Dundurn, Toronto, 2011
198 pp., illus., $22.99 paperback
In August 1953, a Canadian Press reporter filed a story about eleven Korean War veterans arriving at the Sea Island airport in Vancouver. The Canadian troops had been captured and imprisoned during the three-year war and were about to be repatriated. Noting the former POWs’ “laconic” demeanour, the CP reporter stopped Private Ronald Watson and asked him if his imprisonment in communist North Korea had really happened. “No, it never happened,” Watson kibitzed. “Let’s forget it ever happened.”
If it had been long-time CBC TV reporter Dan Bjarnason asking the questions back then, and any of the seven hundred Canadian troops who fought and won the battle at Kapyong in the middle of the Korean War answering, Canadians’ perception of this crucial fight and of the entire war might have enjoyed more attention. As a journalist and documentary producer, Bjarnason has often reflected on the nearly forgotten April 24–26, 1951, battle at Kapyong. This spring, Dundurn published his first book on the subject — Triumph at Kapyong: Canada’s Pivotal Battle in Korea.
“Kapyong is a sure-fire thriller,” he writes. “It has all the ingredients of a terrific saga, full of gunfire and danger, of heroism and sacrifice. It’s also full of Canadians. It’s the classic story of the few against the many.”
Kapyong, as Bjarnason points out in this instantly readable two-hundred-page book, is the story of seven hundred members of the second battalion of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry sent into the United Nations Forces line to plug a hole. Beginning on the night of April 24, 1951, more than five thousand battle-hardened Communist Chinese troops swarmed the valley of the Kapyong River to surround and annihilate the Canadian positions. And yet, the Canadians held on. Outnumbered seven to one, the PPCLI troops successfully drove off repeated attacks that could have led to the fall of the South Korean capital city of Seoul and defeat in the war, instead of the eventual stalemate and armistice in July 1953.
As he has done effectively in his news items about the war, Bjarnason has searched out key individuals at the heart of battle for his book. Through those individuals, he has refocused attention on Canada’s role in the UN-sponsored defence of South Korean sovereignty south of the thirty-eighth parallel, a defence that cost more than five hundred Canadian lives. And, in the telling, the author has proved the Canadians’ soldiering notable and their stories quotable.
Among them, Bjarnason spotlights the herculean efforts of platoon commander Mike Levy. A Second World War veteran, Levy led his 10th platoon of Dog Company, PPCLI, to victory, despite the odds. Bjarnason describes Levy’s leadership in the heat of battle — darting from foxhole to foxhole and directing the fire of his troops — as “a product of character rather than training.”
During a lull in the battle, the author explains, Levy heard a Chinese officer demanding that his troops advance “to kill the American pigs.” Fluent in Chinese, Levy shouted back, “We are Canadian[s] … we have lots of Canadian soldiers here.” Finally, with waves of Communist troops about to overwhelm his position, the young lieutenant recommended DFSOS — Defensive Fire and SOS, or firing on his own position. The tactic drove off the Chinese offensive and, oddly, earned his superior officer the Military Cross.
“[Levy’s] bravery and integrity was the stuff of legend,” Bjarnason writes.
Ultimately, like the war itself, the battle was forgotten. “A great pity,” Bjarnason writes, “[since] the Kapyong story sparkles with qualities that Canadians like to believe make up their national character: courage, initiative, modesty, and an unprecedented, rock-solid belief in themselves.”
One wonders, had Bjarnason and his reporting skills been present back in 1951, if Kapyong’s legacy today might be one of nationwide remembrance, rather than a nearly forgotten footnote.
— Ted Barris (Read bio)
Ted Barris teaches journalism at Centennial College in Toronto. His book, Deadlock in Korea: Canadians at War 1950–1953 was originally published in 1999, and is now available in paperback from Thomas Allen Publishers.