entire battle.

John Osborne VC

This December, don’t expect Hong Kong or John Osborne to be mentioned in any schools, even in Winnipeg.

Ah, but Afghanistan, you say. Now that will be different; who will ever forget our sacrifices there? Who indeed? … almost everyone. We’ve lost almost 160 Canadians in Afghanistan in roughly a decade of  commitment. Not to diminish the agony of the family and friends of the Afghan slain, but our loses in Korea were around three times as great, in one third the time. And who remembers our Korean dead now, except for a dwindling number of heartbroken buddies and family? It is called the Forgotten War for good reason, and in fact it was being forgotten as it was being fought.

If our track record for amnesia holds its course, in a couple of decades, Afghanistan will be as misty and forgotten as Korea and Hong Kong.

The Barris Beat: Korea and Those Other Wars

What do Ted Barris, Kapyong, and Front Page Challenge have in common?

First things first: If you’ve any interest at all in Canadian military history, you’ve read something by Ted Barris, He is arguably one of the most successful and popular Canadian writers on this subject.

He has written an eclectic and steady string of best-selling books: from a study of Prairie steam boats, to hockey, to rodeo stars. But his real passion is this country’s military lore; from Vimy Ridge to Afghanistan. He’s written several books on World War 2, and at least two studies of the Korean War.

One of them, Deadlock in Korea, written over a decade ago (re-released and updated a year ago), has a chapter on Kapyong, and still stands up as a good solid read of the
three-year-long war and has the best account I’ve come across of the fate of Canadian POWs captured by the Chinese.

Ted has a knack of viewing war through the blades of grass; the terrified private peering through the undergrowth, rather than the Field Marshal hovering over his map tables. It’s very human stuff.

He is a broadcaster and journalism professor; is much in demand as a speaker, a battlefield guide, and is always it seems, working on yet another book. I’ve bumped into him on the beaches at Normandy during D-Day’s 60^th anniversary commemorations.

I had known Ted from our CBC days and had interviewed him several times for various documentaries on military history. When I was writing my own, Triumph at Kapyong, Ted could have been competitive and protective with his knowledge and insights. But he was not. Rather, he was generous and patient. Ted believes a rising tide lifts
all boats. The more readers get interested in history, the better for all those who write it.

When Triumph at Kapyong came out in April, Ted took note in his blog:

http://tedbarris.com/2011/04/26/remembrance-and-the-vote/

And now he’s written another flattering Triumph review in the respected and popular historical journal, Canada’s History (formerly The Beaver).

http://www.canadashistory.ca/Books/Book-Reviews/Reviews/Triumph-at-Kapyong–Canada%E2%80%99s-Pivotal-Battle-in-Kor.aspx

A decade ago Ted co-authored a study of  200 Canadian musicians, Making Music.  His literary partner was Alex Barris, a long time CBC television personality and one of the original Front Page Challenge panelists. Alex Barris, who died in 2004, was Ted’s father.

Alex was a wise-cracking, witty, jokester, on air. And just what has this to do with military history or the clash or arms? Lots.

In World War 2, Alex had been a medic in the US Army. Medics are usually unarmed. It’s dangerous work and requires a certain nobility to go around in a war without a weapon, when everyone else has one. Alex was awarded the Bronze Star for valour when he saved several injured men on the battlefield. Ted knew nothing of his father’s medal until shortly before his death in 2004. Alex was simply seen as a very funny guy, not a brave, quiet and selfless hero.

Whenever I read one of Ted’s war books, I think for a moment of Alex. Ted’s next book should be about Alex and his war.

Korean War Competes with Goldfish

For a brief, flicker of a moment, history’s most famous forgotten war was remembered.

On Wednesday, several hundred Korean War veterans, now in their 80s, gathered as they do every year, at the memorial to their slain comrades in the Meadowvale Cemetery in Brampton, just west of  Toronto.

The occasion marked the 58^th anniversary of the ending of the  three-year meat-grinder
from which more than 500 young Canadians did not come home.

A memorial wall in the Brampton cemetery contains individual bronze plaques, replicas of the originals placed on the actual graves, back in Pusan, Korea. The Wall
was almost entirely a grass-roots citizens’ initiative. There was virtually no government involvement. The funds were raised mostly by veterans’ groups and Canada’s Korean
community.

Among those at the ground-breaking dedication 15 years ago, was Korea’s Consul General. At Wednesday’s ceremony, as is the case each year, was Ji-in Hong, Korea’s
current Consul General. (Anyone wondering “what is a Canadian?” should ask two
peoples: the Dutch and the South Koreans. They know exactly who we are.)

Normally this event would be ignored by the media who feel they have bigger fish to fry. This story would have to compete with tales about Toronto’s Mayor driving his car while using a cell phone; or goldfish found in the ruins of the New Zealand quake; or Chapter 576 of the unending British tabloid bugging scandal. Trust me on this, in such a
competition between veterans marking the end of a war that took hundreds of thousands of lives, and goldfish and such; the Vets would lose

But not this time. This time it was news. It took the arrival of Canada’s
Prime Minister to turn a phantom event into an occasion. This is what happens to the media when a Somebody turns up at a local ceremony: it magically morphs into a Something:

Stephen Harper came to the ceremony at Brampton and Shazam … it blossomed into a
media happening. Usually Ottawa and the press scarcely acknowledge the memorial’s existence or care about its meaning. But today, it was the centre of a national news story. Harper gave a certain significance to the war no one remembers, and to the risks these aging warriors took. Korea, he said,  was “one of the most significant armed engagements of the 20^th Century.” He then sent the newly-minted Veterans Affairs minister and his parliamentary secretary to a luncheon held by the Korean Consul General. The event was packed by more than 700 veterans and their families, unused to such attention.

Among those 700 were a half dozen or so veterans of Kapyong, Canada’s pivotal battle in the war, including John Bishop of Victoria BC, currently president of the Korean Veterans’ Association. He also may well be the last.

Bishop has a sad task as president. In late August in Winnipeg, he will preside
over “The Last Hurray” … the last and final gathering of  the aging Canadian Korean vets.

Among those invited to Winnipeg: the Korean ambassador and Stephen Harper. The ambassador will doubtless attend. As for Harper, we’ll see.

On Wednesday, he noted the Korean War was the forgotten war, but he said: “times are finally changing.” Well maybe …  sadly, I’m not hopeful there is a cure for Canada’s historical amnesia. I hope Harper is right and I’m wrong. But put your money on me

Perhaps, if  Harper turns up in Winnipeg, the Last Hurray will be “news.” If  he
doesn’t,  let’s hope there’s no goldfish story happening somewhere.

The Last Hurrah: It’s Over

Was it a time to laugh or a time to weep? Was it an occasion of joy or of sorrow. It was all those things.

It was “The Last Hurrah.”

This week saw the last annual gathering of Canada’s veterans from the Korean war. It was simply time.

They’re mostly in their eighties now. Six decades ago, in the prime of life and fired with a thirst for adventure, they went off to war in a wild place they’d never heard of.

About 27,000 of them fought in the third-bloodiest conflict in Canada‘s history. They battled atop the freezing hills and down in the sweltering valleys for two and a half years. Their forgotten war is as far removed from us as the Riel Rebellion was from the start of the Second World War. Today, the Korean War almost seems like archaeology.

The passing years have cruelly thinned their ranks. There are now only around 11,000 left. Many are in failing health. Local chapters of the Koreans Veterans Association are simply closing down one-by-one as membership shrivels. It was time to say: “Enough.”

This past week in Winnipeg about 500 Korean vets gathered for their one last fling … their final reunion. There were mixed feelings says Mike Czuboka, one of the organizers.

“We’re in the last part of our lives. If you’re in your 80s you realize you’ve maybe got about another ten years ahead of you. You know things are coming to a close.”

For most, this would be their last chance to meet with old comrades from their youth, that they’d fought beside in the greatest adventure of their lives. Hence, The Last Hurrah. Time for a good laugh and a quiet cry.

Curiously, the final curtain falls this year, on the 60^th anniversary (last April) of Canada’s first and most famous Korean battle, at Kapyong.

Kapyong veterans were prominent at this final gathering of  these aging warriors. The Korean Veterans Association’s current (and last) president is John Bishop.

Property of John Bishop

He was a corporal at Kapyong. Bishop, years  later, as a Lieutenant Colonel, became Canada’s military attaché to South Korea, and often visited the battlefield, bragging he could still fit into his old foxhole.

Mike Czuboka, one of the Last Hurrah organizers, hitchhiked a freight train to Winnipeg to enlist and lied about his age to get into the Korean Special Force.

Property of Mike Czuboka

He was at Kapyong, in a small mortar crew that helped save his battalion headquarters from being overrun by attacking Chinese.

Hub Gray, then a young lieutenant, commanded those mortar men and also a heavy machinegun crew at Kapyong.

Property of Hub Gray

He led the small force that blocked the attack on the battalion HQ. In later years he wrote a first-hand account of the battle, from the inside looking out..

And Smiley Douglas was also in Winnipeg.

Property of PPCLI Museum and Archives

He lost an arm at Kapyong (and was later decorated) when he tried to save his platoon when a grenade tumbled into their midst.

Some local Korean Vet groups in larger centres will still function on their own. And the KVA still operates a great website (http://kvacanada.com) crammed with history, anecdotes and statistics. It’s a great resource. And the Memory Project (http://thememoryproject.com) is now interviewing Korean vets and preserving their stories for a generation that has never heard of our war in Korea.

But, as a national group, it’s over. A page has been quietly turned.

Adding to the bittersweet taste of the moment in Winnipeg this past week, were sad memories of those who could not attend: the 500 young Canadians who died in the Korean hills six decades ago and are buried at the UN cemetery in Pusan.

For the aged veterans who are left, their absent friends will remain forever young.

Korean Vets: Death By Cocktail

There was something downright mysterious happening to our Korean War veterans.

They were dying younger or getting serious illnesses at higher rates than the rest of the population.

And during the war itself, of the 516 Canadians who died in Korea, most  were killed in combat. But eerily, 24 are listed as having “died of disease.”

It seemed as if  some kind of Korean War curse was at work. It baffled the vets and their families and almost everyone who studied it. Their lobby group, the Korean Veterans Association, tried to get Veterans Affairs in Ottawa to investigate … no one ever said “No” exactly, but nothing ever seemed to happen.

“No kidding!” you say. “Ottawa bureaucrats did nothing? Oh, how could this be?“

But hang on. This story goes down a different road.

Korea was a dreadful place to fight a war. It was bitterly damp and unbearably cold, or else crushingly hot with drenching downpours; topped off by a string of skin ailments such as ringworm. All of this was exacerbated by fighting in a primitive countryside enhanced by generations of human waste.

The Korean countryside was wild primitive, unsanitary ... and unhealthy

Col. Jim Stone, commanding officer of Canada’s first troops in Korea (2PPCLI),  himself came down with some mysterious ailment (perhaps smallpox) that he caught in an abandoned farm a month before leading his men into battle at Kapyong.

Soldiers have told me of going into action for weeks at a time, with only a blanket for protection. Stone forbad his men to use sleeping bags for fear they’d be trapped and unable to get free in time, if attacked. So they lived and slept in holes in the ground, protected by just that blanket.

One Kapyong veteran told me “soon we became sort of a brown colour. Like dirt.“

After the war, suspicions arose among vets that there was something nasty about the Korean countryside that was linked to the failing health of many veterans. The KVA found that veterans from other countries, such as the US and the UK, were encountering similar ailments.

Then one ingenious Korean vet, Leslie Peate of Ottawa, discovered that Australia had done not one study into all this, but three; involving that country’s Monash University.

 (As a quick aside, Monash U. is named after Sir John Monash, the remarkable Australian commander during World War 1 and one of the rare bright lights among the military brass on our side . Monash was also Jewish and his reaching high command tells us something pleasing about the open, free-wheeling nature of  Australian society.)

Peate described all this in an article,  “A Noxious Cocktail“ for Esprit de Corps magazine in 1997. He found that Aussie investigators (at Monash and elsewhere) discovered there were 40 toxic chemicals troops had been exposed to and sixteen diseases to which the soldiers had no natural immunity, including one nicknamed “The Manchurian Bug”, which had a mortality rate of  41 per cent per among American soldiers. Particularly treacherous, it could lie dormant for years before taking its toll.

Malaria, thought to be something mostly U.S. Marines and GIs got in the South Pacific, took on a new life and became a real problem in Korea. The wide use of Paludrin in Korea, Peate writes, was not as effective a treatment as supposed. And worse … it could lead to such ailments as ulcers and hair loss. And long before Rachael Carson sounded the alarm, DDT to control vermin was widely used to spray bunkers, vehicles and weapons and even sprayed from the air.

Peate quotes an afflicted British veteran as saying all this added up to a “cocktail of contamination.”

Peate writes that in the late 90s, the KVA surveyed its members:

“ … ten per cent of the veterans died within the last two years, 59 per cent suffer from arthritis, 40 per cent from nervous disorders, 39 per cent from heart problems,25 per cent have allergies and 24 per cent each report respiratory ailments, skin afflictions and, surprisingly, malaria. Seventeen per cent report that they suffer from cancer.”

He quotes an Australian investigator: if an army “wanted to choose a country in the early 50s that would expose their troops to the greatest heath risks, Korea would
have headed the list.”

So far; so bad; but this is a good news tale, not one of bureaucratic boneheads.

Canada’s Veterans Affairs made no further studies  … “Aha!” you say … but wait for it. Instead,  in 2007 Canada simply accepted Australian evidence. Ottawa decided that Korean service was a legitimate cause of certain ailments which include eight forms of cancer and respiratory diseases. These, and  certain circulatory ailments, may be eligible for pensions on that basis.

Adjudicators were instructed to give such veterans “the benefit of doubt,” based on Australia’s groundwork.

So, remarkably, the decent thing was done; thanks to common sense in Ottawa, and to untiring persistence by Canadian veterans. And especially, also, to the dogged footwork by those enlightened Australians.

It’s due largely to them that  the bar bill for those “cocktails of contamination” is finally being paid.

Barney Danson: A gentle Gentleman

Barney Danson had a heart as big as Mt Everest and a smile that could stop a Mack truck.

Canada’s defence minister  for Trudeau, it was no easy task working for a boss who had mostly contempt for the military. But Barney soldiered on and was one of the best
friends the average Canadian rifleman ever had in Ottawa. As Peter Newman once said, he was the only defence minister in a quarter century who made any difference.

Danson  was a Liberal MP for over a decade; but it was always hard to think of him as a politician.

Barney was the gentlest, most non-partisan, least acidic person on Parliament Hill. When he was eventually defeated (by a Tory), who should phone up to offer condolences, but John Diefenbaker.

A great “gentleman” in that Victorian sense, Barney would be utterly out of place in today’s Ottawa. He was an easy man to love.

Barney maintained his interest in military affairs long after he left office. He was a chancellor of the Royal Military College and played a major role in launching the new War
Museum in Ottawa (where a theatre is named after him).

He remained devoted to the cause of veterans and helped raise funds for a television documentary series “No Price Too High” which was broadcast on CBC.

A sergeant in the Queen’s Own Rifles, Barney had been in the thick of the vicious fighting in Normandy.

A few years ago he wrote a charming autobiography “Not Bad for a Sergeant.”

He was virtually blind by this stage because of a degenerative disease in his remaining eye. His book was later made available for the visually impaired by the CNIB, a cause to which he became increasingly devoted.

Two years ago, when I was thinking of writing my own book on Kapyong and the Korean War, I consulted Barney, asking him if it was a worthwhile project or a self-indulgent whimsy. Press on, he said, it is gravely important that Canadians know such tales. And after the publication of Kapyong this spring, I was asked to record it for the CNIB. I thought of Barney and quickly did so.

On the 60^th anniversary of D-Day in 2004, Barney and I wandered together down the rural road where he almost died in the Normandy countryside. It was then (and still is), a quiet country lane between two fields, looking for all the world like a scene from a Van Gogh painting, with a great blue sky and glorious sunflowers among the wheat fields.

Suddenly mortar or artillery rounds came crashing down all around. Barney pointed toward the horizon to show me where he thought the enemy gunners had lain in ambush. He never saw them, but they saw him. Danson was wounded after only a day or so in combat. He almost died, lost one eye and damaged the other.

Later during our Normandy journey, we went to the Canadian war cemetery at nearby Beny-Sur-Mer, the last resting place for 2,000 Canadians (and a French resistance fighter who died fighting alongside the Canadians, but who had no known family. So in death, the Canadians became his countrymen).

Barney had visited these graves many times before. It was unthinkable that he would be in the neighborhood, as he put it, “and not drop by to say hello to old friends.”

Three particularly close friends, killed in the Normandy fighting, are buried here. “”We were closer than brothers,” he would tell me.

On each visit over the years, Barney would always put little pebbles on their headstones, an ancient Jewish custom. And he did so again when I was with him. He then began to quietly cry. I asked him: did he think there’d ever be a time when he’d  stop crying for his lost friends?

“No,” Barney said. “I think I’ll cry for them forever.”