Ted Barris

It was just over a decade ago, as I recall. We were on the eve of a different federal election. The membership of the local Royal Canadian Legion had asked me to address the Remembrance Day banquet. I chose to acknowledge veterans of a forgotten war for a forgotten principle. At the branch, that night, was friend and veteran Bud Doucette. I recognized him and those other Canadian volunteers who fought in the Korean War to uphold the peace charter of the United Nations.

“I felt very proud,” former Lance/Corporal Doucette told me that night. “The war and our service have gone pretty much unnoticed.”

Ten years, or so, have not changed that attitude or its significance.

Another federal election date is just four days away. Coincidentally, a wartime anniversary also falls on this week. And it should probably resonate with Canadians who consider voting an extraordinary privilege. But I would challenge even the most knowledgeable history buff to come up with either the name of the battle or its importance.

Unlike Vimy, Passchendaele, Dieppe, Juno or the Scheldt, the battle that raged – 60 years ago this week – for nearly three days along the banks of a remote river in the middle of Korea is not on the tip of anyone’s tongue.

“Kap’yong was … a Canadian Thermopylae – several hundred against the several thousand,” Dan Bjarnason writes in his new book Triumph at Kapyong, Canada’s Pivotal Battle in the Korean War.

Kap’yong, as Bjarnason points out, is the story of 700 men – members of the second battalion of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (one of the regiments yet serving in Afghanistan) – all volunteers who were sent into the United Nations forces line to plug a hole. Beginning the night of April 24, 1951, more than 5,000 battle-hardened Communist Chinese Forces swarmed up the Kap’yong river valley overwhelming the Canadian positions.

And yet, the Canadians held on – taking and retaking dugout positions, fighting hand-to-hand through three days and nights and even bringing deadly fire of their own artillery down on their ranks to push their enemies back. Ultimately, the hill did not fall. The capital city, Seoul, South Korea, (just kilometres away) did not fall. The war, which the North might have ended decisively at Kap’yong, became a stalemate until an armistice was signed two years later.

My own research of this remarkable piece of Canadiana revealed some unexpected heroes. One was a former Ontario Intermediate A Hockey player Don Hibbs, who remembered the confusion of the battle and “the smell of the weapons, the dust, the dirt and the fear.” Another was an 18-year-old from Vancouver named Wayne Mitchell who stood his ground wielding a Bren gun “doing a cowboy trick,” one of Bjarnason’s sources said, “shooting from the hip.”

And not the least of those who rose to the occasion was another Vancouverite, who’d actually fought behind the lines in Malaya in the Second World War. A young PPCLI lieutenant at Kap’yong in 1951, Mike Levy recommends something called DFSOS (Defensive Fire and SOS, or firing on their own positions). It drives off the Chinese offensive and oddly earned his superior officer the Military Cross. “(Levy’s) bravery and integrity was the stuff of legend,” Bjarnason wrote.

It’s difficult to say why such moments – even in the defence of the UN peace charter – get lost in our history. Historian Jack Granatstein wrote that “Korea was a sideshow in Canadian eyes … in a part of the world that Canadians didn’t pay any attention to.”

Maybe it was the numbers. Of the 700 PPCLI troops at Kap’yong, only 10 were killed and 23 wounded – a remarkable feat against a tougher army that outnumbered the Canadians more than seven to one. But perhaps those casualties pale next to Vimy (3,598), Dieppe (3,367) or Afghanistan (155). Maybe it was a time when Canada was tired of war. Maybe it was too far away for reporters, historians or the public to care.

“The South Koreans remember Kap’yong,” Bjarnason said in a CBC interview. “There’s something honourable about the reasons Canadians were there. It was a noble cause and … these were selfless Canadians. There was nothing in it for them. Nothing material or economic to gain. They wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t think it was a worthy cause.”

Restoring peace and civil/human rights to a war-torn land half a world away probably didn’t seem worthy of notice to most Canadians in 1951. It did, however, at Vimy in 1917. It did in Normandy and Holland in 1944-45. It did in Cyprus in the 1960s. It did in Kandahar in 2002.

I know it’s still seven months until Nov. 11, but since there’s a federal election next week, I care to honour my Korean War vet friend Bud Doucette. And I also think of duty in many ways – including voting.