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 ____________________________________________________________________ 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 ______________________________________________________________ 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.