Canadians in Korea

When the Korean War broke out, Canada immediately dispatched three destroyers to the Far East and committed air transport. Initially, Canada committed one battalion of infantry but reasoned that one battalion would look like a puny contribution and hurt Canada's image on the world stage. What's more, the battalion would probably have to operate within the U.S. command, where it would lose its identity went the argument. A brigade with three infantry battalions and support would fit better with the British Commonwealth Division that would soon be formed. In retrospect, the argument was silly. Even when a single battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) was dispatched to Korea it operated with the British.

The real problem - not enough troops -- prompted a recruitment drive for soldiers for the Special Force for Korea. Since the ground action wasn't expected to last very long, our political leaders believed the troops should be signed for 18 months, allowing five months for training, 12 months in the combat zone and a month to kick about. Everyone who joined was given a bonus of $50 on enlistment.

The $50 bonus was a mistake. Cpl Ed Hollyer, who later won the Military Cross as a lieutenant in Korea, was assigned as escort for three railway cars of volunteers. By the time they were loaded on the train at Toronto many of them had spent their $50 and were well on the way to being drunk. By the time they reached Smiths Falls, a rail division point near Camp Petawawa, most had sobered up and had second thoughts. They left the train in hordes and many never came back.

Lack of personnel during the Korean War plagued the Canadian army but became most severe in the second and third years of the war. Between July and October 24, 1952, Canadian troops had 283 casualties: 74 from the Vandoos, 191 from The Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR) and 18 from the PPCLI.

After that, the Vandoos never had enough replacements to keep them fully operational. At one point, the four rifle companies of the Vandoos had to be reduced to three companies. When the Canadians took over the Hook from the British, the RCR and the Princess Pats alternated on the sharp end while the Vandoos far below strength were used in reserve.

By the spring of 1953, numbers had become critical. When the RCR was overrun on Hill 187, rifle platoons were down by a third to one half. A platoon complement was 33 but Lieutenant Ed Hollyer's platoon, which bore the brunt of the attack, had a complement of only 23 men. Six of those were South Korean called KATCOMs (Korean Augmentation Troops Commonwealth Division). The KATCOMS stood guard with Canadians and served as riflemen and assistants on Brens.

For both Canadian and KCATCOMS, the long nights standing guard in slit trenches became very lonely. Conversation was reduced to grunts and sign language. Faced with language problems, platoon commanders usually sent only Canadians on patrol, increasing the frequency and consequently hazards for the few Canadians in the line.

Back in 1950, about 45 per cent of the Special Force who did go to Korea was Second World War veterans. For many of these adventurers, Korea was their last fling and only a small percentage remained in the army. The army had to train them quickly, preferably out of country, where the hazards of battle training associated with getting soldiers quickly ready for combat would not be insinuated on Canadian sensibilities. The troops were sent to Fort Lewis, Washington. Two days before the Chinese launched its offensive across the Yalu River in North Korea, in the middle of the 1950 Christmas season, 937 soldiers of the Second Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry sailed out of the Port of Seattle with the band playing "So long it's been good to know you." In Korea, the battalion went into battle training where it was more or less able to weed out those either psychologically or physically unfit for fighting in the hills.

Three months later the battalion had a first hand look at the Chinese army from dug in positions overlooking the Kap'Yong Valley, 40 kilometres north of Seoul. For five days the British Brigade, which included the Pats, held off bugle blowing hordes of Chinese from three divisions attacking along a seven-mile front. The Gloucestershire Regiment bore the brunt of the attack and was virtually wiped out on April 21 and 22.

Two days later the third battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment in the same holding action withdrew. Shortly after, the Pats were cut off and surrounded by Chinese, and had to be re-supplied by a U.S. Air Force airdrop.

To survive while the Middlesex Regiment cleared the infiltrating Chinese from the rear, the Pats called down fire on Dog Company, which had been overrun. The stubborn defence of the line gave the U.S. time to set its new defences, and a grateful American nation presented the Pats with a presidential citation. The regiment had suffered 10 killed in action and 27 wounded.

By the time the Chinese were stopped and the United Nation's forces were again on the offensive, the Patricia's had been joined by The Royal Canadian Regiment and Royal Twenty Second Regiment or the Van Doos, along with support. In September, 1951, near the village of Chail-Li just north of the 38th Parallel, the Canadian Brigade's first offensive stalled in a driving rainstorm when Chinese ambushed them just before noon and an undisclosed number of enemy cut off Dog Company of the RCR on a massive hill called Kakhul-Bong, 467 metres above sea level. The Canadian strategists had been too ambitious, allowing three and four mile gaps between advancing companies. Smaller hills than Kakhul-Bong required whole battalions to defend or capture. On Hill 355 or little Gibraltar the RCR created a fifth rifle company, which it called Easy Company, for defence. Canadian battalions in Korea had four rifle companies.

In the subsequent retreat, along the road to the village of Chail-Li the Canadians abandoned some vehicles and three tanks, later recovered by the Vandoos. Six Canadians died and 25 were wounded in the engagement. Following is the account by Lt. Don Stickland, second battalion of The Royal Canadian Regiment, whose platoon was ambushed by a Chinese machine gun group.

"We were given the task of replacing D Company. Half way up the hill we ran into a small enemy machine gun group. We were coming up a well-worn path, more or less spread out. We came just up to the halfway point, to a bit of an open area. When the machine gun opened up, I recognized it was Chinese. Some of our guys got under a rock. Some were left in the open; some were killed outright. I tried to organize a counter attack. Our third section had just disappeared. Seven were wounded in my platoon.

We tried to throw some grenades. There was not much you could do. I could hear all these voices below. Paddy (O'Connor) was the stretcher bearer for the company. He came running up with the stretcher over his shoulder and took cover beside me. After a few minutes, he said, 'To hell with it I'm going after my boys' and stood up. He was right beside me. All of a sudden he rolled over dead. We were all so close. He had been shot three or four times. The stretcher hit the ground and then the first aid kit. Corporal Edmunds had been hit, too. He had a Sten gun round his neck and he asked me to remove it because it was uncomfortable. It all happened so fast I can't remember the details. He died.

We went up to the top of the hill eventually. Some people say they saw hordes of Chinese. Apart from the two Chinese I saw dead in the trench, I never saw any. Rockingham ordered us back. Our men performed marvellously."

On May 29 1951, one day before he was killed, the stretcher-bearer, Patrick O'Connor wrote the following poem.

Korea

By Patrick O'Connor

There's blood on the hills of Korea
'Tis the blood of the brave and the true
Where the 25th Brigade battled together
Under the banner of the red, white and blue
As they marched over the hills of Korea
To the hills where the enemy lay
They remembered the brigadier's order
These hills must be taken today
Forward they marched into battle
With faces unsmiling and stern
They knew as they charged the hillside
There were some who would never return.
Some thought of their wives and sweethearts
Some thought of their mothers too
And some as they plodded and stumbled
Were reverently whispering a prayer.
There is blood on the hills of Korea
It's a gift of freedom they love
May their names live in glory forever
And their souls rest in heaven above.

By the end of November 1951, both the Chinese and United Nations forces dug in across the Korean peninsula and the war turned into trench warfare reminiscent of the First World War with continuous shelling and mortaring, and nightly patrols into no-man's-land. But there were big differences. The communication trenches, unlike in World War One, were narrow and curved sharply every seven or eight feet making it impossible for spraying shrapnel from an exploding shell to do a great deal of damage. Bunkers, while they weren't bomb proof, provided much better protection though they would collapse in an extensive barrage. The timbers on the roofs were 10" X 10" and were covered with a layer of sand bags followed by a layer of rock and then more sand bags. A couple of feet of dirt were thrown over everything. The entrance of the bunker zigzagged protecting the inhabitants from spraying shrapnel from the communication trench.

Over the last year and a half, there were three major attacks on Canadian troops. On the left of Hill 355, the Vandoos for four days in November 51 fought off Chinese attacks coming out of the north, from Hill 227. But while the heavier hit Americans were forced off Hill 355 briefly the sector withheld successive enemy attacks, with the help of defensive fire from mortars, artillery and tanks. The Vandoos had 11 killed and 13 wounded. Eleven months later the RCR on October 23, 1952 were attacked on Hill 355 at 5:40 p.m. The Chinese came in under a heavy artillery barrage and overrun part of Baker Company and shared the sharp end for five or six hours with Canadian soldiers. The RCR had 18 killed and 35 wounded. Fourteen Canadians were taken prisoner.

The following spring on May 2 and May 3, the RCR on Hill 187 were overrun again consequently suffering the heaviest casualties in any one battle in the war. Thirty-three were killed, 41 wounded and 11 were missing in action or taken prisoner.

In between the bigger battles, Korea for the infantryman became a matter of suffering through the regular daily shelling and adjusting to trench warfare. With the increase of automatic weapons and night fighting, the bayonet had limited or no value and was used most frequently as a spike holding a poncho or blanket covering a bunker opening. The blanket kept the light from being seen outside. While infantry soldiers still carried the Lee Enfield rifle, soon to go on sale in Canada for $25 as a deer rifle, it was in its last years, though it still had its advocates. Company commanders during training at Wainwright, Alberta told recruits that "A few well aimed shots can stop an attacking company" and the Americans with their use of automatic weapons simply wasted ammunition on the battlefield. The training advice was abandoned in the first 24 hours at the front. Recruits soon learned that all the fighting occurred at night, sometimes with hordes of attacking enemy, and that patrol firefights lasted only a minute or two and were dominated by automatic weapons. Firefights were like bar fights. The one who got the first lick in won.

Contrary to historical myth, a Canadian infantry platoon in an outpost position was well armed. The platoon had two-30 .cal machine guns and six Brens, a light machine gun. The NCOs and officers carried Sten guns, automatic weapons. All soldiers on patrol carried automatic weapons.

Some people saved their beer ration for two weeks and traded it to American soldiers for a carbine, the weapon of choice. The American M1 could be bartered for half that number of beers. Though the M1 could load easier than the Lee Enfield, it was heavier.

The winter of 1952 and 1953 was brutal. The infantry in the front lines lived in bunkers heated by what was called a drip system consisting of an artillery shell casing perforated with small holes into which a small metal tube attached to a rubber tube was inserted. The whole apparatus was called a drip system because a clamp was attached to the end of the rubber hose permitting the user to regulate the flow of gasoline a drip at a time. The gasoline was in a Gerry can sitting outside the bunker.

Beside the enemy, a front line soldier focussed mainly on finding a place to stay warm. The Chinese put pocket warmers in the Canadian wire at Christmas of 1952, a puzzling act like throwing rocks in the dark to spook the soldiers defending U.N. hills. Canadian soldiers had ox-tail soup in with their grenade cache in the slit trench. Each can had a fuse in the bottom but once heated the can was too hot to handle for several minutes and burned many impatient lips on frosty nights.

The hours of stand-to in the night were long, from 5:00 in the late afternoon to about 8:00 in the morning. After 100 per cent stand-to at last light, soldiers spent two hours on duty in the slit trench and two hours in the bunker where they could stay keep warm.

The main meal of the day came at midnight, delivered in Dixies on the backs of Korean Service Corp soldiers. About three times a week the cooks dropped raw turkey legs into the boiling water in the Dixies and sent them to the front line. When they got to the soldiers, blood was still running from the legs. The cartons in which the turkey came were stamped "not for human consumption." Uneaten turkey was thrown into the barbed wire where the rats, much less fastidious than Canadian soldiers, feasted and multiplied.

Over the long nights the Chinese or North Koreans over loudspeaker from across no-man's-land frequently played sentimental songs. After a while a seductive female voice would say something like "American officers, American soldiers, this is not you war. Go home. A rich American capitalist is in Florida having turkey dinner with your wife, while you are in Korea freezing."

Asked how the propaganda affected him, one young soldier replied: "Not at all. First, I'm not American. Secondly, I'm not married. And thirdly, I don't want to eat any more damn turkey."

Toward the end of the war, a reconnaissance patrol was composed of the patrol leader, radio operator, a dog handler and his dog, along with a sniper with an infra-red scope that enabled a soldier to see about 30 yards in the dark. The patrol dogs, part Malamute and part German Shepherd, alerted like bird dogs when they smelled an oriental, who because of a different concentration of skin pores smell differently from Caucasians. Orientals had to be removed from the trenches while the dogs passed through or the dogs would tear them to pieces. The dogs began conditioning for combat with a beating from a South Korean.

A patrol going into the valley after last light had a troop of artillery, a section of mortars and machine guns as backup. The patrol had certain objectives or places it had to reach and these had code names. On one patrol led by Lieut. Bob Skullion the code names were Brockville, Kingston, Belleville and Oshawa. When the patrol reached Brockville, the radio operator under the patrol leader's direction, lay close to the ground and whispered as softly as he could: "Able one for Able two. Able one for Able two, Brockville, over." Headquarters acknowledged the message and the radio operator whispered
"Roger out."

Just after he went through the minefield gap, going into the Samichon Valley, Lieut. Skullion was spotted by a Chinese lay-up patrol. Unaware of the surveillance, he attributed the single burst of machine gun fire 10 feet ahead of him on the path as coincidental. Artillery, mortars and machine guns fired sporadically through the day and night.

A day or two later, however, a Chinese lay up patrol was spotted near the minefield gap and a sniper was brought in and eliminated the problem.

Half an hour after Lieut. Skullion had gone through the minefield gap and into the valley, he heard a Chinese patrol. The Canadians went to ground and called in supporting fire. The radio operator came on the 300 wireless set and said: "Able one for Able Two. Bandits, Brockville plus 50 yards. Over." Within two minutes, shells began falling. The platoon commander ordered a correction. "Able one for Able two. Brockville, right 50 yards. Over."

When the shelling stopped, the Chinese had disappeared and Skullion's patrol moved silently through the darkness to the next objective. Many historians have criticized Canadian and American soldiers for not moving without artillery or other support, for not being aggressive enough. They don't know what they are talking about. The last thing a patrol wants to do is fire a shot where the flash from the muzzle can be detected. It would take artillery observers on either side only a minute to zero in on the flash. Smart soldiers used their support and applauded when Hollywood actors charged with bayonets during either the day or night. But they'd never follow an officer who believed in such tactics.

Unlike in any other war, Korea required a huge number of support troops, estimated at 18 people to keep one infantryman in the frontline. Battalions of Koreans were used as labour and transported food and equipment to the front line. When Hill 187 was over-run a large number of men in a Korean labour battalion digging trenches on the position were killed. Afterwards, the Korean labourers cleaned up hundreds of unexploded Chinese grenades and carried Canadian dead out on stretchers, a distance of about two miles through narrow trenches, where hands bearing stretchers turned raw from scraping along the rough mud walls and sharp protruding rocks.

The end

On July 23, 1953, Cpl J. Ferlatte of New Brunswick took a dawn patrol consisting of himself and three KATCOMS around the wire on Baker Company position on Hill 159 and skirted the minefields. It was supposed to be a routine patrol but Cpl. Ferlette no more than 400 yards from a dug in Russian tank stepped on an anti-personnel mine and was killed instantly. The three KATCOMS on the patrol were all wounded. Ferlatte was the last Canadian to die in combat in Korea.

On the afternoon of July 27, unlike in World War One when patrols and attacks were ordered the last day of the war and soldiers died, all patrols were cancelled. A fighting patrol in Able Company lolled on the rear slope of a hill position playing poker with American script money under a pleasantly warm sun. They were wearing running shoes and their faces, hands and running shoes were darkened with camouflage paint; automatic weapons and grenades had been cleaned, and the grenades hooked to webbing around to the side and back so they could crawl on their bellies. Helmets had been replaced with balaclavas.

The poker game was broken up about six O'clock with the call to "chop chop" followed by the announcement the patrol had been cancelled. Sometime between five O'clock and six the last artillery shell was supposedly fired and the shell casing designated for a museum in Canada but about quarter to ten a lone artillery shell went over head and that was the last shell anybody heard. Canadian soldiers sat on their parapets and talked about home and girls but still took precautions, pulling a blanket over their heads when they wanted to smoke a cigarette. Their eyes scanned as they had for months the defensive fire zones for probing or attacking enemy.

The Chinese partied all over their hills; they sang to the accompaniment of what seemed like clanging and banging pots and pans. When false dawn broke in the land of the morning clam, wisps of fog rose from the valley floor but it was no longer mixed with gun smoke. Canadians looked across no man's land and as the sun rose were astonished to see that on hills where once dwelt only dangerous phantoms and the threat of death, were covered with hundreds of Chinese. To the right of Baker Company close to where Sergeant Walker and the patrol dog Killer had died in an ambush, the Chinese were hooking up blocks and tackles to a Russian tank, removing the camouflage netting and digging the tank out of the mud. A large banner over the top of the hill across from Baker Company read "May you go home soon."

One odd incident occurred when two Canadian soldiers went through Charlie Company of the RCR and crossed the valley and partook of sake with the Chinese. The soldiers in the ranks thought it was great derring-do but not the colonel. They were both given 60 days in the detention centre at Seoul for fraternizing with the enemy.

The day after the armistice had been announced thousands of non- combatants plugged the road with jeeps and three quarter trucks on a sight seeing tour of the front. They had to be stopped because frontline troops couldn't get their equipment back to the other side of the demilitarized zone.

Canadians in Korea suffered 516 killed and 1,558 wounded, a small number when the compared to World War One and World War Two. However, it was an infantry war and more than 80 per cent of casualties were in the three infantry regiments. Though Canada made the third largest U.N. commitment after the U.S. and Great Britain, the number of troops in the Korean theatre of war was fewer than 5,000 at any one time. Of these, fewer than 1,000 served on the sharp end.>According to the official Canadian history of Korea Strange Battleground only 15 battle deaths were suffered by corps other than infantry.