Remembering the 'Forgotten War': Korean War vet reflects on battle

A Canadian Korean War veteran touches the name of a fallen soldier he knew as he visits the Korean War Memorial in Seoul, Republic of Korea. (Adrian Wyld/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

When Don Sudden returned from Korea in 1954, most people had no idea he had been gone for two years.

“Nobody knew where I was,” Sudden said. “I said ‘I was in Korea, just came back from the war,’ and that’s it, nobody had a clue, a lot of people didn’t know that Canada had troops in Korea.”

Today, 60 years after Canadians returned home from the Korean battlefields, the three-year campaign remains the “Forgotten War.”

“Everyone seems to forget the Korean War,” Sudden, 81, said. “I don't know why.”

More than 26,000 Canadians served in Korea, and 516 died during the conflict, making the “Forgotten War” the third deadliest in Canadian history.

Terry Wickens, president of the Korean Veterans Association’s Ontario region, said the Korean War unfolded in the shadow of the Second World War, at a time when “the general public had their fill” of war.

And because the conflict gained little media exposure, “the only people who were fully aware of what was happening were people that had family members involved,” Wickens said.

Canada was one of 16 countries sent by the United Nations to South Korea to contribute military forces under American command.

Following the Second World War, the Soviet Union formed a communist government in North Korea, while a pro-Western state was established in South Korea. Tensions began to rise when North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea on June 25, 1950.

Two years later, a 20-year-old Sudden, unable to find a job, volunteered to go to war.

“I only had a grade six education and I said, ‘well, might as well join the army,’” Sudden said. “Of course, everybody asked, ‘where’s Korea?’ And nobody knew and nobody gave a damn, and they said ‘go on if you want to go,’ and that’s how it went, we went to Korea.”

Sudden wasn’t nervous about heading into battle. He actually joined the army to go overseas. “I was just excited to go, that’s all,” he said. “It’s a new country, a new experience, and as far as war was concerned, we didn’t have much thought of that until you got into it.”

He fought in hand-to-hand combat in The Battle of Hill 187 as a front-line gunner in the artillery, alongside the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment. Sudden said The Battle of Hill 187 was the very last battle of the Korean War.

Owing to the intensity of the bloody conflict, he has trouble remembering the details.

“You’re so busy, you got an enemy soldier coming at you, and he’s got a bayonet, he’s ready to tear your ribs out, so you’re going to do something about that guy there,” he said. “You don't care too much about either side and so you’re dealing with the person in front of you.”

It was only after the war, during therapy session, that Sudden was able to fully understand what he had experienced.

“We had a group therapy and that’s when I found out more of what happened during the Battle of 187, because other people had their little sights, I had my little sights, where I was, and stuff like that, and I knew where they were, so you get bits and pieces when people tell you what part they were in.”

After the war, Sudden was involved in peacekeeping missions, but for the most part, he was fighting on the front lines.

“Finally, after travelling the world about 100 times I got tired of getting shot at everywhere I went,” Sudden said. “I was kind of fed up and I couldn’t handle it anymore so I decided to get out.”

While Sudden hasn’t forgotten the brutality of life on the battlefield, it’s the moments of kindness – away from the frontline – that bring tears to his eyes.

“I met a lot of people in Korea behind the lines, and they were having a hard time because their place was being flattened out and bombed out, but I met a lot of wonderful people,” Sudden recalls. “And they did everything they could to help me -- like they’d do anything for you, even though they didn’t have nothing.”

In return, Sudden and his fellow soldiers would save their leftover food for those who needed it.

“Lots of time we’d have food left over from our rations and we had a little village behind us, and we’d make sure that all excess was given to them, we never dumped it in the garbage -- we made sure they had food.”

“Little things like that, I’ll always remember,” he added.

After two years of ceasefire negotiations, the Armistice at Panmunjom was signed in July 1953, marking the end of the Korean War.

Sudden served 21 more years in the Canadian army before settling down in Southern Ontario, where he worked as a welder for more than 20 years.

He was married twice, and has a 53-year-old son from his marriage. He now lives in Breslau, Ont., and is active in the Korean Veterans Association of Canada.

In 1989, along with fellow Korean War veterans, Sudden returned to Korea. He found a country unrecognizable from what he’d seen just 35 years earlier.

“It was a strikingly beautiful country, with beautiful people, and what they did after the war it was just hard to believe,” Sudden said as he fought back tears.

“I said, we’ll, must’ve done something right in my life, because these people built up a beautiful country -- a bunch of very beautiful people -- and, well I did something right in my life.”