June 25, 1950, Jack James, a well-connected correspondent for the United Press wire agency walked into the American embassy in Seoul with the scoop of a lifetime.
“The North Koreans have crossed over the parallel in force!” he announced to a marine guard on duty.
The bored duty sergeant said simply, “So what? This is a common occurrence.”
“Yeah,” said James. “But this time they’ve got tanks.”1
Jack James’s exclusive beat the State Department announcement by two hours. The Korean War was on.
It was almost a very short campaign. The tough, well-trained, and well-equipped North Koreans swept aside the South Koreans and the capital was evacuated. American occupation forces based in Japan were sent to try to salvage the unfolding disaster.
The U.N. Security Council, boycotted at the time by the U.S.S.R., voted to come to South Korea’s defence with uncharacteristic speed. This decision would eventually lead to an international fighting force from almost twenty countries, lead by the U.S. and fighting under a U.N. banner. “Neutralist” countries such as Sweden and India sent medical teams. Even tiny Luxembourg, a member of the newly-founded NATO, sent forty-four soldiers.
In Ottawa, however, there was great hesitation. Even the defence minister was wary of getting involved with what he feared would become some endless American adventure in Asia. But Lester Pearson was among those saying it would be very difficult to say “No” to the Americans if they insisted Canada join in sending combat troops to Korea to drive back a blatant example of communist aggression.
Eventually Canada did climb board. In August, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent (external affairs minister under Mackenzie King, who had only died a few weeks earlier and whose ghost must have been uneasy at what was about to be announced) declared that Canadians would be going to Korea to fight. Canada was a driving force in the founding of the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization and was being governed by a generation of Atlantic-minded men. Europe’s defence against the Soviets was their obsession.
There was also little taste for another Canadian military venture in Asia after the disaster at Hong Kong in the last war, in which ill-trained and badly led troops had been sacrificed for no apparent reason and were captured and brutally treated (and often murdered) by the Japanese. Canada’s sacrifice in the Hong Kong debacle seemed, to many, to be serving mainly Britain’s interests. And now there was a similar unease that the war revving up in Korea was to serve Washington’s agenda more than Canada’s or the U.N.’s. But other countries were not hesitating to contribute combat forces, including fellow Commonwealth cousins such as Britain and Australia. So, too, were fellow NATO allies, such as Turkey and Greece, which couldn’t possibly be any further away from Korea. And the Americans, with Munich ever on their minds, felt this was a classic case of a testing of resolve in standing up against clear-cut aggression.
Munich symbolized the meek capitulation of Britain and France to Hitler’s demands to take over Czechoslovakia, making the Second World War a virtual certainty. Munich forever gave “appeasement” a bad name. The Munich ghost made several return visits to American foreign policy in the years ahead, providing some of the philosophic and moral unpinning in justifying intervention in Vietnam a decade after Korea, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein a half century into the future. Munich has had a long shelf life. Korea would not be abandoned as Czechoslovakia had been. If a Korea-style U.N. force had been available to defend the Czechs in the late 1930s, the thinking went, Hitler’s invasion schemes could have been stopped cold.
The international U.N. force being put together was quite unlike anything that followed. It was not a peace-observing mission, or even peace-keeping. There was no peace to keep. It was a fighting force heading, by design, straight into harm’s way.
It was truly a “coalition of the willing,” in some cases with traditional foes such as Greece and Turkey fighting on the same side. All were more-or-less democracies. All would pay a heavy price in blood, including countries such as Columbia, with 146 killed, and Turkey with over 800 killed. (The group cohesion of the Turks was so strong that their captured soldiers had the highest survival rate in the brutal Chinese POW camps.) Ethiopia sent what it called “Conqueror Battalions” and had 122 killed. Thailand had 136 killed; Belgium, 97; Greece, 190; and tiny Luxembourg had seven killed.
Italy, which was not a U.N. member at the time (it had actually been an enemy country and fought at Hitler’s side in the war which ended only six years earlier), sent a Red Cross unit.
Norway and Denmark each sent a hospital ship. Sweden sent a field hospital, which stayed on long after the war ended. India sent a MASH unit, which was much praised by the Canadian wounded, and also sent a medical team that accompanied American paratroopers when they jumped into combat.
Many countries, Canada included, won U.S. Presidential Citations from President Truman for feats of particular bravery. Two British units received such citations, as did one from Australia (at Kapyong); also Belgium, Turkey, Greece, France, a South African Air Force Squadron, and Holland, whose Regiment Van Heutsz, received the citation twice.
Korea was a remarkable example of shared international sacrifice and reflected a highly diverse array of religions and cultures that held intact throughout the entire conflict. No one dropped out along the way. Canada, after a confused start, was to be in to the finish.
On August 7, about six weeks after the invasion, Prime Minister St. Laurent announced that a “special force” would be raised specifically to go into combat to help defend the embattled South Koreans. The march to Kapyong had started.
This would not be a war, St. Laurent stressed, not a “real war” at any rate, but a “police action.” And it would not be an American war, he emphasized. Rather, it would be run under the United Nations flag. This was a quaint legal nicety. The Americans provided the leadership, in large part American equipment and weapons would be used, and Americans were providing, by far, most of the troops. And, most importantly, the U.S. military was certainly charting the war’s overall direction and strategy. Aside from the Koreans themselves, the Americans were doing most of the fighting and most of the dying, so the war would be run their way. When Truman once suggested he would not rule out the use of nuclear weapons in Korea, a startled British Prime Minister Clement Attlee quickly flew to Washington for assurances Britain would be consulted first. He was given no such assurances. There was no doubt: as the senior partner, the U.S. was calling the shots in this war, although as we shall see when the Americans tried to rush Canadian troops into combat prematurely, their commander bravely, and successfully, stood up to U.S. bullying.
St. Laurent’s phrase “police action” never sat well with the troops who were doing the shooting and dying, and was seen as outright hypocrisy intended to lull the folks back home into thinking nothing too serious was happening. An additional problem was that, technically, if no actual war was declared, then where was the process that would someday end it? How do you undeclare a war that was never declared? And in a dilemma that Canada and its allies in Afghanistan would face decades later, what exactly was victory anyway; what exactly would “winning” look like? Was winning simply driving the invaders out of South Korea? Or was it to crush the North Korean Army? Or was it, more ominously, to destroy the North Korean state? The war aims changed and morphed as the war dragged on, and many of the more drastic end-scenarios were mused about rather than stated. Everyone, it seemed, had their own definition about what the point of it all was, where it was leading, and how it would wrap up.
This was a fuzzy, new world that the military felt quite uncomfortable in. The Americans were not at all at ease the idea of fighting for anything less than total victory. In this reality, they were not out to destroy North Korea as Japan and Nazi Germany had been crushed. They were merely there to stop North Korea’s aggression, which meant American
