who were mostly young, mostly restless, on the prowl for excitement, and who were sneeringly dismissed by the brass in Ottawa as untrustworthy adventurers whose favorite marching song contained the line they shouted with pride: “We’re untrained bums, we’re from the slums.”
In command of the three battalions of the Korean Special Force was John Rockingham, a Second World War veteran brought out of retirement for this special mission. He looked, sounded, and acted exactly like what everyone imagined a magnetic commander would be like. He was a Gibraltar of a figure who literally towered over everyone around him. Rockingham was a dashing, charismatic leader right out of a recruiting poster, who led from the front. He joined the militia as a private and ended his career as a general, commanding the 9th Canadian Infantry brigade in Europe. He led his men through some of the bloodiest fighting in the war, eastward across France and Holland, and on into Germany. In one action, his driver and signaller beside him were shot by a sniper and Rockingham’s own nose was clipped by a bullet. He grabbed a submachine gun, stalked the sniper, shot him, and then resumed the war. He was slated to command a brigade of Canadian troops to fight the Japanese, when Hiroshima happened and the Pacific War ended.
Rockingham’s soldiers felt he was one of them and would follow wherever he led. He was a restless warrior and had no interest in being in the military at all unless there was fighting to be done. Rockingham was an improviser with the ability to rivet his attention on the crisis at hand
and not be distracted by peripheral matters; an ideal commander to take charge in Korea.
Brigadier General John “Rocky” Rockingham, a much-decorated Second World War hero, was plucked from his tedious job as union negotiator for a B.C. bus company to command the special Canadian force being created to fight in Korea. It was an inspired choice. Rockingham was a fighting general who had no interest in a life in the army unless there was fighting to be done.
PPCLI Museum and Archives.
In August 1950, he had an unbearably boring desk job with a British Columbia bus company. He was in charge of tedious union contract negotiations. To this real-life action figure used to making instant life and death decisions involving of thousands of men, his biggest issue now was over the issue of lunch breaks. The give and take and compromise so much at the heart of negotiating was not to his nature. He was a commander. Then, happily, in the midst of deadlocked contract talks, his phone rang. It was Ottawa on the line. It was a life-changing call for Rockingham. They were offering him command of the Korean special force and he could pick his own staff. Rockingham checked with his wife and the next day accepted. Two days later he was in Ottawa starting to organize his Korean army. He was only thirty-nine. He was rightly perceived as a seasoned combat leader who was coming not from the military culture but from civilian life. He would protect Canadian interests while serving under a foreign (American) command and would stick up for his men. In particular, he would work well with the Americans on a personal level and there could be no doubting his professional credentials, although once he got to Korea Rockingham would often clash with his U.S. officers over their emphasis on body counts as a measure of progress, a questionable yardstick which would afflict the U.S. military fifteen years later in Vietnam. Rockingham was a charismatic bulldog of a man. He was an inspired choice, and was selected personally by the minister of defence, Brooke Claxton.
One of Rockingham’s choices was Lieutenant-Colonel “Big Jim” Stone, one of the most talented and innovative soldiers in Canadian history.
He looked like something from a Marx Brothers movie, sporting a huge walrus moustache that made him resemble a puffed-up, desk-bound, self-important, Colonel Blimp-type figure from Punch magazine. He was none of those things. Kapyong is impossible to understand without understanding Jim Stone.
In 1939 he was working in a forestry camp in northern Alberta. When war broke out in September he was thirty-one, an absurdly ancient age to start an army career. He mounted his horse, Minnie, rode her 30 miles to Spirit River, then thumbed a ride to Grand Prairie, and enlisted as a private in the Edmonton Regiment. His aura of natural leadership and toughness were quickly spotted and he was promoted through the ranks and fast-tracked into officer’s training.
Brigadier General John Rockingham (centre, with Scottish headwear) and Colonel Jim Stone (right of Rockingham, with moustache).
Paul E. Tomelin/Department of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada, PA-133399.
Stone fought first in Italy, in Canada’s first battles with the Nazis since the debacle at Dieppe the year before. Italy was a tough, mountainous, wild place to fight an infantry war against crack German troops. Stone was at the centre of the bitter house-to-house battles around Ortona, where he established a reputation as an aggressive commander of great tactical skill — a reputation enhanced by the precious care he took with the lives of his men.
In a typical Stone exploit, during fighting through rubble-strewn streets of Ortona, he wanted tanks to blast their way through an obstacle, helping pave the way for his infantry. In his classic account of the dreadful agony at Ortona, Mark Zuehlke captures the spirit of Jim Stone at his most cantankerous and his best:
But suddenly, little more than 25 yards short of the rubble pile, the lead tank paused. The other tanks ground to a halt, maintaining their preset intervals between each other. They also ceased firing their guns. The infantry milled, unsure what was happening. By pausing, the tankers were hopelessly messing up the attack. As an infantryman, Stone believed, it was an all-too-common experience. Stone jumped up on the lead tank. “What the hell’s the matter?” he yelled. The tank commander pointed at a scrap of sheet metal lying in the road. “It’s probably concealing a mine,” he said. Stone was incredulous. The entire street, from one end to the other, was littered with bricks, stones, chunks of metal, broken boxes, and other debris from the battered and destroyed buildings fronting it. What made this piece of metal special? Stone tried to convince the man to get going again. He could feel the attack’s momentum slipping through his fingers, like so many grains of wheat. The tank commander said petulantly, “Don’t you realize a tank is worth $20,000? I can’t risk it.” “You armoured sissy,” Stone snapped. “I’ve got 20 to 30 men here with no damned armour at all and they’re worth a million dollars apiece.”2
The attack bogged down. A German anti-tank gun started firing at the Canadian tanks. Stone yelled at his own anti-tank man to open fire with his PIAT, a British version of the bazooka. The man fired and missed and then began trying to reload. Stone had run out of patience. He tossed a smoke grenade at the German gun, then, all alone, began running towards it, pulling out a fragmentation grenade as he went, and tossed it over the gun’s steel shield protecting the Germans, wiping them all out. He was awarded the Military Cross for his amazing day’s work.
Stone was light years removed from military behind-the-lines, “chateau” commanders who gave their orders far removed from the front, inhabiting a different universe from the men they commanded. Stone lived, ate, and slept where his men did and took the same risks. And they knew it.
By war’s end he’d become a lieutenant-colonel and gone on to fight his way into Germany. In addition to his Military Cross, he had been decorated with the Distinguished Service Order — twice.
One of his citations reads: “There were many instances (in Italy and Holland) where Lt-Col. Stone’s personal leadership was the contributing factor to the success in battle. His initiative and courage are unsurpassed.”
In Korea, he would drop in on his front line troops, and often walk along the crest of a hill offering himself as a live target, daring the Chinese to fire at him, which they
