THE MAKICHUK REPORT

“Be steady, kill and don’t give way!”
— Lieut.-Col Jim Stone’s order to his troops on the eve of battle

Korean peninsula, April 1951.

It’s spring in Korea, and things are warming up from the preceding brutal cold.

You are tired and hungry, and full of fear.

Your only friend, is a standard issue Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk 1. A reliable bolt-action rifle in use for over a half century, and it’s got a mean kick.

But that badge on your shoulder, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Regiment (2PPCLI) gives you confidence.

So does commander Lieutenant Colonel Jim Stone, a Second World War veteran.

And you are one mean mother-fucker, to put it nicely. Spoiling for a fight.

Instead, North Korean forces have been pushed across their border back into the North. It looked like an easy stint, garrison duty no less.

The thought of meeting one of those nice Korean girls wasn’t far away, and maybe having one of those weird Korean beers.

Man, was that about to change.

While gung-ho US General Douglas MacArthur repeatedly refused to heed Chinese warnings and US intelligence reports, China launched a massive surprise counteroffensive with approximately 300,000 soldiers, catching the overextended UN forces completely off guard.

MacArthur’s misjudgment was a critical error that prolonged the war for another two and a half years.

And a fellow named Hub Gray, a Canadian from Winnipeg, would end up in the maelstrom.

What was at stake? Hill 677, which controlled the entrance to the Kapyong River Valley north of Seoul. Beyond that, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping the advancing communist forces from retaking Seoul.

The hill was a critical last stand.

The Aussies took it on the chin, first.

The 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3 RAR), bore the brunt of the initial attack and after heavy combat were forced to withdraw, with 155 casualties.

Captain Reg Saunders, the first Aboriginal Australian to be commissioned as an officer in the Australian Army, was Officer Commanding C Company, 3 RAR.

After the battle, he said: “At last I felt like an Anzac, and I imagine there were 600 others like me.”

While the Australians fought bravely, Stone ordered his Canadians, about 700 troops, to dig in on Hill 677 and prepare to repel a large brigade of massing Chinese forces, estimated at nearly 5,000-strong.

After attacking the Australians, the Chinese turned their attention to the PPCLI.

Death was on the menu, not a picnic. In waves.

The Canadians risked being wiped out. Outnumbered and outgunned.

As expected, on the night of April 22, 1951, an entire Chinese communist division swarmed them, hoping to take Seoul, only a few miles away. 2PPCLI was surrounded, and on its own.

It was a terrifying night of positions lost and retaken, hand-to-hand fighting in the dark, with bayonets, grenades, rifle butts and shovels.

Private Wayne Mitchell, despite being wounded, charged the enemy three times with his Bren gun. He earned the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his efforts.

The relentless waves of Chinese soldiers almost overran the position of D Company.

With his men securely entrenched below ground, company commander Captain J. G. W. Mills, desperate and overrun, called for an artillery strike on the position of his own 10 Platoon — what the Americans called “Broken Arrow.”

He relayed the request from Lieutenant Mike Levy, who was hunkered down with his men in shallow foxholes on the hill.

A battery of New Zealander guns obliged, firing 2,300 rounds of shells in less than an hour, destroying the Chinese forces on that position.

Though the barrage landed just metres from Levy’s position, he and his men were unscathed.

“I remember sitting down there in that trench one time during that fight and I was shaking and I was thinking, ‘What the f–k are doing here, you dumb shit?”‘ said Ernie Seronik, a member of the 2PPCLI’s D Company.

“You really can’t tell people about it, can’t describe it. You can’t know what it’s like until you’re there, the fear you have, and it stays with you. I was scared all the time.”

“When you sit in the dark and are looking for and waiting for them to appear, every stump that is out there is a person, the enemy,” recalled Seronik.

“At that time, the real terror comes from not knowing what’s going to happen to you. At any time a bullet can come out of nowhere and you’re dead. It happened a lot.”

At one point, a Chinese officer yelled, “Kill the American pigs,” in Chinese.

Levy, a platoon commander who understood the dialect, yelled back:
“We are Canadian soldiers, we have lots of Canadian soldiers here.”

Desperate, the Chinese attacked battalion headquarters from the rear. Hoping to break the Canadian lines.

If HQ fell, the Canadians would be driven off the hill and the road to Seoul would be open. It did not fall, in part thanks to Hub Gray.

He was in charge of a small mortar-machine gun unit. Coming at them: about 500 battle-hardened Chinese.

With the enemy almost on top of them, Gray’s men opened fire, the Chinese attack stalled, and then fell apart, described by one Canadian as “like kicking the top off an ant hill.”

Through it all, Stone refused to allow his men to withdraw, as he believed the hill was a critical strategic point on the UN front. He was right, it was.

Veteran David Crook, remembered the battle all too well.

“From sheer boredom to sheer terror. At times it didn’t stop. And then you’d get lulls where the enemy would be regrouping for another attack so we’d get a bit of a breather to think a little bit. But, most times it was just non-stop,” he said.

While they defended the hill, the Canadians were cut off and had to be supplied via air drop.

As Canadian soldier Gerald Gowing remembered: “We were surrounded on the hills of Kapyong and there was a lot of fire. We were pretty well out of ammunition and out of food too. We did get some air supplies dropped in, but we were actually surrounded… that was a scary moment, let me tell you.”

The Canadians were down to their last bullets when the Chinese advance finally broke. Hub’s machine guns had saved HQ.

Kapyong did not fall. Nor did Seoul. The Canadians held firm their positions.

The 2PPCLI were eventually relieved on the front line by a battalion of the 1st US Cavalry Division.

The battle contributed significantly to the defeat of the Chinese offensive, protecting the capital city of Seoul from re-occupation, and plugging the hole in the UN line to give the South Koreans time to retreat.

Both the Canadians and the Australians received the United States Presidential Unit Citation from the American government.

Five men in other units were (rightly) decorated for bravery that night. Hub Gray was not among them.

Levy wasn’t recognized for his bravery until 2003, when Governor General Adrienne Clarkson granted him a coat of arms.

In later years Hub Gray wrote his own account of Kapyong (Beyond the Danger Close) with a vivid account of the fighting, but made no mention at all of his own vital role. You’d scarcely know he was there.

But he was. A true Canadian hero. Along with all the rest.

Every child/student in Canada, should know their names, and what they did.

Hubert Archibald Gray known as “Hub” to all his friends, passed away peacefully in his sleep on Nov. 9, 2018, in Calgary, with family at his bedside. He was 90.

— with files, from the National Post