Triumph at Kapyong by Dan Bjarnason

Author:Dan Bjarnason [Bjarnason, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Korean War, Canada, General
ISBN: 9781459700147
Google: uIJte22AefwC
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2011-03-02T04:55:30+00:00

On April 18, they were taken out of the line and replaced by South Korean troops. The Patricias went into a rest zone a few miles from a nothing little village. It was Kapyong.

The Chinese armies were disengaging from the front, such as it was, following their strategy of withdrawing in the face of strength, and re-grouping for a decisive engagement. On the night of the 22nd, the Chinese opened their new offensive. The plan was to force a hole in the front, charge through the gap, and make for Seoul or wherever fortune presented a promising opportunity.

The first blow fell on the hapless ROK (Republic of Korea) 6th Division. By about eight o’clock, they had smashed into the South Koreans, just north of Kapyong. The Chinese had found the weakest point in the line. By eleven o’clock the South Korean commander had lost contact with his army and his troops were fleeing their posts, abandoning their weapons, and equipment. The Patricias and the rest of the commonwealth division were no longer in reserve. They were back in the war.

That same afternoon, some Canadian officers were visiting a nearby New Zealand artillery base that was hosting a goodbye party for some British troops. In an offhanded way they noticed refugees began streaming by. The phone rang. The message: “A bit of a sticky wicket is developing at the front.”44

The party was over. Everyone raced back to their units.

Stone had just returned to his Battalion, just recovered from smallpox he probably caught in an old abandoned Korean farm a month earlier.

Sergeant Alex Sim noticed a flurry of meetings: “Suddenly senior NCOs and officers were gathering. I thought ‘Oh Oh!’ For some strange reason in the back of my mind a very small light flickered and I thought: something is wrong. Then the light went on. I don’t know why I did it but I did. I started issuing ammunition and grenades to my troops. Later I was told the front had collapsed and were moving up to plug holes.”45

The Kapyong area is at the intersection of north-south and east-west roads. To anyone wanting to break into the South, Kapyong would be a front door. If you wanted to lock that door, you had to control Kapyong. Two streams met at Kapyong, forming a Y-shaped depression between two steep hills. The Chinese would come along the valley floor between those hills. Control those two hills: you control the valley.

The right hill, Hill 504, was assigned to the 3RAR, the Third Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, and an American tank unit, the 72nd Heavy Tank Battalion. They were to dig in on the north slopes. Their time at Kapyong would be both heroic and terrible.

A mile or so to the west, on their hill, would be the Patricias. The men atop these two hills had no protection on either side and were highly vulnerable to flanking attacks in which they could be surrounded.

It’s the kind of question they’d put to young officers in a classroom exercise: you’re surrounded.

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