Hill 355, Bravery, Tragedy

Transcription

1 The Korean War Veteran Internet Journal - March 27, 2012 They fought They held... Hill 355, Bravery, Tragedy The sharp end of Hill 355 looking toward Vancouver Outpost and Hill 227. Taken on October 24 by Lt Brian F. Simons, RCCS, RCR signals officer (later Lieutenant Colonel).

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3 Canadian Ambassador Denis Comeau adjusts small Canadian Flag after placing humble wreath at summit of Hill 355 in 2003 before ending his tour of duty in Korea. It was something he wanted to do to pay homage symbolically to all Canadians who fell in the Korean War. From the summit, as all who served there know, when the sky is clear, as it was that day, one can see all the way down the valley to the Saimichon River, where just beyond to the East lies the infamous Hook position. There was no fanfare, no release of photographs on this occasion. It was just something that Ambassador Comeau wanted to do. Shown with him is Colonel Jules Wermenlinger, then the Canadian Defence Attache in Seoul. The sign welcomes UN inspectors to the summit of Hill 355 and OP/CP of the ROK commanders. Farewell to Korea Painting Fund Canadian veteran/artist Ted Zuber is undertaking a huge canvas that will depict Hill 355 and be dedicated to all Canadians who served in Korea. It will be presented to the People of Korea as a final farewell gift of the Canadians who served there. The freedom Koreans enjoy today is their real gift, left there by the suffering and the wounded and the shell shocked and the thousands who served. The painting will be a reminder to future generations in Korea that the Canadians were there and that they gave them that freedom. Donations to the $30,000 project can be made by cheque to Sandra Delorme Elliott Treasurer KVA Unit Islandview Drive Amherstview, ON K7N 0A5 Funding is needed and the appeal is made to all Korean War Veterans, and others who may wish to contribute. The fund is under the oversight of Terry Wickens, past national president of the Korea Veterans Association of Canada and now president of the association s Ontario Region. Kindly send an message to advise of donations that have been made to the Korean War Veteran publication koreavetnews@aol.com The painting will be presented in memory of ALL Canadians who served.

4 It will be permanently displayed in the corridor foyer leading into the United Nations Room of the expansive War Memorial of Korea in Seoul. Liaison with the War Memorial of Korea is being kindly provided by the Canadian Defence Attache in Seoul, Colonel Jacques Moreau. Main building and entrance to the indoors portion of the War Memorial of Korea There are a few pieces of the great Kowang San, Hill 355, located in various places to commemorate that huge hill. It is symbolic in the minds of tens of thousands of Canadians who served in Korea during the last two years of the Korean War. Sometime in 2001, the then Canadian Defence Attache in Korea undertook a personal mission. Colonel Chip Bowness, who is a professional engineer and was commissioned in the Royal Canadian Engineers, went with ROK officers onto the high summit of Hill 355. Some of them were skittish of land mines and stayed precisely on the track they followed.

5 Chip Bowness, who spent two years in Cambodia in charge of mine clearing operations, was respectful but less wary of those hazards, though Hill 355 remains heavily mined and is filled with old incoming rounds. Bowness selected two suitable multi-ton boulders that had temperature fissures and could be easily extricated with the right equipment. He made arrangements for ROK Army engineers to undertake their removal at some later date. Bowness, serving as mine clearance specialist in Lebanon, returned to o participate in dedication and Consecration of the Monument to Canadian Fallen in Ottawa. He then took up an empty sandbag and moseyed around the position, mindful that many Canadians and soldiers from other countries had been killed on those very slopes half a century before. He painstakingly selected rock chards and dug out shrapnel that had been there all through the years, and many bullets as well, that were bent and distorted from striking. Bullet cartridges were mostly corroded away and there was not a metal bullet charger one, though in many places the trenches used to be filled with them and their clinking could be heard as soldiers inadvertently kicked them while moving by night. That was the on-site, open air, active part of the mission. The follow-up included supplications to Korean governmental environment authorities, for though it is in the DMZ, Kowang San is on the South Korean side, or considered so, and its territory is protected by all of the bureaucracies. Then, too, the governmental groups in Korea must approve the movement of soil or fauna from one location to another, to prevent possible contamination or other ill effects. A couple of months after the vigil the ROK Army, without fanfare, delivered two huge boulders at the sculpting studio of artist Yu Young-Mun, located near a quarry in Pochon, near the old Canadian 25th Brigade headquarters.

6 Vince Courtenay with newly delivered monoliths from Hill 355, extracted by the ROK Army. Yes, that is the rear of the studio where artist Yu Young-mun modeled and made the plaster splashes for the Monuments to Canadian Fallen. Proud to have worked there with him. One monument today stands in the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan, and a second, slightly larger version is sited in its own park on Slater Street in Ottawa.

7 Chip held meetings with the architectural firm designing what would be the new Canadian embassy building in Seoul, and asked them to incorporate the Hill 355 stones in some way into the new structure. The architects pledged they would work them into the foyer atrium in suitable fashion. Until the new building was built, the Canadian embassy had operated from two rented floors of the old Kolon Building near Seoul City Hall, in the heart of the city's downtown sector. Chip also made good on two promises. He somehow (I believe he snuck it home in his luggage) delivered a large chunk of one of the monoliths to the Royal 22e Regiment and I believe that it is now respectfully displayed at the Citadel in Quebec City. He also delivered one to the Royal Canadian Regiment s headquarters. Later, when he returned to Canada, Chip s assistant, Warrant Officer Jerry Tummillo, brought back a sack filled with the Hill 355 fragments, bullets and shrapnel. These were distributed to veterans who had served on the huge hill, including one who had been wounded there and grabbed onto a chunk of the shrapnel like it was worth a million dollars. To him, it probably was! The others held the little stone chips respectfully, distant looks on their faces. No doubt all of them could see that great hill once again. Chip had left Korea when they built the new Canadian embassy in Seoul. He had retired from the Canadian Army and was a mine clearance specialist for the United Nations. He had worked covertly in Lebanon and some other Middle East locations, then moved to Bangkok where he was the United Nations mine clearance administrator for continental Asia. Had he been there in Korea and able to influence use of the stone, there might have been a much more impressive result. The designers cut one of the monoliths and utilized only a small portion, a section less than one meter wide and only a few centimeters deep. They planted it in the arboretum. It had taken a long time for that project to be completed. Another attaché, Colonel Jules Wermenlinger, also an engineer, had come and served a two-year assignment and was gone. Still a third engineer, Colonel Steve LaPlante, a spark plug like Bowness, took over as defence attaché.

8 He could not influence the final design and completion of the expansive foyer, but did provide inputs and he gave the arboretum an appropriate name, The Stone Garden. This signifies both the stone withdrawn from the great Hill 355 and also dedicates the place to the venerable Colonel Jim Stone, who led Canada s first unit to serve in Korea, the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia s Canadian Light Infantry. The 2nd Patricias had been in the war when the line was moving. Hill 355 and other positions along what today is the Demilitarized Zone were captured and occupied in September and October of Thereafter the great Hill 355 was defended seamlessly by a procession of proud regiments from England, the United States, Canada (in chronological order) and other nations. Canada s The Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR) held the position from early August, 1952 through early November, a three month period in which the fighting was intense and allied forces for the first time were feeling the new might of massed artillery fire that the enemy could deploy. The shells killed and wounded throughout the three months. One officer, Lieutenant Cyril Harriott was fatally wounded by shellfire within a few hours of stepping foot on Hill 355. Another, Lieutenant Dan Loomis (later major general) was wounded leading a fighting patrol against the enemy, but returned again to Hill 355, refusing evacuation to Canada. He served in the lines at night and underwent medical treatment and rehabilitation therapy behind the lines by day. Loomis was one of the June, 1952 graduates of the Royal Military College of Canada. To fill vital junior officer positions, the entire graduating class had been sent to Korea, right out of the school door! With Loomis in 1 RCR on Hill 355 was Lieutenant Andrew King. Both of them were awarded the Military Cross for bravery. Also serving with them was another RMC June, 1952 graduate, Lieutenant Brian Simon of the Royal Canadian Signal Corps, who was assigned as RCR signals officer. The RCR experienced incoming shellfire from an initial barrage of 1,000 rounds, then it dropped but recurred from time to time until the barrages were escalated to well over 1,000 rounds in a single day. On the night of October 23-24, the rounds that came in were uncountable, but were estimated at more than one thousand in

9 seven to ten minutes minutes. The count for the full day was six thousand rounds of all types. Lieutenant Dan Loomis, whose company was in a position adjacent to the forward Gibraltar position then held by the few men of B Company, said it was a beautiful late autumn evening with a mellow sun turning everything bronzen and the night air was calm and cool. Suddenly the entire summit of Hill 355 rose in flame that extended ten feet or more into the air and pulsed like some wicked fiery dragon was devouring it. The raging fire never stopped for a full ten minutes! Even when the main barrage slackened the entire area was shrouded with a pall of choking black gas from the explosives. Visibility was at zero on many parts of the hill. Imagine the war those good soldiers fought on that hill. Some survived the unparalleled barrage and fought the enemy. Some disappeared from this Earth. Some World War Two veteran officers and senior NCO's who were there said the shellfire was worse than anything they had seen in the battles in Europe. Canada s defence department should have been turned out for the travesty of shortages that was never publicly reported. The entire battalion had less than five hundred soldiers holding the vast position. One company was made up of cooks, clerks, drivers, administrators and men like Lieutenant Loomis who had been wounded and still was receiving medical treatment by day. B Company, then holding the sharp forward end that extended toward the far away Vancouver outpost, had little more than 20 men left at the time. The company had been shelled earlier in the day and many of the Royals had been killed or wounded. The defensive positions had been shattered. Over in an adjacent position, the Princess Patricias was also greatly below strength. Their D Company was seconded to The Royal Canadian Regiment on the night of the attack. That D Company became the RCR s P Company. It s total strength was just 40 men, including three officers. One of the officers was Lieutenant Herbert Pitts (later major general), also a June, 1952 graduate of the RMC who had been hurriedly shipped to Korea. He also would be awarded the Military Cross, but for service on another position. The Royal 22e Regiment, which earlier had shared the Hill 355 defence with the RCR, had to withdraw its decimated company before the battle. The valiant Vandoos were so understrength that they pulled their company off of Hill 355 (The

10 Bowling Alley position) and combined it with another shot up company, and came up with one that was still not at full strength. Instead of four rifle companies the Vingt Deux made do with three. The RCR formed a fifth company to take the place of the withdrawn R22eR company, by pressing to duty all of the echelon and special service troops they could muster. They called it E Company. The number two signals officer of the R22eR was Lieutenant Ramsey Withers, also from the June, 1952 RMC class. Years later he would retire as a full general and chief of the defence staff. The Canadian Army deployed in Korea was holding a brigade section of the line with three battalions forward and fully deployed, yet among the three they had only enough front line troops between them to constitute what would have been less than two full battalions at regulation fighting strength. The soldiers who served on Hill 355 remember that. Perhaps the reason the Korean War was downplayed and not talked about by Canada s defence department officials and the politicians that controlled them was the horrible mess they had in Korea, with every front line soldier being forced to do the job of two or more. The senior officers at DND in Ottawa knew all about it. They authorized the battalions to be committed in their weakened condition. They were trying to do things on the cheap - the very, very cheap without their civilian bosses incurring the wrath or disapproval of their voters. Their shameful rationale was that it had become not such a dangerous war. It breaks one s heart to remember. Yes they fought. And they held. And they were forgotten. Casualties incurred on Hill 355 and by Canadian units on the flanks in the three month period, August 5 through the end of October.

11 Of the small number of Royals in the trenches who served with the 1st Battalion of The Royal Canadian Regiment (Few more than 500 at any given time and always in urgent need of replacements), the following numbers of casualties were sustained while defending Hill 355 from early August, 1952 through the end of October. Wounded in action 113 (six of them for the second time) Killed in action 35 Missing in action In their three-month defence of Hill 355 the Royals, drastically short of troops in every front line company, sustained more than 10 percent of the total number of Canadians who were wounded during the three years of the Korean War. Of those who went missing in action on Hill 355 or on patrols, the remains of two, Lance Corporal John Fairman, of Hastings, Ontario and Private Joseph Kilpatrick of Montreal, were never recovered. They are listed on the Commonwealth Monument to Those With No Known Graves in the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan, along with 14 other Canadians who fell in other locations but whose remains were never recovered. In addition to the RCR losses on Hill 355, on October 17 some kind of horrible training accident near Kure, Japan, caused another 23 casualties, which are not included above. Of them two were listed as killed, 18 were listed as accidentally wounded and three were listed as dangerously ill. The accident was never publicly reported with sufficient explanation. The Patricias on the eastern flank and the Royal 22e Regiment, (R22eR) on the west and northwest flank also sustained casualties in the three-month period. During the three months the R22eR on the hot left flank of Hill 355 suffered 54 casualties, including twelve soldiers killed in action, 41 soldiers wounded and one missing in action. The Patricias, who were fortunate to be positioned on the relatively quiet right flank, opposite Old Baldy, sustained one soldier killed and 17 wounded in action. Earlier, the 2nd Battalion of the Royale 22e Regiment had suffered 13 soldiers killed in action and more than 50 wounded at Hill 355 in November, 1951, when their D Company held a saddle of ground between the huge fortress hill and Hill 227.

12 They were positioned between attacking enemy troops and a battalion of the U.S. Army s 7th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division, who were under massive attack on Hill 355 for a sustained four-day period. The Vandoos bravely interceded and fought the enemy in one of the most gallant actions of the war. After the war the committee on honours would fail to award their battalion an honour for their colour for this remarkable action. The 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricias would hold Hill 355 in June and July of 1953 and would also suffer soldiers killed and wounded, through to the end of the war on July 27. They would see enemy troops in vast numbers emerge from their tunnels and concealed positions and mill about on the hillsides, cooking, doing their laundry, soaking in the warm summer sun. Hill 355 today provides a vital ROK Army observation post in the west central sector of the Demilitarized Zone.