Fred Gaffen - Dundurn Korean War Library Bundle: Fighting Words / Korea / Triumph at Kapyong / Deadlock in Korea / Cross-Border Warriors

Kapyong is the perfect example of the perfectly fought defensive battle.

It is a thrilling story, but is now largely an invisible battle from the Forgotten War in Korea six decades ago. It is about as far removed from us as the Second World War was from the Riel Rebellion. Kapyong is about one April night in 1951, when freshly minted, hopelessly outnumbered Canadian soldiers made a desperate stand on a rocky hill near a nothing village on the edge of nowhere.

Korea was largely a war at night, in small groups, fought to grab control of hilltops. It was a war of patrols and ambushes; of snipers and prisoner snatches. There were no Vimy Ridges here, or Normandys. In Korea, Canadians usually died in little batches of fives and sixes. But not always. Sometimes there were awful battles where positions were swamped by Chinese human-wave attacks. Kapyong was one such terrible fight. It was Canadas first battle in the Korean War.

This is the story of only 700 men, all volunteers, in the 2nd Battalion of Princess Patricias Canadian Light Infantry, whod signed up specifically to fight, and fight specifically, in Korea. The story is about how on this lonely night they found themselves surrounded and cut off by 5,000 tough, seasoned Chinese veterans sweeping around their positions.

It was a terrifying battle-in-the-dark that had the feel of a Canadian Thermopylae; the several hundred against the several thousand; with hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets, shovels, and rifle butts when ammunition and grenades ran out; with foxholes lost and retaken; and with calling down artillery fire on their own positions.

Kapyong is also about what did not happen. The Canadian position held on, despite everything. The hill did not fall. The Korean capital, Seoul, only a few miles away, was not laid open to a Chinese breakthrough. The Chinese assault was blunted and led to nowhere. And so, the Korean War did not end abruptly in April 1951 in a communist victory.

Its a matter of some resentment to Canadian soldiers who came later to the war that it is Kapyong that resonates. No one now gives a second thought to the other awful battles that followed, where Canadians fought and died in human-wave attacks just like those at Kapyong; places with drab names like Hill 419, Hill 532, Hill 355, Hill 97, or Hill 187. But, however unfairly, no one remembers any of this now. It is Kapyong that has captured the popular memory of what little is recalled of our war in Korea.

There is only room for one event that symbolizes a countrys wartime experience. For the Russians, among a thousand battles against the Nazis, it is surely Stalingrad. For the British, in their years upon years of fighting Napoleon, it is Waterloo, and also, perhaps, Trafalgar, though no one ever talks about meeting your Trafalgar. For Americans, the iconic Iwo Jima flag-raising on a South Pacific flyspeck has come to stand for their entire Second World War experience.

And so it is Kapyong that is Canadas singular Korean War memory.

As sailors in the Royal Navy must have felt the hand of Nelson or Drake on their shoulder during the darkest days of the war against the U-boats, it is knowing of past heroism and sacrifice that sustains generations that follow through the most fearsome hours and blackest nights. That is why tradition, so quaint a concept to many civilians, is so priceless to armies. If scarcely any civilian now has ever heard of Kapyong, every Canadian soldier in todays army surely knows of it and what happened there. Kapyong is a sure-fire thriller. It has all the ingredients of a terrific saga, full of gunfire and danger, of heroism and sacrifice. Its also full of Canadians. Its the classic story of the few against the many.

An American Civil War general argued that battles arent won by the generals, no matter how brilliant they are. A generals job is to get his soldiers to the battlefield. After that, its all up to his men. Will they fight or not fight? Generals can lose battles, but to win battles, well, thats determined by the men. Jim Stone, the gruff, hawk-nosed commander who led the defence at Kapyong, agreed.

Long after the battle, twenty years later, he told a younger generation of Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) officers the most important weapon in their arsenal was a factor that was almost spiritual, although such a hard man would never have used that soft phrase.

There was something of much greater importance at Kapyong than the tactics of defence, he told his audience. Kapyong demonstrated that morale, spirit of the troops, or call it what you will, is probably the most important factor in battle; and all the logistical support, the finest plans and the many other factors that are considered as requirements to fight a battle are subsidiary to it.1

The 2nd battalion of the Patricias went to Korea because they volunteered. They wanted to be there. At Kapyong, they had simply decided they could, despite the awful arithmetic, tough it out alone on their rocky hill and prevail.

It is an utter enigma why the Korean War, and the story within it of Kapyong and other valiant stands, has vanished from this countrys memory. Its more than the Forgotten War: its the war that never happened, scarcely touched on in high school history courses.

It is a fantasy to believe this countrys military story is one of dedication to neutrality and peacekeeping. We have a long history as a people in arms. This country fought in the Boer War, sent a 6,000-man force to intervene in the Russian Civil War, and, of course, was a major player in the two greatest wars in history. Canada was one of the founding members of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance specifically formed to be prepared for war with the Soviet Union. To back up our commitment to fight, we had hundreds of fighter aircraft and thousands of troops permanently stationed in Germany until the mid-1990s when the Cold War ended. Lester B. Pearson, who was a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was one of NATOs most passionate defenders and did not automatically reject force as an instrument of national policy. Canadians (in a pre-Confederation Canada) as individuals volunteered and fought in Cubas war of Independence in the 1800s, and one man, Toronto-born William Ryan, was captured and executed by the Spanish. His portrait, flanked by a Canadian flag, is displayed at a memorial in Havana today where Ryan is an honoured hero in Castros Cuba. Canadians in their tens of thousands fought in the American Civil War. In the Spanish Civil War no country aside from France had a greater proportion of its population involved. Canadians were with Castro in the hills fighting and running guns to his guerrillas. Other Canadians went to Rhodesia to fight guerrillas there. Many Canadians have fought for Israel in its many wars against the Arabs, and one of this countrys most illustrious Spitfire pilots, Buzz Beurling, died in a mysterious crash while running arms to the fledgling Jewish state. About 30,000 Canadians volunteered to fight in Vietnam, including the son of a chief of the Canadian defence staff, who died there in the battle for Hue. Almost 120 Canadians have been killed in U.N. peacekeeping missions, including nine who died in a U.N. plane deliberately shot down by the Syrians in 1974. In Korea, fifty Canadians were killed in the two years after the armistice was signed.

It is simply untrue to believe this is a nation without a military tradition. And so it remains baffling why Korea, and Kapyong in particular, has been air-brushed out of our national story. Max Hastings, the British military historian, has suggested that if the Canadians at Kapyong had been massacred and no one had come down off the hill alive well thats the way to be remembered in history books. But thats the history that happily didnt happen.