The Korean War Veteran An independent Internet publication dedicated to the sacrifice and indomitable spirit of those who served in the Korean War.

Love and Duty A Canadian remembers the Korean War

Written by Vince Courtenay

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Love and Duty 60th Anniversary Internet Edition

This Internet Edition is published as a gift to those who served in Korea so long ago

This manuscript and book that is published on the Internet is copyrighted under the laws of Canada, which prevail worldwide. It is prohibited to duplicate or extract from this work in any way in whole or part or to use it in any way for commercial purposes without the express, detailed written permission of the author.

Korean War Veterans organizations may circulate it without deletions or revisions in their official member newsletters, in which the author’s copyright will still prevail.

Published in January, 2011 for the author by The Korean War Veteran Internet News Publication

Cover Art – Major George Flint, officer commanding A Company, 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry leads his men through mountains in February, 1951, getting into position to assault enemy held hill.

This book is a documentary novel. It is written as fiction, but is precise history. All individuals named are real people. All actions and places are authentic.

Published on the Internet January, 2011

© Copyright internationally

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Chapter 1 Rideau Hall

Joe Dowey had taken a leak in the basement level washroom in Rideau Hall. He was there to receive a civilian medal from the Governor General of Canada. When he washed his hands in one of the basins he jerked back. He could see those same hands as they were in Korea half a century before. They were caked with the brown blood of wounded comrades he had helped. He shook away the vision. Dowey was used to seeing the blood show up. Whenever it did he softly heard the far away rifle shots, the shuffles of mortar bombs coming down. Sometimes he sensed shrill shells changing gear and descending and blasting around him, yet muffled. He had lived with that since he was a teenager in Korea. So fighting in the Korean War was not something that he once did; it was something he had done all of his life through memory and flashback. He had not known that a soldier who goes to war does not do it for a few months or a year. It is his life forever. There is much sorrow there. Dowey knew he would collect his medal in front of many honorees and their families. He was confident he would be able to hold down the sprouting imagery from a war that had taken place more than 50 years before. There had been coffee in the mansion’s Reception Room and then a briefing by a young woman captain who was in the Royal Regiment of Artillery. She wore two golden bars on the scarlet ribbon of her Canadian Forces Decoration medal. So she must have had at least 24 years of service and so was not so young, except from Dowey’s senior perspective. A woman’s presence in the military was novel to him, although it had long ago been accepted by the men who served in the Canadian Forces and to them was unremarkable. During the Korean War the only women in army uniform were nurses and paramedical personnel and at least one woman physician from England, whom Dowey had once seen during training. The young captain explained the complex drill for seating the honorees, calling them forward to receive their medals from the Governor General, shaking hands with her and with her husband who was the vice regal consort of Canada, signing of the Chancellery Register, and then returning to their proper seats without wandering astray. It was quite a procedure but would see perhaps 40 people presented with their medals in little more than one hour. Dowey had done many things since leaving the Canadian Army when he was still a teenager. There had been many twists, ups, downs, false starts, stops. In the early years when the exhausting carryover from the war was worse, he had managed to enrol and graduate from college. He had become a very good reporter and news executive and later on changed careers and became a public relations executive. He had worked with some of the best journalists and media hypes in America and Canada. Yet on this special day he felt the 16-year old boy stirring shyly. He spoke with a naval commodore who had led the Canadian naval flotilla in the Enduring Freedom operations in the Persian Gulf. Veterans are quite candid and less inhibited than others, when in the security of their own company. They both agreed that, but for the push from their wives, they never would have amounted to much. Dowey, deep down, believed that he never had been elevated much from his army job of acting lance corporal. He had just found places to hide from the phantoms of the war. But there had been wonder in the army, at first. Back in August, 1950, having just turned 16, such a magnificent thrill it had been! Dowey was in Canada’s reserve army, taking summer training at Camp Petawawa, not far from where he was standing that very day in Ottawa. The Prime Minister had addressed the nation by radio and television to announce the formation of a Special Force brigade to serve in Korea. He went into the recruiting office on the post, a little hut, and within ten minutes had an official letter in his hand instructing him to report to the recruiting depot in London. They had accepted him! When he later approached Canada’s Governor General in the Ballroom that morning in Ottawa his eyes told him she was still a very attractive woman, as she had been when she was a beautiful television personality working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He briefly sized her up and found her naturally desirable. Then he realized he was there to be honoured by her and she was a living symbol of the strange forces that made his Canada; indeed, she embodied the authority of the Queen of Canada. He also reflected that she was not actually a beautiful older woman, but a very attractive woman who was younger than him by several years. He quivered a tad. Her husband sat in the throne beside her, a very lucky man, Dowey reckoned. John Ralston Saul was an accomplished author and also the son of Colonel William John Saul, a famous member of Dowey’s own Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Regiment. Sauls’ father had died some years before. As Her Excellency Governor General Adrienne Clarkson pinned the medal on his chest, Dowey began trembling like a leaf ready to fall. She took his much scarred hand in both of her delicate ones and spoke softly. He could not hear her because more than 100 people in the room were applauding and his ears sang and buzzed as they had when the shells in Korea had near driven him crazy. The war had left not much that worked inside one of them. He had an adolescent desire to kiss her for the woman she was; also one to pea in his pants because she represented the Queen and her strong eyes showed it. Her husband, John Saul had risen in synchrony with his wife. After she had finished honouring him Saul shook Dowey’s hand firmly. He had a natural grace, was quite proper but also in his throne in front of so many, he seemed comfortably at ease, like he was relaxing in his own drawing room – a remarkable social talent. Dowey then signed the register on a desk at the side of the chamber where the Governor General’s Secretary was standing. He shuddered visibly then, fought to get a grip on his feelings. The next honouree had already been brought forward by the Governor General’s Aide-de-Camp. She was a young woman who had done much work in developing organ transplant programs in Canada. She was already being pinned and the applause thundered and rattled his ears more. He put his name in the great log of meritorious and heroic Canadians. He followed the young captain’s earlier instruction and returned to his seat without mishap. He would have been in a dither without her good briefing. He was already thinking of the time when he put that same signature on enlistment papers in 1950. His hand’s scrolled letters were much the same back then. He had been bold and precocious in those days, but underneath timid and apprehensive. He was so again that day in Ottawa; felt more the young teenager than an accomplished man of advanced years. The Royal Canadian Regiment was based in Petawawa when he signed up and still is. In 1950 they frightened him. He saw their soldiers often and they were as spit and polish as Coldstream Guards. He had preferred someone rougher, with more dash and less officiousness. He thought the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was right up his adventurous street. So was their location, a thousand miles away in Calgary, Alberta, near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Of course, he did not know that all three special force infantry battalions would be quite different from their polished home defence battalions. The ones being formed for Korean service were filled with volunteers who were clamouring for action, All of the Special Force soldiers and their units were much alike. Getting to Calgary, the home base of his Regiment had been a grand adventure in itself. Dowey was given a train ticket and enough dining car meal tickets to last for three days. In his tourist car there was a woman of about 30, a waitress traveling west to visit family. He chatted with her, although just 16 by a few weeks. Other recruits in the same car were raucous. He had worn a sports jacket and slacks and good dress shoes, so that gave him a slight edge. At night the porter broke down the seats and opened upper and lower berths. There were green canvas curtains enclosing each one. When he got into the upper berth he grinned widely. He had kibitzed and entertained an attractive older woman. He would soon put on the uniform of the Canadian Army Special Force. To top off a splendidly bold day her slender hand came through the buttoned curtains and she whispered that he should come to her lower berth to look out the window. Once below he made an absurd comment. “I can’t see a thing,” he said. His naivety made her laugh. “Try feeling,” she said. He remembered that the second day he had spent on that train had not been so splendid. He foolishly purchased breakfast in the dining car for the much older woman. She was somewhat reserved, conscious that others were watching them. He was in high spirits, almost giggling. He sat with her after the berths had been knocked down and later he bought her lunch in the dining car, using up most of his last money. She was then speaking to him a bit stiffly; politely but as though he was reaching above his station. It got worse. She would not give Dowey an address in either Toronto or Moose Jaw, saying she was “between places.” She wrote his name and “Currie Barracks, Calgary” on an envelope and said she would get in touch. He tried to kiss her good-bye when she got off in Moose Jaw but she turned her head so that his kiss just touched her chin. She laughed as though he was a mischievous boy playing a prank, and scooted out of his life. He expected her to write, but she never did and that had made him feel cold. Now he had turned away from this beautiful Governor General of Canada after feeling her warm, soft hands and relishing her smile and her voice which he could not hear and she would be gone, too. He knew the pattern of how quickly the nice things can move away. He sat patiently in his seat in the Ball Room next to a former assistant attorney general of Canada, who was on his right and the woman who had championed transplant donations was to his left. He listened to the citations being read by the Governor General’s Secretary, waited for the investiture service to end. He thought of Currie Barracks in Calgary. The Special Force soldiers of the Patricias 2nd Battalion lived in shabby tarpaper H-huts left over from World War Two. Their permanent army comrades of the spit and polish airborne 1st Battalion lived in white stucco buildings, two to a room, like students in a dormitory. Dowey had looked for a decent girl during the short time he spent there. A young idealist always looks for somebody special and he had looked for her in the accessible places like beer halls, and she was never there. In such places soldiers might fight each other desperately for one night stands. Others called the women sluts who hung out in them, but he did not. One woman in Calgary was known as Strathcona Jane, because she allegedly slept with so many troopers from the Lord Strathcona’s Horse, Royal Canadians. Dowey could not remember the bawdy nicknames of the rest. That they did not much mind those references tells one something about them. At least he thought they seemed not to care much, but maybe he had been very wrong. Many women in their unfortunate circumstances hide their pain well. They were looking for something more than a roll in the hay, too, and the callous soldiers took advantage and abused them. One of the girls was a decrepit Indian lady, or Aboriginal lady as Canada now calls its original people. She was not much pretty and had a gimpy leg and a lung problem. She hung out in the second floor level roughhouse dance hall the Patricias and Strathconas went to. She could always get picked up by a suitor after the prettier ones had been matched up for the night. Gimpy leg and cough or not, she would never go home alone, unless she chose to. One night when Dowey went onto the fire escape balcony to take a leak he saw her below in the alley. She was with a young fellow named Moon. Moon had joined the army with one blind eye. He had been found out or let them find out on purpose and was waiting for his discharge. The girl had a considerable list because one leg was much shorter than the other. Moon was trying to mount her standing from the front. He stepped away, picked up a cement building block and put it beneath the foot of her short leg. When they went at it she began huffing and cooing and he was grunting. Then she started hacking and coughing but young Moon held his ground, until he turned away quickly. “Aw shit!” she yelled with breaking voice. “You wasted the best part! Kin ya do it agin?” That was home on the range in the rolling foothills of southern Alberta. Dowey and the others would long for that moderately sordid life when they got into the windy hills of Camp Wainwright. Such a shameful recollection to have when he had just been complimented by the beautiful Governor General of Canada and had shaken hands with her and her husband! Still they were natural and not dishonourable ramblings of mind and he felt quite innocent. Dowey and the other recruits had soon moved to Camp Sarcee, just outside of Currie Barracks in Calgary. They lived in tents for a few days and part of the training involved rolling out of the backs of trucks. It sounds stupid and was, but they did it, hitting the dusty road like hooked carp, thumping and rolling and getting sprains and scrapes. From there they went by troop train to Camp Wainwright, which was an absolutely horrid place in those years. There was a small camp of wooden huts, but the Special Force soldiers weren’t billeted there. They were put under canvas on the wretched rolling prairie foothills with the coyotes and the cutting weeds and the alkali ponds. There they baked under a merciless sun by day and shivered their asses off in the refrigerator of night. At night the Northern Lights danced gaily, majestically, slowly. Sometimes they could hear them sputter. The friggin’ coyotes howled and yipped and yapped. While in Wainwright, most got to spend a few nights revelling in the town, which was about ten miles from the wretched camp. The town’s roads were not paved and when it rained the mud was well over the tops of the thick soles of their polished black boots. Dowey did not like the sweetish Alberta beer. The old brick Wainwright Hotel that served it could have been a good prop for a comic western movie. It was so crowded that waiters made their way through the standing soldiers by balancing full trays of beer high over their heads. A chair at a table was a treasure. Staying out of fights was an achievement. There was much shoving and bad mouthing and spilling of beer. An accidental nudge against someone might get back a mighty shove and then a fist would fly and blood spray. A fight in that place would have several men shoved or hit and so would spread to a brawl very quickly. Wise men got out, if they could make their way through the others Young men filled with beer surely are not wise. When all of the honorees had received their medals at Rideau Hall they broke from the ceremony and went into a large reception chamber near the main entrance. Two very ample bars were set up. The others began drinking liquors and wines. Dowey could not. He had lost part of his stomach some years before and was on the sick list for more surgery. Still, he sipped a soft drink, watched the revellers. There was a retired major from Dowey’s Regiment in the scrum. Major Roderick Middleton had received a decoration for his years of civilian service running a military museum in Calgary and for his devoted efforts to log and disseminate the history of soldiers who had served in the Korean War. He was there with his wife or many years. He had proposed to her by mail from the front in Korea. Dowey had always liked him. He had served with him for awhile in Korea when Middleton was a young lieutenant and he had met him five years before the ceremony when both of them had visited Korea as veteran delegates with Canada’s Minister of Veterans Affairs. They had stayed in touch since then by telephone. “I might be sitting at her table.” Middleton said. He meant the Governor General and was obviously delighted by the prospect. They would have luncheon after the drink service ended. Dowey thought it would be a nice honour for him, although he had connived with the Governor General’s Secretary to be seated alongside Middleton and that would upset the plan. Middleton asked Dowey very gently about his coming surgery and Dowey acknowledged that it was on the serious side; removal of a cancerous tumour. He had to fight a throat that strained his voice and set extra water in his eyes. Middleton nodded and wished him all the best. Old soldiers do not linger over their wounded or their dead. They bury the loss where it does not show.

Chapter 2 Early Training

Dowey’s platoon had its first casualty at Camp Wainwright. Some of the new Patricias were staggering home one night when a car came on them. The driver no doubt was drunk because he went off the road and ran one of them down. It was a hit and run. The young soldier died a few days later in the Wainwright Hospital. Dowey had visited him on the day that he passed. He took with him a blow up toy he had bought in the town drugstore. It was a plastic whale a child might use as a swimming aid. He laughed when Dowey dropped it onto his bed. It had the word “Flubber” printed on it. Later he had been laughing when the nurses hung it from the ceiling on a string. That night his surgery came undone and he bled to death. There was a black man in Dowey’s platoon named Jimmy. He came into the tent that night and shook him awake. “You an’ your fluvver! You kilt our poor boy!” Dowey knew that he didn’t and was sorry that he had passed. The killer was the driver of the car that had run him down. He got even with Jimmy a few nights later. He didn’t try to. It was a natural thing Storms came up in seconds in that fickle territory and were often quite violent. Dowey woke late at night, needing to piss. The wind was thumping the tent canvas. The rain was sifting hard against it. He made his way to the tent flap by feeling for the upright tent poles, then touching the steel rails of the double bunks. He could see himself pissing into the hard driving rain. But he was still asleep! Jimmy screamed. “Yaaah! Who is there, you bastard? Who pissed on my head!” Dowey fumbled for the canvas, spread the entrance flap and finished the leak. “Yaaah, I know it’s you! You bastard!” “Jimmy! You had a nightmare,” Dowey said. “The rain blew in on you!” “That’s warm rain, you asshole! I’ll cut your neck off!” “Forget it, Jimmy. You had a nightmare.” Back in his upper bunk Dowey slid his rifle in beside him to use as a club if Jimmy came for blood. He started to chuckle. “You’re no man, you dip shit!” Jimmy hollered. “If I wasn't so tired I’d bust your head open! I'll get you for this!” Others had wakened. They grumpily ordered him to shut up. Jimmy was a very good man, a former east coast sailor. Months later he would be evacuated from the front in Korea with shrapnel in both of his eyes. But back then he was a very popular new soldier. He had a most bold but mellow voice. When he sang, he strummed and thumped on the guitar like a real professional. Sometimes the officers or sergeants shanghaied him to sing for a couple of bottles of beer in their mess tent. Dowey could see his old friend as he had been on one of those hot nights in Camp Wainwright; his back naked and slick with sweat. He had a magnificent repertoire. A song popular then often peeled from his lips to coax tears from the listeners. “I was slowly passing an orphan's home one day, And stopped there for a moment just to watch the children play, Alone a boy was standing and when I asked him why, He turned with eyes that could not see and he began to cry. “I'm nobody's child, I'm nobody's child, I'm like a flower just growing wild, No mommy's kisses and no daddy's smile, Nobody wants me, I’m nobody’s child .” Joe Dowey had been Jimmy’s friend and he didn’t piss on him on purpose. It was an accidental misfire, like an accident on the rifle range, or later in Korea, like one at the front. The song was written and was on records by the Canadian country western singer, Hank Snow. Hank Snow was so good at it half of the United States thought he was an American country boy. It was about a blind kid in an orphanage. Many of them, most of them, would come to feel like that child in the song in later years; in fact in later months. There was no reward for their service, except for doing it. Few admired them for it and even those who did didn’t dawdle near them for long. They might be a curiosity, but not much more. “People come for children and take them for their own, But they all seem to pass me by and I am left alone, I know they'd like to take me but when they see I'm blind, They always take some other child and I am left behind .” Yeah, you get left behind, alright, Dowey thought in the chamber in Rideau Hall. And you never seem to catch up. He had come to accept long ago that you can’t, because you’re different. You can’t be what you were before. And you can’t be like the others who stayed at home and stayed the same. But through years and decades he had tried hard to do it. There were no black people among the honorees and guests in Rideau Hall, though Jimmy could have livened things up. He was gone by then. He had survived Korea with two badly damaged eyes, suffered as a man much less than he had been. He had died, maybe of melancholia, many years before. Lieutenant General James Gervais, the Deputy Secretary of the Chancellery of Canadian Honours came over and chatted with Dowey. There was a push by the Korea Veterans Association of Canada to have the Chancellery approve the wearing of a medal issued by the Korean Government in 1951. President Syngman Rhee had authorized it for all soldiers in the United Nations Command, but Canada had never permitted its soldiers or veterans to accept or wear it. Gervais acknowledged there was some merit to the push but said it was doubtful that it would be approved. Dowey told him he personally didn’t care, but thought the guys who wanted to receive and wear it should have the right without interference from anyone who managed Canada’s honours system. Gervais tacitly agreed, although he himself could tip the scale favourably if he wanted to When he excused himself to take care of business, for he genuinely was very busy, he was most gracious, as though it were Dowey who had held the highest rank. Half a century before that Joe Dowey had met another general, Lieutenant General Christopher Vokes, commander of Canada’s Western Command. The son of a British officer who had instructed at the Royal Military College of Canada, both Vokes and his brother Frederick had graduated from that school. Colonel Frederick Vokes had fought at Dieppe, France and later died of wounds suffered in action in Italy. Christopher Vokes was an engineer and had graduated from McGill University as well as the military college. He had once commanded the Princess Patricias, then the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division in Sicily. He had then commanded the 1st Canadian Division during the terrible 1942 Battle of Ortona in Italy and throughout that December, when Canadians suffered nearly 2,000 casualties. He then commanded the 4th Canadian Armoured Division in Northwestern Europe. It was a shitty, rainy day in Camp Sarcee and Vokes had the men break ranks where they gathered for his review on the prairie dirt. He admonished them never to drink if they couldn’t smell the cork without getting drunk. It was a subject he hit on frequently. Drink was a great evil, he scolded them, though he had put down a few hits himself at lunch and it stunk on his breath. Dowey was incredulous when Vokes waved him over right after he finished speaking. The young recruit was grinning; nearly giddy. This great general wanted to chat with him. Had he recognized something special in the young soldier? “How old are you?” “Twenty-one, sir!” Vokes ordered a corporal who was nearby to take Dowey to the battalion orderly room under escort. “Make this man produce a birth certificate!” he said firmly. Years later when Dowey learned the history of that red faced general, he would adjudge that Chris Vokes had seen far too many young men perish under his command in Ortona and in the other battles in Europe. The casualties had always bothered him. In his autobiography that was published in 1985, fully 35 years after that meeting in Camp Sarcie, Vokes wrote: "It is a matter of great satisfaction to me that no troops under my command ever lost a battle, although there were some very difficult ones in Sicily, Italy, Holland and Germany “Also, I shall always regret deeply, very deeply, there ever had to be casualties. Casualties cannot be separated from battles. A commander at any level cannot shirk unpleasant decisions, whether he be corporal or general or any rank in between. If he does shirk such decisions, he is unfit to command in battle… “You should know our soldiers were kind to the children of our enemies, and kind to those in adversity. And they were, on the whole, great ambassadors for Canada.” The corporal had let Dowey go when they were out of sight of the general. “If you ever see him or any other general or senior officer come near you, go the other way,” the corporal warned him.

MGen Christopher Vokes CB, CBE, DSO,CD

He was a spirited guy, with the France-Germany campaign ribbon along with several others on his chest. Dowey had wanted to wear campaign ribbons, too. He looked at himself in a mirror in the latrine later, resolved he would try to look tougher.

Most of the men in Dowey’s training platoon were raw recruits. He had a tad more training than some because he had served in the militia for four months before signing up. The air was absolutely electric all of the time; at least for him and probably for most of them. There were many fine veterans from the Second World War among them, forming the bulwark of his wonderfully exciting battalion. All of the company commanders and the captains were Second World War veterans. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel James Riley “Big Jim” Stone, was a Canadian legend. Dowey reflected that it had been veteran sergeants and corporals who had really set the tone for the gang and glued them together. Many had fought in France, Germany, Holland, Italy, North Africa. One had fought in Hong Kong and had been brutally imprisoned by the Japanese after a hopeless battle in 1940, and a few had served in Burma. It was like being in the grand outfits those guys had served with; almost being in the same battles. Dowey and his friends hung on their words. They were their mentors. What made their blood bubble richly was that they were actually their friends. They were all glued together in this delightful comradeship. It may have been that the veterans did not mind and possibly basked a tad in their adulation. They probably had experienced very little appreciation themselves when they had come home from the world war. They suspected the same thing would happen to them and the new soldiers when they returned from Korea. Their own excitement was suppressed by the weighty knowledge that for certain some would never return. The non-veterans were a most motley crew. There were a few common traits. Most had the desire to be like their veteran mentors; to go bravely to war. And most really did believe in serving their country and their King. Who would risk his life in a fierce war if he did not? Nobody was in it for the pay. But maybe some were, in a way. Some parts of Canada, as half a century later, were very poor and their social welfare umbrella was a tattered rag. Still, from the poor areas, the Maritime Provinces mostly, from near destitute towns in Newfoundland and on Cape Breton Island and from jobless plagued villages in Quebec as well, many such recruits would prove to be bravest of the brave. They were dedicated, made of steel cable, backed down from nothing; and if the army put some dollars in their pockets, then that was grand. But it was not why they joined. The money was a bonus. Men like them would not mercenarily sign up to kill soldiers from another country for the pay alone. They might do it for the pay and the challenge or adventure. But there was still more to it than that. Most could not express well the conviction that what they had a chance to do was right. The Canadian Army had recruited all of them in a headlong rush. In three weeks more than 4,000 men were signed up and serving in the Special Force Brigade. It had three infantry battalions, an artillery regiment, a squadron of armour and supporting corps units. Most of them had been hardly looked at by the recruiters. Very few had been asked for documents. They were who they said they were by word of mouth and it went no deeper than that. This was a blessing for fellows who’d been in the penitentiary or were on the lam from something or other. For the most part they appreciated the chance and behaved themselves. There were many fine gentlemen among them, too. In fact the majority were of that higher cut. Some of the World War Two veterans were actually recipients of war service disability pensions. They hid their maladies and signed on once again. Eventually some were found out and their pensions reduced. Few were kicked out. Many would rather give up their pittance pension than not serve in Korea. But there were a few screwballs on the rosters as well and they slowly showed themselves. Big Jim Stone gave himself the personal assignment of identifying them and kicking their asses out. He called the few he thought might detract from the rest, “his scruff.” The Princess Patricias had not been alone at Camp Wainwright. The whole Special Force Brigade was there. It was properly titled the 25th Canadian Infantry Brigade and for awhile ‘ Special Force ’ was also designated in the name in parentheses. With them were the 2nd Battalion of The Royal Canadian Regiment, which spells the word “The” with a capital “T” and the 2nd Battalion of the French speaking Royal 22e Regiment. Also part of the brigade was the 2nd Regiment of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and a squadron of Sherman tanks, manned by troopers from the Royal Canadian Dragoons and Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians). For a short while they wore the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps badge but were soon designated as C Squadron, of the Lord Strathcona’s. Of course, they had all of the supporting corps, too, providing medical service, transport, engineering, signals, all the rest. The brigade commander was Brigadier John Rockingham, an Australian born Canadian who had an outstanding record leading a Canadian infantry brigade in World War Two. At Wainwright it was boring and dirty. The food was absolutely shitty, at least for the other ranks. Working in the officer’s mess on fatigue duty Dowey saw how their cook personally took pains to prepare their steaks according to the individual preference of each officer and was more chef than mere army cook. They all showered regularly in ice cold water, and that included the officers if they used the showers in the tent lines. There was no way to heat it. The shower lines were simply plumbed into the water mains. Dowey suspected some of the officers also had access to heated water in the barracks buildings in the old, original part of the camp. He certainly would have used it, if he could. They should have been thankful they even had the cold water, Dowey would reflect later. They surely would not have running water in Korea In Wainwright the sun was bitter hot and burned and the prairies were rife with mosquitoes. In Korea, on the other hand, the summer weather was much the same but the mosquitoes could give you malaria. One wonderful day, Major Pat Tighe, a great gentleman who was second in command of the battalion, called all of them around him on parade. Big Jim was gone already, no doubt taking care of business at the place they were to move to. They could not suppress a cheer when Major Tighe told them they were to move to Fort Lewis, Washington; the first stop on the way to Korea! A week later a unit train was waiting on the tracks and their heavy equipment was trucked there by the transport company and by trucks of the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps. They all moved to the siding in full marching order, great packs on their backs, small packs on their sides, chest pouches jammed chock full, rifles on their shoulders. They had packed up their extra uniforms and clothing in kit bags that had been trucked to the train. Everything else was moving with them under their own power. When they got to the train they were halted and dismissed company by company. They mobbed the doors and grabbed whatever seats were appealing, or whatever ones they got shoved into. There was no roster to be checked off and virtually anyone could have crowded on board for a trip to Tacoma, Washington. It was a disorganized move, but it didn’t look like it. The men all wanted to go, their sergeants and corporals yelled at them not to get rowdy, and most of them complied.

Chapter 3 Crossing the Pacific

In the Reception Room near the Rideau Hall entrance gallery Dowey’s ears were sifting and whining. It was most uncomfortable and in fact sickening. He looked at the glass of soda that he held in his hand, watched the liquid send little bubbles to the top. The loud chatter hurt his damaged ears and he longed to get out of there. The voices of others had been amplified by the booze and the wine, not raucously, but uncomfortably. They were all very pleasant to each other and the picture of Canadian graciousness. He wished they would all shut up. If he knew where to move to he would get away from the din. He knew it was not unnerving to the others. He had wanted to hurry on out of other places, too, some 50 years before. The crowds and the loud voices had tantalized and not vexed him then, but he had wanted motion, action; not babble and density of people. They had stayed in Fort Lewis, Washington for 10 weeks, which is a very long time for one who is 16. Some of the guys developed ephemeral relationships with girls from Tacoma. Most of them didn’t run very deep, from what Dowey knew of it. Those who did well brayed about their successes in the barracks, giving details of the hotel room scores; so the liaisons were not meaningful things, or else the braggarts were rude asses, which was strongly possible. Many among them were from little hick towns or had spent years in logging camps and so forth and big city life was a shocker for some. That does not mean that soldiers from such places were ignorant asses, but it seemed many of the ignorant asses had such backgrounds. On the other hand, some of the most devout, sincere, trustworthy, dedicated men came from wee villages that were hard to find on the map. Dowey was kept on the post much of the time In fact, he had been put on charges twice; once for an unclean rifle, which was an untrue charge and once for not shaving, although his beard was not very discernible and again the charge was unfair. He got in with some bad company he met on the defaulters parades he was sentenced to. They were discussing going absent without leave to escape the boring daily grind. Their plan had been to hitchhike to Hollywood and meet one of the beautiful movie stars. A couple of their guys had done it and Big Jim Stone sentenced them to 28 days in detention, which seemed a fair enough trade for seeing and possibly speaking to a pinup Hollywood beauty. There was something magic in getting close to those who were adulated in the light and sound imagery of the movie screen; something like becoming part of it, or part of that age. But sudden great news burst over them and made that delicious prospect dim. They were to go to Korea! Their battalion had been selected from the brigade’s three infantry units. They were becoming part of the Korean War mystique – the strange fascinating magnet that pulled on them all so powerfully. Now they would blend with the newsreel images of other men, the Americans mostly, who were in battle in the Korean War. They would blend with, become part of the flickering war scenes on thousands of American and Canadian television sets. Television was still very young and not many families owned the expensive entertainment boxes. They got both arms filled with various antitoxins to combat the many diseases lurking in Korea. Their arms were still swollen and sore when they were given passes a couple of days later and went by train to their homes on embarkation leave. Then they came back to Fort Lewis and soon on to Seattle by train that ran right to the dockside. They got onto a World War Two Liberty Ship called General Joe Martinez. How wonderful! Sixteen and among men in uniform! Dowey’s uniform! Among soldiers who had fought in World War Two, and who spoke with him as his comrades! His whole body was a hard on! On a less passionate note, the scarlet shield shaped patches they wore on their sleeves, embroidered with a red maple leaf and the gold designation “Canada,” were called by them “Flaming Assholes.” For some reason, the Canadian Army then, as before and after, eschewed their heroes and the soldiers made deprecating comments about their own brave selves. Yet they were all so cockily proud to wear those scarlet patches that they referred to so disrespectfully. The ship was called a “she,” like all others, but named for a guy. Getting aboard was paradise. She was homely and grey like the ships in the war movies and the newsreels. One of the Patricia officers was ticking their names off a manifest as they clomped onto the gangplank. A mean faced American petty chief officer was with him, verifying each name on a clipboard of his own. He looked like a hateful character straight out of Hollywood central casting. He would have been on his ass in an instant if he tried to shove any of the Patricias around. Luckily, there was none of that, though some of them leered at him. They did not know that in the American armed forces they take their discipline and their military laws on a more serious plane than the Canadians. If a Canadian soldier got into a fight with a sergeant, he might get a month of two in the detention barracks, but would come out a soldier with equal rights again. Nothing would be held against him. He could still serve, could still be promoted. If the same thing happened in the U.S. Army the soldier might draw a sentence of a year or more in Leavenworth penitentiary, a yellow dishonourable discharge, and lose all of his pay and entitlements. Maybe that is why many Americans who held rank seemed to be caustic pricks to the Canadians and their own Canadian officers were grand, good fellows they respected – and usually cherished. Dowey was grinning as he went up. On the steel deck his hobnailed boots made like ice skates. He skidded awkwardly, flapping arms, fell hard to his ass. One or two others did the same. After they clambered down five deck levels and stowed gear on four-tiered bunks they made their way to the stern of the upper deck. Dowey came alongside the remarkable Sergeant Thomas Prince. He was a legendary Aboriginal Canadian soldier. He had served with the Canada-US Special Service Battalion in World War Two and wore the ribbons of the Military Medal and the U.S. Silver Star, awarded for separate brave acts. He was a platoon sergeant and instructor in A Company. Dowey expected him to be huffy and off- standish, but Prince welcomed him warmly. “Enjoy the ride as best you can,” he said. “Stay away from these sons of bitches running the ship. Always pretend you’re on duty doing something. If you don’t they’ll have you on KP and fatigues all the way to Korea.” The Joe Martinez got underway next day. The Regimental band had played Danny Boy and Tipperary for them at dockside. Both were their regimental songs and had considerable sentimental appeal. Then a huge American band marched onto them and smothered their music with their brazen din. They were playing the music of the World War One song, “ Over There! ” It was very American and the lyrics were still well known. They bespoke that “ the Yanks are coming and will soon have it over, over there !” It was half way through December and the weather on deck froze their balls some days but the ship stuck to southerly climes. There was much puking on decks in the focsle area where American troops were quartered. Dowey’s friends put that down to a diet rich in Hershey chocolate bars. In truth it was the buck of the big bastard General Joe. It could drop 10 yards in a second and come rising up by twenty in two more. Showers were a thrill. The ship’s plumbing ran a constant stream of water direct from the ocean through the pipes in the heads. The showers were always running full bore. Dowey and the others were ordered into them by cranky sergeants. A corporal couldn’t have done it. The water chilled their hearts. Once in, they rubbed wildly with soap to try to build some warmth through friction. Once soapy they had to stay long enough to wash it away. They shaved every morning, of course. When they called Dowey’s compartment for a meal the “chow” line ran down some two deck levels and the wait was about 20 minutes. “Chow” was an Americanism, and it was the word that came over the PA system to get them in motion. Once in the galley they got grub on a tin tray, went to the end of a long stand up table. It was closer to shoulder height than waist. Then they began gobbling. As others at the far end finished and left to wipe off their trays, the next in line shuffled along They had to be finished by the time they got to the other end or were out of luck. The breakfast never changed. Eggs scrambled in grease and a ball of wicked, buttery bacon. In Rideau Hall in Ottawa that day, more than five decades later, Joe Dowey and the others were asked to proceed to the dining room. They moved along two great buffets that held incredible dishes made up of foods said to be native to Canada; every Canadian grain, including rice, vegetables, wild herbs, nuts, sausage stuffed with wild game meat, pates, slices of Canada Geese, but no steaks or potatoes. It was a most interesting and overly Canadian layout. Dowey had a ticket in his hand and would be seated at the table of John Saul. He was told that the Governor General of Canada was seated at the next table in the centre of the room. Looking at the array of odd foods on the buffet Dowey recalled that on their fifth day at sea on the Joe Martinez he had puked all over the mess deck table. He was punched and shoved by friends. It was indeed humiliating. He had been called a “sissy punk” by one of them, which enraged him, though he reeled with bilious gut like a balloon filled with water and couldn’t manage himself. The Yank merchant sailors made him wash the table down with a hand mop, and the steel deck, too. It was most humbling. His face burned. The soldiers gave him mild kicks or tried to tread on his fingers while he was on his knees mopping. One who had hit him overly hard was not very big. He seemed to be quite young. Dowey came on him on deck one morning while the Americans were hosing it down. “You wanna try punching me now?” Dowey asked. He hit him fast and hard on the button, before he could defend himself. He went to his buttocks. Dowey thought he had won. He was impressed the man had dropped so thoroughly dazed; turned away victorious. Then the fellow called out. He was on his feet again, smiling. He put an arm on Dowey’s shoulder and asked, “Why’d you wanna do that for, sir?” His smile and courteous voice were disarming. He was from Newfoundland and had all false teeth. Dowey started to smile, too. There was a sudden horrid bang and much pain! He was on the deck. Blood was running from both nostrils. His lips were cut. “You best git some practice afore yez try ta sucker punch anyone else, boy!” The force of a head crushing into Dowey’s nose, lips, chin and cheek was amazing. He was in a terrible mess and luckily had a handkerchief. It was soon sopping with blood. “I’ll get you for this, you Irish son of a bitch!” He did not know that many Newfoundlanders have a perfect Irish brogue, more Irish than the Irish. “Yes? Come on then!” Dowey decided he would do it on another day Nobody had seen the fracas except a couple of Yanks so there was no loss of face among close comrades. He did not want to suffer another head butt again that morning. The other fellow’s name was Leo. He was a few pounds lighter than Dowey and some shorter. He had put his arm around his neck and bashed his big flat brow square into his face. Dowey learned later that Leo did that quite a bit. He disarmed his foe with a smile then butted him like a goat; or a buffalo in his case. He was actually five years older than Dowey and had been through the mill many times. Later Leo came to see him to make sure he was alright. He brought him a paper cup of Coca Cola from the machine in the small recreation room on their deck. It cost a nickel. It was priceless in sentiment. It taught Dowey something about being a man. He also had learned that when you do something vile, it is long remembered. Men cringe when you come near. Evidence of a weak gut can make others hold you at the edge of manhood and never let you come closer. It was that way with some of them because Dowey had puked on the mess deck like a kid. His growing friendship with Leo helped him make inroads again. The Patricias and their American comrades had a concert one night, with their own amateurs doing the playing and serenading. The ship’s office mimeographed a program for them. It was still extant, more than 50 years later, somewhere in Dowey’s cartons of papers. He couldn’t remember the names of all of the performers but Roy Rushton, from West River, Nova Scotia was one. Roy was around 30 and a veteran of the First Canadian Parachute Battalion that jumped into France just before the Normandy landings. He played the guitar and crooned. He and a soldier named Al Millar, from Owen Sound, Ontario had played a guitar duet. A four piece band of trumpet, bass fiddle, piano and drums started the night off with their rendition of “Slow Boat to China,” a very popular song of the day. The trumpeter was a U.S. Army private first class who came from Chicago, and was quite good. Emcee for the evening had been Kerry Dunphy, of Carleton Place, Ontario, near Ottawa. Toward the end of the evening, Doug Keddy, who billed himself as “the Frankie Lane of the Martinez,” bragging on his style that was similar to a popular American singer, sang that they should “ Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams .” All were great entertainers on that thumping, growling ship. Camaraderie was thick as molasses in winter, which season they were full into. Some of the American troops signed the concert program with names and addresses, pledging with the Canadians that they would get together again after Korea. Of course, that had never happened. They would never be the same men they had been while aboard the General Joe. After filling an elaborately gold rimmed plate with the extraordinarily Canadian food from one of the Rideau Hall buffet tables Dowey made for a round table near the centre of the dining room. It was formally titled the Tent Room. The room was used mostly for other purposes but had been set up that day for the noon luncheon. His ticket had a number and name that matched the neat sign in the table centre. It was a large dining-in-the-round set up, with impeccably clean natural coloured lace table cloth. There was a vase of colourful mauve Asia hybrid lilies in the centre. With his back to Dowey as he came on was John Ralston Saul, standing between his own outdrawn chair and the table edge. Dowey moved to sit on Saul’s left and saw a name tag for a Garth Webb. He knew this was the World War Two veteran who had founded and raised funds for the Juno Beach memorial centre in Normandy, obviously assigned the honoured seat at Saul’s elbow. He found his own nametag three seats removed from Saul’s right. Middleton had not been seated with the Governor General as he thought might happen and pulled out the chair on Dowey’s left. Moving into the chair between Middleton and John Saul was a fortyish young Colonel; a very fit looking soldier named Colonel Patrick Stogran. He wore his neat dress green uniform with the four gold bars on the cuffs of the tunic.

The year before Stogran had taken Canada’s first unit to Afghanistan to pursue Taliban fighters. He had commanded the 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Battle Group. It was an infantry battalion with armor and artillery and other support attachments. To the left of Garth Webb was Chief Warrant Officer Joseph Comeau, a tall, strapping fellow who had been Stogran’s regimental sergeant major in Afghanistan. Both of them had received high military medals that morning. John Saul noted to all that there were four members of the Princess Patricias, including Middleton and Dowey, at the table, because he had engineered it that way. He explained that his late father had served in the same regiment. He asked everyone to introduce himself or herself and each guest gave a very short description of who they were. Most said nothing about why they were there. Dowey had sat at many high level luncheons with military people and with captains of industry and commerce as well. His mind was on the Pacific and not much on fellow honorees. He heard them, but the bump and hiss of the Pacific drifted in and out. At sea on the General Joe, many of the Patricias had spent as much time as they could on the open decks, even though it was December. It is surprising how long one can look at the creamy wake that stretches endless behind your ship, or behind your life. A couple of black albatrosses hung in the air over the fantails, sailing in the wind churned by their passing. It was the favourite place for many of the soldiers because the foul air exhaust funnels blew warm air from the inner compartments across the decks.

Sometimes they looked down on the froth and splash of the huge bronze screws that propelled them to new adventure. As the bows rose the screws would turn deep and the bashed waters would settle in a frowning bulge. But as the General Joe broke over the great rolling swells and the bows settled deeply the stern would rise up shuddering. Sometimes the blades would chop above the surface and everyone would be impressed by their slow, relentless turning. At sunset they looked down along the hull and watched the phosphorescent bugs in the water stirring in mysterious bluish patches The ephemeral light was intriguing and went deep inside of them. Sometimes from far down a pale blue bubble would rise, ever larger as it came to surface, like a magical bauble intriguing a babe in its crib. Then it would be gone and black night would come into them. They would shrug off the black, look for more of the new, mysterious light.

(Stay Tuned )