Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

ALLIES OF A KIND

Canadian Army-US Army

Relations and the Korean 

War, 1950-1953

Allan R. Millett
COVER IMAGE. Brigadier J.M. Rockingham meets with US General Matthew Ridgway. (Courtesy of Canadian Department of National 

Defence.)
ALLIES OF A KIND

Canadian Army-US Army Relations

and the Korean War, 1950-1953

Allan R. Millett

Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 
ii

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Millett, Allan Reed.

Allies of a Kind : Canadian Army-US Army Relations and the Korean 

War, 1950-1953 / Allan R. Millett.

 pages cm

 ISBN 978-1-940804-16-3

1. Korean War, 1950-1953--Participation, Canadian. 2. Korean War, 

1950-1953--Participation, American. 3. Canada. Canadian Army. 

Canadian Infantry Brigade, 25th--History. 4. United States. Army--

History--20th century. 5. United States--Military relations--Canada. 6. 

Canada--Military relations--United States. I. Title. II. Title: Canadian 

Army-US Army relations and the Korean War, 1950-1953. 

DS919.2.M55 2015

951.904’2420971--dc23

2014043109

2015

Editor

Jennifer B. Fike

Combat Studies Institute Press publications cover 

a variety of military history topics. The views expressed in this CSI Press publication are those of 

the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense. A full list of CSI press publications is available at: http://usacac.army.mil/organizations/lde/csi.

The seal of the Combat Studies Institute authenticates this document as an 

official publication of the CSI. It is prohibited to use the CSI’s official seal on any 

republication without the express written permission of the Director of CSI.
iii

Foreword

American Soldiers take for granted the close personal relations we 

have developed with our Canadian comrades during more than a decade 

of side-by-side service in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other areas 

around the world. Canadians serve in responsible positions inside a 

number of US formations, and the reverse is also true. Therefore, it 

may surprise some in both armies to read Allan Millett’s less-than-rosy 

narrative of our two nations’ first attempt at interoperability. US Army 

Command and General Staff College Press is pleased to publish this 

short study not because we seek to focus on past mistakes, but because 

it helps to identify some of the issues to consider as the US Army focuses ever more energy on its regional alignment of forces. Today no less 

than in 1950, planners must understand and account for national differences when the goal is interoperability. With little justification, US 

commanders in Korea at the operational level often paid scant notice to 

the national strategies and aspirations of the United Nations Command 

member states. At best, this led to frosty relations and poor coordination; at worst, it resulted in a casual disregard for casualties among 

non-US formations in pursuit of tactical goals only tangentially related 

to strategic requirements.

The reasons for avoiding such preconceptions today are obvious, 

and identifying the shortcomings of our predecessors does them no dishonor. The US now relies on coalition military support for everything 

from humanitarian response to major combat operations. The human 

dimension of war, the one in which personal experiences and prejudices influence battlefield behavior, is more important than ever in an 

environment where technological solutions cannot guarantee strategic 

success. Allied interoperability is much more about each side overcoming the burden of previous experience than it is about whose materiel is 

more efficient. For this reason I hope you will read this short history of 

US Army-Canadian Forces relations during the Korean War with care 

and identify the themes it contains. They will serve as useful topics of 

discussion in formal and informal settings at every level. Dr. Millett 

has proven yet again that knowing our history is the first requirement 

for improving the future.

Colonel Thomas E. Hanson

Director, US Army Combat Studies Institute
iv

Acknowledgements

This article was written with a grant from the Canadian Department 

of Foreign Affairs and International Trade as part of its Faculty Research 

Program (United States of America) of the Understanding Canada-Canadian Studies Program. The fellowship allowed the author to do research in 

Ottawa, Canada, March 8-16, 2011, at the Library and Archives Canada, 

the library and archives of the Directorate of History and Heritage, National 

Defence Headquarters, and the Canadian War Museum Research Center. I 

thank the professional staff members of all three agencies, especially historian William Johnston (DHH), for their assistance. I would also like to 

thank Dr. Timothy K. Nenninger for providing material from JCS and Army 

Staff records, US National Archives and Records Administration. 
v

Table of Contents

Foreword ..............................................................................................iii

Acknowledgements ..............................................................................iv

Table of Figures ...................................................................................vi

Introduction ...........................................................................................1

The Canadian Army in 1950 .................................................................4

The Origins of the Canadian Special Force (CSF) for 

Korean Service ......................................................................................7

Going to Korea and Joining an American Army .................................14

The Canadians in Battle, 1951 ............................................................22

The War on the Jamestown Line, 1951-1953......................................32

Getting Along in Korea and Japan with the US Army ........................41

Conclusion ..........................................................................................44

Notes ...................................................................................................47

About the Author .................................................................................56
vi

Table of Figures

Figure 1. Canadian Chief of the General Staff, General 

G.G. Simonds.............................................................................................. 4

Figure 2. Canadian Chairman, Chiefs of Staff, General 

Charles Foulkes......................................................................................... 10

Figure 3. Troops of the 2d PPCLI during patrol, 

March 1951. .............................................................................................. 15

Figure 4. Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry 

returning from patrol in Korea, 1951........................................................ 17

Figure 5. 27 British Commonwealth Infantry Brigade 

Operations, 19 February-11 March 1951.................................................. 24

Figure 6. The Action at Kapyong, 24-25 April 1951. ............................... 26

Figure 7. Brigadier J.M. Rockingham inspects Corporal 

Rocky Prentice and other soldiers............................................................. 27

Figure 8. The 2d Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse 

Artillery, equipped with American half-tracks and 

British 25-pounder howitzers, provide fire support in 

the Iron Triangle, June 1951. .................................................................... 31

Figure 9. American-supplied Sherman tanks of C 

Squadron, Lord Strathcona’s Horse, return from patrol 

in the Iron Triangle, 1951.......................................................................... 33

Figure 10. 1 Commonwealth Division Front, 31 March 1952.................. 34

Figure 11. Brigadier Rockingham shows the incoming 

Canadian brigade commander, Brigadier M.P. Bogert, 

the forward position on the Jamestown Line, August 1952...................... 36

Figure 12. The Royal 22d Regiment mortar platoon 

ready to fire in Korea. ............................................................................... 39
1

Introduction

The international mobilization to save the Republic of Korea 

(ROK) in June 1950 brought the Canadian Army into its first major 

sustained contact with the US Army. The experience proved generally 

positive and laid the foundation for cooperation for hemispheric and 

European defense during the Cold War. The relationship of the 25th Canadian Infantry Brigade Group (CIBG) in Korea and its rear echelon in 

Japan to the US Army was, however, occasionally strained. The major 

clash of military cultures between Canadians and Americans occurred 

in the Japanese domain of the US Far East Command (FECOM) and 

US Army Forces Far East, not in the US Eighth Army. The result was 

grudging accommodation and wary compromises that kept alive the 

Canadian and American partnership.1

When the United Nations called for its member nations to provide 

ground forces to fight the North Korean Army, the US Department of 

Defense tried to set the terms by which FECOM would accept foreign 

troops for the Eighth Army. The basic criteria were reasonable enough. 

The forces should be of brigade or regimental size and of proven effectiveness. The forces should be supportable by their national armies and 

the US Army. The logistical support agreements should be negotiated 

for cost sharing, to be paid later. The existing military aid programs 

would remain in place. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) knew which 

armies met the criteria: Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, and Canada.2

The Korean War mobilization brought Canadian air and naval 

units to the FECOM, but for these units — three Royal Canadian Navy 

(RCN) destroyers and one squadron of Royal Canadian Air Force 

(RCAF) transport aircraft — integration into the UN naval and air forces, dominated by the US Seventh Fleet and US Far East Air Forces, 

proved smooth. Canadian and American air and naval units had worked 

together since 1940 in hemispheric defense. They not only spoke the 

same operational language but shared the international culture of modern air and naval forces. Disagreements tended to be about matters of 

personal style and minor operational issues, not matters for organizational attention. If sometimes miffed at being treated as stepchildren of 

the (British) Royal Air Force (RAF) and Royal Navy, the Canadian air 

and naval commanders had no special problems integrating with United 

Nations Command’s air and maritime forces. The Korean War simply 

extended the World War II partnership. 
2

The Canadian ground forces did not have the same wealth of shared 

World War II experience with the US Army in forging an alliance. The 

Canadian Army between 1939 and 1945 had gone to war as the leading 

Commonwealth partner in saving the British Empire — if one excludes 

the Indian Army. The Canadians did not flinch after the disasters of 

Hong Kong (1941) and Dieppe (1942) but soldiered on to victory in 

campaigns in Sicily, Italy, and northern Europe, 1943-1945. By war’s 

end, Canada had provided five divisions to armies and Army groups 

most influenced by British Army commanders and military culture. 

Canadian Soldiers did have some experience in World War II as 

part of extemporized, special-purpose US Army units. Canadian Soldiers participated in the American-commanded, unopposed reoccupation of Kiska Island in the Aleutians in August 1943. The Canadian 

Army contributed 5,000 officers and other ranks of the First Special 

Service Force and the 13th Infantry Brigade, the latter a conscripted 

hemisphere defense unit, to the Kiska operation. The First Special Service Force, formed for mountain and arctic raids into Norway that never 

occurred, then redeployed to Italy and France and served with distinction until disbanded in December 1944. Like their American counterparts, the 800 Canadian members of this force existed on the forgotten 

fringes of their Army. 

Canadian and American Soldiers served together in both the extreme east and west of wartime Canada. During the construction of 

the Alaska-Canada highway and pipeline (1941-1943) 33,000 GIs and 

16,000 Canadian troops, largely engineer, transportation, and support 

units, served under separate commands along the 1,523 mile construction project which ran from Dawson’s Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, Alaska. On the Atlantic coast, US Navy and US Army Air Forces 

units arrived in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to manage American 

participation in the aviation and maritime transit of the North Atlantic. 

The trauma caused by the Yanks, if any, bore upon civilians; the air and 

naval services shared hardships and entitlements on common grounds.3

In sum, 730,159 Canadians served in their national wartime Army, 

but only a few thousand had any meaningful contact with the US Army. 

The senior officers of the postwar Canadian Army won their rank and 

decorations in British armies fighting the Italians and Germans. During 

the Korean War, the 25th CIBG had three commanders, all of them 

with exceptional records as commanders of Canadian brigades and battalions in Europe. The three infantry battalions, one Royal Canadian 

Horse Artillery (RCHA) field regiment (an artillery battalion), and ar-
3

mored squadron (a tank company) had 23 different commanders. Not 

one had served with the US Army or attended a US Army school. If they 

had any opinions about American Soldiers, they probably reflected the 

prejudices of their British Army peers, who held the US Army in mild 

contempt, largely because of its relaxed discipline, careless “turnout,” 

lack of a regimental tradition, profligacy with equipment and supplies, 

and tactical casualness. 

In the face of the British Commonwealth’s postwar economic woes 

and demanding military commitments, the Canadian Army faced a new 

reality: Canada’s defense would depend in the future on amicable relations with the US Armed Forces. The developing partnership focused 

on hemispheric defense along the Arctic Circle and the northern waters 

of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, all doorways to and from the Soviet 

Union. By 1950, the members of NATO, having confronted the Berlin 

Blockade, had also committed themselves to the forward deployment 

of air and ground forces to a NATO command defending continental 

Europe. Despite a shrinking treasury, Canada agreed in January of 1951 

to form a contingency force of division strength for both hemispheric 

and European defense. The Canadian Active Force (regular Army) in 

June 1950 numbered only 20,369 organized as a mobilization base for 

any future wartime force. Its combat power came from three infantry 

battalions, an artillery battalion, and a tank battalion. The Canadian regulars showed a distinct emphasis on administrative, technical, and service-support experts. Soldiers in combat units made up only one-third 

of the force. The Army also had a schools system and base structure to 

maintain, organized to train reserves.4
4

The Canadian Army in 1950

The outbreak of the Korean War found Canadian-American Army 

relations in the toddling stage of development. Accepting the association in principle did not ensure any real collaboration, certainly not equity. Although the Department of National Defence (DND) had begun 

contracting for American military equipment, largely for the Canadian 

air and naval forces, not until May 1950 did Congress approve legislation that allowed the Department of Defense to buy as much as $20 

million of Canadian goods and services, a sum about one-quarter of 

Canadian military purchases in the United States. There were as yet no 

agreements on exchanges in officer professional military education or 

alliance staffing. The Minister of National Defence believed in US-Canadian cooperation. The Honorable Brooke Claxton, a tall, hyperactive, talkative Montreal lawyer who had served as a gunner sergeant in 

World War I, supported alliance initiatives, but as a Liberal Party leader, 

he also fretted over money and Parliamentary criticism. Until Prime 

Minister Mackenzie King’s retirement in 1948, Claxton served a prime 

minister whose basic instincts were pacifistic and isolationist as well 

as unbending on reduced government spending. A reform enthusiast, 

Claxton found the Army’s senior officers, especially Generals Charles 

Foulkes and Guy G. Simonds, the two Chiefs of General Staff (CGS), 

short on imagination and long on avoiding risk. Certainly neither attached much importance to the American connection. 

Claxton himself preached 

US-Canadian partnership with 

missionary fervor. As defense 

minister (1946-1954), Claxton strengthened the Canadian 

military mission in Washington and ordered it to develop 

strong working ties with the 

US Army’s research and development agencies. He consistently looked for areas for 

ground forces cooperation 

but he found Army projects 

squeezed by a vulnerable defense budget that represented 

Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

Figure 1. Canadian Chief of the General 

Staff, General G.G. Simonds.
5

half of Canada’s government expenditures or $2.7 billion a year after 

1950, which was 10 percent of Canada’s gross national product. Half 

the defense budget went to air defense, in part to keep Canada’s aviation 

industry aloft. The same imbalance shaped military assistance programs 

with the United States. In the 1952-1953 plan, the RCAF received $47 

million for F-86 fighter-interceptor airframes (purchased in the US) and 

$112 million to pay for aircrew training with the US Air Force. The 

Canadian Army’s largest aid item was $2.7 million to buy US Army 

155mm howitzers. Despite continuing discussions, Canadian officers 

found various proposals for weapons standardization unacceptable. Almost every weapon the US Army made or wanted to make impressed 

the Canadians as overpriced and oversold on performance. The possible 

exception was tactical radio communications, but by 1953 these projects faded in the rapid development of spending for air defense radars 

and anti-aircraft missiles. Even officer education exchanges became a 

one way trip to the United States. In 1952, more than 200 Canadian officers attended US Army schools while perhaps 30 Americans, mostly 

air defense technicians, went to Canada.5

In an operational sense, there wasn’t much Canadian Army with 

whom the US Army could cooperate. The Active Force in June 1950 

fielded three infantry battalions, the First Battalions of three historic 

regiments, politically distributed by geography and recruiting appeal: 

the Royal Vingt-Deux Regiment (R22°R), the Royal Canadian Regiment 

(RCR), and the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI or 

Patricias). The regimental areas were eastern Francophone Canada 

(R22°R), central Canada (RCR), and the western provinces (PPCLI). 

In theory all three regiments, which had reserve counterparts, recruited 

on a national basis; in practice they looked more like the “county 

regiments” of the British Army. The working language of R22°R was 

Quebecois French. The other units that made up the combat forces 

were two armor regiments (two battalions) of Lord Strathcona’s Horse 

(Royal Canadian), an artillery regiment (one battalion) of the Royal 

Canadian Horse Artillery, and a World War II-era range of support and 

service units of battalion strength or smaller to handle communications, 

engineering, supply, maintenance, training, ordnance, medical, security, 

and personnel functions.

To control defense spending, the DND chose to man the operational 

units at less than wartime strength and cut training costs. In 1950, much 

to General Foulkes’ unhappiness, DND raised recruiting standards and 

even closed its recruiting stations for the winter months. The DND also 
6

suspended unit live-fire exercises. Largely because the US Army agreed 

to furnish logistical support, the First Battalion, PPCLI participated in 

Operation Sweetbriar, December 1949-January 1950, a cold weather 

exercise held in Alaska and the Yukon under American sponsorship. 

The Canadian battalion, which made one parachute jump, made up less 

than 10 percent of the 10,000 man exercise force. Much of the Canadian 

Army’s concerns in 1950 were whether its one brigade group would 

remain in Canada for hemispheric missions or deploy to Europe as a 

token contribution to NATO’s planned ground force stationed in Germany.6
7

The Origins of the Canadian Special Force 

(CSF) for Korean Service

As part of the Truman administration’s decision to send ground 

forces to help the Army of the ROK stop the invasion by of the Korean People’s (North Korean) Army, the US State Department chose to 

use the United Nations to legitimize the American military intervention. The key individuals who convinced President Harry S. Truman 

to take the “collective action” path to meet “international aggression” 

were Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Assistant Secretary of State for 

Far Eastern Affairs Dean Rusk, and John Foster Dulles, who was the 

special envoy to Tokyo to initiate negotiations for a peace treaty with 

Japan. Truman did not require much persuading because he saw North 

Korea’s invasion as another Soviet military adventure to test his will to 

contain communism. As part of its campaign to save the ROK with a 

military intervention sanctioned by UN Security Council and General 

Assembly resolutions, the State Department, much to the dismay of 

the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, especially Army Chief of Staff J. Lawton 

Collins, called for America’s allies in the UN to send ground forces to 

join the US Eighth Army in Korea. Canadian diplomats at the United 

Nations in New York and in the embassy in Washington immediately 

felt pressure to persuade the government in Ottawa to take a leading 

role in sending troops to Korea. Great Britain on 16 August ordered two 

infantry battalions stationed in Hong Kong to sail for Pusan, which only 

increased the pressure.7

The reorganization of the Canadian government after King’s 

retirement in 1948 predisposed the Cabinet to sending ground forces to 

Korea. Deciding to send token naval and air units to the war zone caused 

no special policy argument. Some Cabinet officers and key members of 

Parliament thought this commitment was quite enough. The Ministry 

of External Affairs (the Canadian State Department) was not so sure. 

The diplomats had a champion in the cabinet, Prime Minister Louis 

St. Laurent, who had been Secretary of State for External Affairs until 

King’s retirement. His principal undersecretary, a career diplomat, took 

office as Canada’s foreign minister, and that person was the energetic 

charismatic giant of the Canadian Diplomatic Corps, Lester B. “Mike” 

Pearson, a future prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Like his 

friend and counterpart Dean Acheson, Pearson had been present at the 

creation of the World War II alliance, the United Nations, the Marshall 

Plan, and NATO. Pearson carried two intellectual and emotional burdens 

that influenced him to be “tough” in meeting Communist adventurism. 
8

One was a keen awareness of his unhappy military experience in World 

War I when, after honorable service in an ambulance unit, he failed as a 

pilot trainee in the Royal Flying Corps. During an unauthorized leave, 

Pearson had been run down by a bus and his unauthorized injuries 

led to a nervous breakdown. College studies, a faculty appointment, 

and a soaring diplomatic career restored Pearson’s self-confidence but 

he retained a sense of unfulfilled military obligation that predisposed 

him to support calls to duty, especially from the United States, which 

Pearson respected with affection. He shared this affection with his close 

friends Hume Wrong, the Canadian ambassador in Washington, and 

Escott Reid, Pearson’s closest advisor. 

Pearson’s other concern was a Canadian faux pas in the United Nations on Korean policy. In 1947-1948, the United States turned to the 

UN to extract it from its military governance of the southern Korean occupation zone, established by hurried agreement with the Soviet 

Union in August of 1945 to repatriate Japanese Soldiers and civilians 

back to the Home Islands. Two years of negotiations with the Soviet 

Union produced no formula to put Korea back together again. Korean 

opposition to the haphazard American trusteeship mounted to the point 

of insurgency. When the United States turned to the UN for help, Canada (with Pearson deeply involved) led the plan to create the United 

Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTOK) that investigated 

the task of unifying Korea by UN-sponsored elections. The Canadian 

representative on UNTOK, George S. Patterson, played an important 

role in persuading the UN General Assembly to establish the United 

Nations Commission on Korea (UNCOK) that would supervise the Korean elections either to unite and neutralize the country or to establish 

the American zone as the Republic of Korea, the only internationally 

recognized government of all Korea. Canada, the UN assumed, would 

continue its leadership role as a statutory member of UNCOK. Mackenzie King, however, decided to distance Canada from this risky Asian 

commitment. He had little confidence that the UN, the United States, 

the Soviet Union, and the Koreans would unify Korea by peaceful 

means, for which King gets high marks for prediction. More optimistic, Pearson thought the effort to make UNCOK work was critical to 

the UN’s reputation and Canada’s special relationship with the United 

States. When King refused to appoint a Canadian member to UNCOK, 

Pearson became angry and embarrassed for Canada and remained so. 

He felt Canada had an unfulfilled duty to help South Korea.8

 As the 

ROK and American Soldiers fought a delaying action that finally ended 
9

at the Masan-Taegu-Pohang perimeter, the cabinet in Canada debated 

whether to send ground troops to Korea. Canadian public opinion, the 

pollsters said, favored some commitment while the anti-Liberal opposition sounded more loudly skeptical. Despite Mike Pearson’s opposition, 

seconded by Brooke Claxton, Prime Minister St. Laurent announced on 

19 July that Canada would not send ground troops to Korea. The popular and press outrage at this decision convinced St. Laurent to agree 

with Pearson that Canada’s new internationalism and rapprochement 

with the United States justified sending ground troops. He changed policy in another announcement on 7 August. Had the brigade group been 

organized from the Canadian Active Forces, it might have reached Korea in six weeks. A new formation would take longer. Either way the 

war would be won or lost sooner, which would have made the Canadian 

commitment irrelevant, as St. Laurent may have calculated. Whatever 

Canada did would take time and the mobilization plan actually put into 

effect insured that the Canadians would arrive in Korea no sooner than 

1951, if at all.9

There was nothing the US Army could do to speed the Canadians to 

the war and the Canadians did not ask for help, yet. The US Army Chief 

of Staff General J. Lawton Collins regarded the UN call for troops a 

State Department idea whose time should not have come. Nothing about 

the Canadian plan to form an infantry brigade group reassured him. St. 

Laurent, Pearson, and Claxton charged General Foulkes and Adjutant 

General W. H. S. Macklin to recruit a new formation from scratch, the 

Canadian Army Special Force, whose combat element would be the 

25th CIBG (Special Force). The concept had a historical precedent, the 

formation of an infantry battalion (2d Royal Canadian Regiment) for 

service in South Africa, 1900. In this case, Canada had a much larger 

pool of World War II veterans from which to recruit. It also had a pool 

of postwar reservists and cadets to call to the colors voluntarily. The 

brigade’s core would be a new Second Battalion of each of the Active 

Force regiments: the PPCLI, the RCR, and the R22°R. The artillery 

battalion would be an addition to the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery 

and the tank squadron a new unit of Lord Strathcona’s Horse. All the 

other supporting units would come from a mix of regulars, volunteer 

reservists, and veterans. The proposed brigade group would number almost 7,000 officers and other ranks with a forward deployed (Korea and 

Japan) Brigade Reinforcement Group of an additional 2,105 officers 

and other ranks. 
10

The Claxton-Foulkes Plan worked in terms of raw numbers and 

talent. Within weeks, the recruiting offices screened 12,000 volunteers. 

Claxton reduced recruiting standards and established policies that cut 

post-special service financial commitments. For example, the volunteers would receive no special family living allowance (the regulars 

did) but they would not have to contribute to the Army pension fund. 

Even though the married volunteers had to agree to have part of their 

pay allotted to their families, they still received three times the monthly disposable cash ($75.00) of their World War II counterparts ($22). 

The demographic profile of the Special Force enlisted men did not 

vary significantly from the troops of the Active Force: average age 25; 

average level of education, Eighth Grade; employed 92 percent. Fifty 

percent of the volunteers were Catholics, which suggests Francophone 

(French-speaking) overrepresentation. Unlike the US Army, 65 percent 

of the Canadians were married. Seventy-five percent of the brigade 

had prior military experience, 45 percent in the World War II Canadian 

Army. The enlistment screening process, hardly fool-proof on physical 

and moral criteria, could not gauge motivation. Of the first 10,000 accepted volunteers, 2,230 were discharged for various reasons of unsuitability and 1,521 men deserted. The recruiters kept finding more men to 

fill the ranks, although the high turnover slowed individual training and 

physical conditioning in Canada.10

The brigade’s officers would set 

the standards of the brigade as 

Claxton and Foulkes knew. They 

chose the brigade commander 

from the pool of World War II veterans: Brigadier John M. Rockingham, a British Columbia bus line 

executive, who had commanded a 

World War II battalion and brigade 

with distinction (three awards of 

the Distinguished Service Medal). 

The three infantry battalion commanders — Lieutenant Colonels 

James R. Stone (PPCLI), Robert 

A. Keene (RCR), and Jacques 

Dextraze (R22°R) — had comparable war records. Less than 

thrilled by his new military career, 

Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

Figure 2. Canadian Chairman, Chiefs 

of Staff, General Charles Foulkes.
11

Rockingham set conditions for his acceptance of command that allowed 

him to choose the officers critical to the brigade’s success. Rockingham 

chose officers of proven wartime expertise and mature professionalism. 

Twenty-one of the 28 officers in the brigade headquarters were regulars, 

as were 22 of 32 key commanders and 34 of 51 technical specialists. 

The infantry companies were dominated by temporary Special Force 

officers, but many of them were former noncommissioned officers 

(NCOs) in the regular army.

In dealing with their US Army counterparts, the Canadians had a 

rank advantage: majors commanded companies and captains served as 

executive officers (“2ICs” in Commonwealth-speak) where comparable 

US Army infantry billets were filled by junior captains and lieutenants. 

The same rank relationship applied in all units.11

Following the progress of forming a Canadian brigade, the US 

Army Staff assessed the mobilization and recommended that the JCS 

report to Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall that United Nations 

Command should accept the brigade groups. The JCS concurred, noting 

that the Canadians had met all the criteria for Korean service. If the 

brigade wanted to use British weapons and other equipment, then the 

subsequent logistical problems became Canada’s concern. The US 

Army already faced shortages and welcomed some relief. Spared a 

period of familiarization training with US Army infantry weapons and 

communications, the CSF might be ready to embark in late November. It 

could change to American weapons later if “desirable,” perhaps during 

another three or four months training on Okinawa. General Foulkes 

seemed most concerned about realistic pre-deployment training and 

thought that Canada’s earlier winter made training there impractical. 

His preference would be to send the brigade to a site in the United 

States, then move it to Japan to climb mountains and conduct tactical 

exercises “under conditions similar to those in Korea.” Foulkes chose to 

keep British weapons since he hoped the 25th CIBG would become part 

of a Commonwealth division. The CGS made one exception, he wanted 

the new US Army 3.5-inch rocket launcher, a proven T-34 killer.12

The US Army Staff recommended that the Canadian brigade train at 

Fort Lewis, Washington, staffed to support extensive training but empty 

now that the 2d Infantry Division was in Korea. US Army Brigadier 

General LeRoy H. Watson and his staff could provide vehicles, petroleum, 

oil and lubricant (POL), ammunition, and ranges, and the Army Staff 

sent Major Chester A. Lively, an infantry officer turned logistician, to 

Fort Lewis as FECOM’s liaison officer and Army Staff trouble-shooter. 
12

Foulkes and Rockingham later wrote General Collins that the Fort Lewis 

training had more than met their expectations. Foulkes, however, kept 

pressing Collins to recommend that the 25th CIBG go to Germany, not 

Korea. Foulkes’ persistence reflected Canadian press criticism of the 

St. Laurent government’s Korean commitment. Collins would not be 

moved. Eighth Army needed not one Canadian battalion but the whole 

brigade group. Collins promised to help Foulkes spend an uncommitted 

Mutual Defense Assistance Program grant of $120 million on US Army 

artillery and vehicles to equip another new brigade group for NATO 

service. Foulkes had already started forming this force by activating 

a third battalion for Canada’s three Active Force infantry battalions.13

The 25th CIBG made its first contact with the US Army at Fort 

Lewis. Rockingham pushed to consolidate his brigade at one site in 

order to get his troops under the control of his officers, not active force 

trainers and administrators. In addition to being vacant, Fort Lewis provided American trainers, live-fire ranges and ample ammunition, and 

access to the Seattle port of embarkation. The Fort Lewis period allowed the Canadians to train with American crew-served weapons (machine guns, mortars, rocket launchers), some radios, and vehicles. The 

Fort Lewis training proved a bargain at $2.46 a day for each Soldier, 

or $2.5 million from October 1950 to March 1951 when the brigade 

departed. The training provided opportunities to see what American 

equipment and weapons suited Rockingham and his staff. The Canadian infantry sections kept their M4 Enfield rifles, Bren light machine 

guns, and Sten submachine guns because of their ammunition and troop 

comfort level. The Canadians kept their British style helmets, justified 

by their compatibility with radio headsets. The US model helmet might 

have provided more protection from head wounds but the Canadians 

wore their unique soft caps anyway. The Canadian troops found GI rations, cooked or field, acceptable but wondered why Canadian money 

could not buy quality Canadian food available in British Columbia. The 

Fort Lewis experience gave the Canadians an unjustified sense of superiority over the US Army, erroneously based on observations of US 

service troops. The Canadians trained hard and endured Washington’s 

chilly continuous winter rains. The infantry remained in the field for 

12-day periods, punctuated by four days of garrison breaks for cleaning, classes, and recovery. The GIs avoided getting wet. The Canadian 

junior officers discovered that Madigan Army General Hospital had a 

superior officers’ club well stocked with young nurses. Some officers 

took the opportunity to learn unfamiliar jobs. Lieutenant Bob Rigma, 
13

Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps (RCOC), learned how to manage his 

Mobile Laundry and Bath Unit (46 vehicles, 30 men) from a US Army 

captain who was a professional laundryman. Rigma, who retired as a 

major general and logistical specialist, remembered using his post exchange (PX) access (part of the US-Canadian military agreement on 

support) to purchase camp cots and electric razors. He also remembered 

other acts of kindness. Military police (MPs) recovered his jeep from 

R22°R thieves and a supply sergeant gave him wooden barracks boxes 

for his unit’s personal use overseas. Captain Harry Pope, a habitual critic of all things military and the brigade’s first adjutant, found the Fort 

Lewis training period a welcome relief from the chaotic mobilization 

in Canada. The Fort Lewis training and support NCOs provided timely 

assistance, unhampered by regulations. Pope concluded that sergeants 

ran the US Army. His only memorable complaint was that the managers of the officers’ club did not like rowdy parties. The FBI didn’t 

like Harry Pope’s interest in a blonde Trotskyite who lured him to an 

anti-war protest in Seattle. Under pressure to rid his ranks of “radicals,” 

Brigadier Rockingham sent an enraged Pope back to Canada before the 

brigade deployed.14 
14

Going to Korea and Joining an American Army

The dramatic change in the war in September-October 1950 threw 

Canadian-US planning into disarray. General Douglas MacArthur 

advised that the brigade not train in Japan where it might be viewed 

as a new occupying force. He then thought that since he was about to 

destroy the North Korean government and Army, he might need only 

one token Canadian battalion for occupation duties in North Korea. 

General Foulkes then reported to General Collins that his government 

now thought the CSF should become Canada’s NATO ground force. The 

issue went to Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Secretary Marshall 

for resolution. The State Department liked the NATO option but as signs 

of Chinese intervention grew, the JCS on 27 October insisted that the 

Canadians go to Korea. On 27 November, as Eighth Army reeled back 

from the Chinese Second Offensive, Marshall assured Brooke Claxton 

that United Nations Command needed every Canadian fighter Claxton 

could furnish and the force would go directly to Korea.15

Lester Pearson and Brooke Claxton established the political-strategic context that shaped Canadian-American ground force relations 

in the war zone, Korea and Japan. Both ministers knew the perils of 

joining a big army even for a small war. Canadian policy in the two 

world wars stressed the operational independence and national identity 

of the Canadian armed forces. For naval and air forces, the charge to be 

independent could not be met but if Canada could balance its army’s requirements with American assistance and its own support system, Canada might create a military presence and political leverage greater than 

its real operational contribution. Pearson thought the American call for 

troops through the UN was so much anti-communist rant, and he feared 

that the Republican Party would press for a war with China. Claxton 

worried more about his commanders’ will to resist American or British 

calls for force integration. The secret of independence was not to ask for 

too much and to give back enough operational excellence to discourage 

amalgamation. It was a formula the Canadians had used to ward off the 

British Army since 1914.16 

For the 25th CIBG, maintaining its Canadian identity — and speeding its commitment to combat — meant serving under its own officers, wearing its own uniforms and equipment, using a mix of British 

and American weapons, driving American vehicles, eating American 

rations, refueling with US Army gas and lubricants, and trying to communicate with radios used by three different armies. Only the Chinese 

People’s Volunteer Force (CPVF) faced a similar challenge. Some of 
15

the American weapons and equipment came from Fort Lewis, FECOM 

(Japan), and the 2d Logistical Command (Korea) picked up most of 

the supply burden. In his dealing with US Secretary of the Army Frank 

Pace, Jr., his own Cabinet Defence Committee, and the American defense officials with whom he met in conferences, Claxton remained 

enthusiastic about inter-allied cooperation in Korea. His principal military advisors, General Foulkes (Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee) 

and Simonds (CGS), supported the defense minister’s dogged pursuit 

of balance between dependence and independence in dealing with the 

Americans.17

While the CSF formed up in North America, Claxton and Foulkes 

(still only Army CGS in 1950) started to build a Canadian support 

establishment in the war zone. The first Soldiers to go to Japan were 

four officers and five enlisted men as a liaison mission to the US 

FECOM (General Douglas MacArthur) and the British Commonwealth 

Occupation Force or BCOF (Lieutenant General Sir Horace Robertson, 

an Australian). The two senior liaison officers were Brigadier F. 

J. Fleury and Lieutenant Colonel P. F. L. Sare, who became the 

underappreciated organizers and driving personalities of the Canadian 

Military Mission Far East (CMMFE). Although CMMFE in theory 

Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada. 

Figure 3. Troops of the 2d PPCLI during patrol, March 1951.
16

and sometimes in practice represented the RCN and RCAF in Japan, 

its principal function was to serve the needs of the 25th CIBG, a task 

it began on 25-30 September 1950 by looking for a suitable training 

base for the Canadian ground forces. Encouraged by the FECOM staff 

and Robertson to inspect a US Army base on Okinawa, vacated by two 

battalions of the US 29th Infantry, the Canadians visited the island and 

returned to Japan unimpressed with the proffered property. They were 

pleased with US Army cooperation, which Fleury found more helpful 

than BCOF’s dire warnings of American incompetence. On 1 October, 

Fleury met with the FECOM general staff and then had an audience 

with General MacArthur himself. Subjected to a classic MacArthur “I 

talk, you listen” briefing, Fleury got a preview of MacArthur’s “I’ve 

Won the War” soliloquy staged for President Harry S. Truman on Wake 

Island two weeks later. The overriding message for Canada was simple: 

don’t bother to send an entire brigade group, but a battalion would be 

nice for occupation duties in a unified Korea. With this new appreciation 

of the situation, Fleury recommended to Foulkes that Okinawa basing 

be ignored and that one Canadian battalion come to Korea directly and 

leave North America as soon as possible and operate out of the US 

Eighth Army’s port and logistics base at Pusan.18

Claxton, Foulkes, and Rockingham accepted the new concept of a 

one-battalion expeditionary force with good grace but did not order the 

25th CIBG to stand down from training at its separate posts. For one 

thing, Canada had assumed the obligation to form a similar brigade 

group for service in Germany, and Claxton did not relish sending his 

one “regular” brigade abroad. Instead Claxton and Foulkes ordered 

Brigadier Rockingham to send one infantry battalion to the US Army 

base at Fort Lewis, Washington, for its last pre-embarkation training. 

Just as Rockingham had appealed to Claxton as someone who could 

work as a partner with the United States and British armies, Rockingham 

chose the 2d Battalion, PPCLI as his first expeditionary force because he 

believed Lieutenant Colonel Stone, who had participated in Operation 

Sweetbriar, could manage the challenges of allied cooperation. The 

2d PPCLI’s bases also happened to be closest to Fort Lewis and the 

embarkation port, Seattle. And the PPCLI had been the first Canadian 

battalion to reach the Western Front in 1914.19

Recognizing that CMMFE itself needed reinforcement, General 

Foulkes sent an advance party, commanded by Major C. J. A. Hamilton, 

a regular general staff officer, first to Fort Lewis and then to Tokyo 

to arrange for the 2d PPCLI’s arrival in Pusan. Hamilton agreed with 
17

Fleury that the Canadians needed a support structure at both Pusan and 

somewhere in Japan. Although the US 2d Logistical Command was 

cooperative enough, its lax inventory control and Korean-Japanese 

work force made formal supply requisitioning adventurous. Organizing 

a service organization in Japan would allow the Canadians to work 

directly with the US Army logisticians of FECOM, in fact to use the 

US Army as a counterweight to BCOF, which really had little to offer 

in terms of facilities and equipment. Commonwealth resources were 

really controlled by the British Army’s General Officer Commanding 

Far East, Lieutenant General Sir John Harding, based in Hong Kong. 

Although BCOF helped the Canadians procure some local vehicles, 

General Robertson seemed more interested in selling Australian rations 

to the Canadians, which Rockingham wisely rejected in favor of US 

Army food, none of which included either mutton and vegemite.20

As Canadian planning advanced and the 2d PPCLI moved to 

Fort Lewis, the People’s Republic of China created, in MacArthur’s 

well-chosen words, “an entirely new war.” In late October and early 

November, the first twelve divisions of the CPVF attacked the lead 

elements of the US 1st Cavalry Division, the US 1st Marine Division, 

and the ROK 1st, 6th, and Capital Divisions in battles near both of 

North Korea’s two coastlines. Although MacArthur and his FECOM 

Figure 4. Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry returning from patrol in Korea, 

1951. Their lack of helmets and casual attitude indicate they are behind friendly lines.

Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.
18

G2, Major General Charles A. Willoughby, did not initially recognize 

the enormity of the Chinese intervention, Lieutenant General Walton 

A. Walker, the Eighth Army commander, did and demanded control of 

every UN unit in sight or over the horizon, including the 25th CIBG. 

After only four days at Fort Lewis to draw weapons and equipment, 2d 

PPCLI sailed from Seattle on 25 November now bound for a real war. 

In the meantime, Rockingham requested that Foulkes order all other 

elements of the 25th CIBG to Fort Lewis for advanced unit training, 

including the live-fire exercises still banned in Canada. The brigade 

would specialize in mountain and cold weather operations, certainly 

appropriate for Korean service, but very demanding on troops and 

equipment. Rockingham welcomed the challenge and appreciated the 

help of the Fort Lewis training cadre, who agreed to advise the brigade’s 

commanding officers, not ignore them as the Canadian cadre had done. 

Rockingham used the training to weed out the incompetent, unfit, and 

unwilling members of his command with the full backing of Claxton, 

Foulkes, and Adjutant General Macklin.21

In the meantime, the 2d PPCLI sailed slowly into harm’s way, but 

the battalion’s first wounds came in Japan, self-inflicted. Experiencing 

a sudden, uncharacteristic lapse in his unrelenting discipline, Colonel 

Stone allowed his bored and paid troops a 48-hour shore leave in Yokohama, presumably to buy souvenirs and Christmas gifts. Facing combat, the battalion’s officers argued that the troops needed a break — and 

break they did: bottles, fists, faces, stomachs, and urinary systems. They 

also traded their uniforms for drinks, souvenirs, and services. The collective debauch — the only unit action of its type by Canadians in the 

Korean War — outraged Stone and hardened his heart to complaints 

about food, forced marches, mountain climbing at night, primitive living, and a lack of promotions and medals. 

The Yokohama affair did not alarm FECOM, however, since it 

demonstrated Canadian fighting spirit. The incident did not attract 

much high-level American interest since at that moment (15-17 December 1950) the Eighth Army was in full retreat back to South Korea. 

The incident, however, may have strengthened CMMFE’s recommendation that off-duty Canadians be concentrated in the port city of Kure, 

already a Commonwealth naval base and growing British Army support 

center for the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade (BCB). That unit 

was already in combat and a probable home for the 2d PPCLI until the 

25th CIBG arrived.22
19

When the 2d PPCLI reached Pusan, Stone faced another challenge, 

an Eighth Army order to march to the sound of the guns, mostly 

Chinese, just north of Seoul. Distressed by his battalion’s lack of 

training, discipline, and physical fitness, Stone firmly and politely kept 

saying “no” all the way up the chain-of-command until he reached 

the Eighth Army Commander, General Walker. Despite the constant 

assertion by Walker’s chief-of-staff, Major General Leven C. Allen, 

that the 27th BCB needed more troops, Walker accepted Stone’s orders 

not to enter combat until he judged his battalion fully trained. Walker 

decided not to force the issue despite Allen’s plea that other new 

UNC foreign units (the Turkish brigade and the Greek battalion) had 

not been such reluctant warriors. (Stone called Allen a “rather snarky 

individual.”) Before Walker could change his mind, Stone moved 2d 

PPCLI to mountainous Miryang, North Kyongsang province, and away 

from crowded, odiferous Pusan. Stone immediately mounted a regime 

of hard marches, tactics, climbing, and weapons firing that by design 

drove the faint-hearted and unfit Patricias from his ranks. His program 

of forced attrition alarmed Canadian personnel planners, who estimated 

that Stone’s rate of non-combat attrition, if applied to the whole 25th 

CIBG, would require 1,350 replacements a month — above replacing 

casualties. Stone did not relent in his Spartanesque training. He did 

not get the eight weeks of training Walker approved, but 2d PPCLI 

improved rapidly in the six weeks the Eighth Army granted.23

With the 2d PPCLI safely dispatched to Korea, CMMFE and 

Advanced Party, 25th CIBG concentrated on creating a sound 

administrative-logistical organization in Japan, largely at Kure, 

designed to parallel US Army service commands and to work closely 

— but independently — with other British, Australian, and New 

Zealand military agencies. The Canadians even provided inter-allied 

entertainment between a 25th CIBG hockey team and a Japanese allstar team. To their surprise, the Canadians lost 6-2 and 6-4 to a group of 

ice rink kamikazes. 

By the time the 25th CIBG entered combat in May 1951 the 

Canadian organizational presence in Japan had taken its final form. 

Canadian Military Mission Far East consisted of the following 

(Canadian Base Units Far East): 25th Canadian Reinforcement Group; 

2d Canadian Administrative Unit; Canadian Transport Company; 

Canadian Movement Control Group; and Canadian Section, British 

Commonwealth Hospital.
20

As the 25th CIBG entered Korea and joined the First British Commonwealth Division in July 1951, the Canadians also contributed to the 

division’s support structure in Korea. By the end of the year the Canadian service units within the war zone included: 

57th Independent Field Squadron (Royal Canadian Engineers) 

25th Canadian Field Ambulance, RCAMC 

25th Canadian Field Dressing Station, RCAMC 

54th Canadian Transport Company, RCASC 

25th Canadian Infantry Brigade Group Ordnance Company, RCOC 

25th Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineer Workshop 

25th Canadian Provost Marshal Detachment 

25th Canadian Field Detention Barracks 

1st Canadian Field Security Service 

25th Canadian Public Relations Unit 

25th Canadian Field Dental Unit, RCDC 

Unless formally assigned as an attachment to the Commonwealth 

Division, the Canadian support units fell under the administrative 

control of Headquarters, Canadian Base Units, Far East, but provided 

services to all of the British Commonwealth ground forces in the war 

zone. The Headquarters, Canadian Base Units, Far East, did not become 

a formal organization until February 1953. Until this reorganization, 

the brigadier commanding the 25th CIBG served as the nominal 

commander of all Canadian units in Korea and Japan, an impossible 

assignment for an operational commander with a limited brigade staff, 

which had far fewer officers than a US Army regimental combat team. 

In practice the brigadier commanding the CMMFE functioned as a de 

facto commander of the Canadian units in Japan. 

The Canadian policy of non-integration in the Eighth Army applied 

to the British Commonwealth Division as well. Only the ordnance 

company and Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers 

(RCEME) workshop became a Canadian “element” within a Commonwealth Division specialist unit. The loose and complex organizational structure actually worked well for the Canadians, who formed 

and maintained lateral contacts with their US Army counterparts in 2d 

Logistical Command and its successor, Korean Communications Zone 

(KCOMZ) (October 1952) or the 8006th Army Unit. In Japan the Ca-
21

nadians worked with the Japan Logistical Command (JAPLOGCOM) 

(8000th Army Unit) and its successor Headquarters, US Army Forces, 

FECOM (October 1952). The size and complexity of United Nations 

Command’s structure encouraged informal, personal contacts at which 

the Canadians became experts, probably because of their World War 

II experience with the British Army. There was almost no part of the 

Eighth Army, KCOMZ, and JAPLOGCOM that Canadians could not 

contact with their broad but thin support structure. The Canadian support units formally became part of the First Commonwealth Division 

and BCOF and its parallel component, British Commonwealth Forces, 

Korea, whose commanders during the war were three different Australian lieutenant generals. In its determination to remain separate from 

the tar pit of US Army Forces Far East, the Canadian 25th CIBG and 

its support structure became embedded in the First Commonwealth Division, much to the pleasure of General Guy Simonds, the CGS and an 

unreconstructed Anglophile. The support protocol with the US Army 

remained in place, however, exercised formally and informally by Canadian officers in the service units in Korea and Japan. In the meantime 

the combat formations of Canada entered the war in the Eighth Army 

and learned quickly that dealing with the US Army demanded watchfulness, patience, and determination.24
22

The Canadians in Battle, 1951

To maintain their identity in the face of British and American 

pressure, however mild, to sacrifice some national independence in 

the name of efficiency, the Canadian combat forces had to prove their 

operational excellence. The 2d PPCLI did so in the battle of Kapyong 

(21-26 April 1951), and the 25th CIBG proved itself in Operation 

Commando (1-7 October 1951), the battle for the Maryang-san 

mountain complex northwest of the Imjin river valley. When the Eighth 

Army shifted to the strategic defense in the winter of 1951-1952, the 

25th CIBG had become an integral part of the First Commonwealth 

Division, which was part of the US I Corps and the defender of Seoul 

and the Han River valley. The Commonwealth Division held this critical 

terrain until United Nations Command and the Communist coalition 

signed an armistice on 27 July 1953.25

While Lieutenant Colonel Stone worked up his battalion to combat 

effectiveness in North Kyongsang province’s mountains, the Chinese 

Army drove the Eighth Army out of Seoul in January 1951, and attacked 

again in February to stop a relentless Eighth Army advance back to 

the Han River watershed. Having checked the Chinese Third and 

Fourth Offensives, Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, Eighth 

Army commander since late December 1950 after General Walker’s 

accidental death, ordered corps-level offensives that recaptured Seoul 

and put United Nations Command across the 38th Parallel. Ridgway’s 

immediate goal was to occupy a system of roads, rivers, mountains, 

meager valleys, and corridors that would defend South Korea and 

serve as a base for any other offensives farther north to the PyongyangWonsan line, a potential strategic, imposed UN victory.26

To pursue Ridgway’s offensive plans, the Eighth Army needed 

more troops, and it needed them immediately. As a veteran of WWII 

in Europe, Ridgway appreciated the dependability of British Commonwealth troops. He welcomed the 29th British Brigade Group when it became operational in Korea in November 1950, and he pressured Stone 

to move into battle as an addition to the veteran but shrinking 27th 

British Commonwealth Infantry Brigade (BCIB), which had been engaged since September 1950. The 27th Brigade needed a fourth infantry battalion to maintain its operational efficiency within the excessive 

frontages and “die-hard forlorn hope” missions it received. When Stone 

took his battalion forward to join the 27th BCIB on 15 February 1951, 

he arranged for his battalion to have a sobering experience by marching 

past 68 dead GIs of the 2d Infantry Division’s reconnaissance company 
23

and L Company, 3d Battalion, 9th Infantry. Stone told his troops the 

GIs had been killed in their sleeping bags, where they had disrobed 

and fallen asleep without adequate security. Stone believed his troops 

needed this shock treatment to increase their toughness; some Patricias 

wondered about the dependability of the GIs and South Koreans to their 

front and on their flanks. On 21 February, the 2d PPCLI marched north 

in Operation Killer against sporadic Chinese resistance. The Canadians 

moved up hills and down hills to avoid Chinese road-oriented fire sacks 

and ambushes. They also learned that like the stars, the Chinese came 

out at night, when they attacked instead of defended. Eighth Army artillery and Fifth Air Force fighter-bombers had made the Chinese daytime 

moles and nighttime badgers. On 7 March, the Patricias attacked a Chinese-defended hill and took 44 casualties, a good test of the Canadians’ 

fighting heart. Along with its parent brigade, which managed relations 

with the US IX Corps (Major General William M. Hoge, US Army), the 

Patricias would face their greatest challenge at the roadside village and 

creek called Kapyong.27

The battle of Kapyong (21-25 April 1950) proved that the 2d PPCLI 

had learned how valuable American fire support could be for embattled 

infantry. Senior officers noted that American generals tended to imperil 

the Commonwealth formations by assigning them to backstop faltering 

South Korean divisions, in this case the ROK 6th Division, which had 

already been routed three times by the Chinese since November 1950. 

The 27th BCIB won Kapyong against a Chinese division because 2d 

PPCLI and 3d Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (3d RAR) held 

the two dominant hill masses above the main road south to the critical 

Pukhan River corridor. However, the winning edge came from four batteries of US IX Corps artillery, the 16th New Zealand Field Regiment 

(a 25-pounder howitzer artillery battalion), Company A, 72d Tank Battalion, and the Patricia’s own 81mm mortar platoon. The only air strike 

— one Marine F4U Corsair — hit an Australian company. The difference between 3d RAR’s desperate defense and partial withdrawal and 

2d PPCLI’s firm hold on Hill 677 on the brigade’s left flank was timely, 

close, and accurate artillery fire of the New Zealand artillery. The Canadians also believed their support (weapons) company, armed with US 

Army 81mm mortars and .50-caliber Browning heavy machine guns 

and mounted in mobile half-tracks, delivered more effective area fire 

than their Australian counterparts conducted with British crew-served 

weapons. When 2d PPCLI began to exhaust its water and ammunition 

supply on 25 April, four USAF C-119 cargo aircraft dropped the critical 
24

Figure 5. 27 British Commonwealth Infantry Brigade Operations, 19 February-11 

March 1951.

42 Corps

CCF

66 CCF

X X X

Sindae-ri

12 MAR

























 









Hill 685

Hill 532

Hill 410

Hill 450

Hill 614

Hill 484

Hill 523 Hill 444

Hill 642

Hill 404

Point 419

Hagal-il

Sogu

Wol-li

Chip’yong-ni

Chuam-ni

Chohyon

9 US Corps

27 BRITCOM

Inf Bde

3 RAR

3 RAR

9 US Corps

Held by

2 PPCLI

11 MAR

3 MAR

19 FEB

11 MAR

11–13 MAR

10 MAR

8–9 MAR

10 MAR

8 MAR

8 MAR

3 MAR

21 FEB–5 MAR

19 FEB

21 FEB

22 FEB

28 FEB 27 FEB

On 7 MAR 27 BRITCOM Inf Bde came under command of

1 US Cavalry Div

X

27 TAC

X

27 TAC

X

27 TAC

0 1 2 3 4 5

miles

X X X

X X X

X X X

X X X

5 NK

42 Corps

CCF 66 Corps

CCF

1 US

Inf Div 6 ROK

Inf Div

9 10



Yoju



Hoengsong

24 US

Inf Div

9 US Corps Front 11 March 1951

Sangsok

1 US

Marine Div 

Hong-ch’on

X X X

38 Corps

CCF

0 5 10

miles

Sangsok

 19 FEB



2 PPCLI

11–12 MAR

1 9

1,312 feet/400 meters

1,968 feet/600 meters

Canadian forces

Other Commonwealth forces

Creek/stream

Unimproved road

Symbols

Elevation

Naeryong-ni

N
25

supplies (including food and medical stores) on the Canadian position 

with almost pinpoint accuracy. The only flaw in American fire support 

was the limited contribution of the 4.2-inch mortar company positioned 

behind Hill 677 near the main road and thus subject to direct Chinese 

fire. Colonel Stone thought the problem was that the 4.2-inch mortar 

forward observer disappeared, and he had no communications with the 

US Army heavy mortar company in his sector. Stone believed that his 

artillery and mortar support explained the difference between his casualties (33 killed and wounded) and those of 3d RAR (84 killed and 

wounded). Neither Stone nor Brigadier B. A. Burke thought the corps 

artillery batteries27 had fired up to British standards of coordination but 

they appreciated the numbers and weight of shell that US Army guns 

could provide.28

As the Chinese Fifth Offensive stalled north of Seoul, then shifted 

to the Wonju-Hwachon central corridor in May with equal futility, the 

25th CIBG embarked in Seattle (19-21 April 1951) with 7,000 officers 

and other ranks, 1,500 vehicles, and 2,000 tons of supplies. Four weeks 

later the brigade reorganized ashore at Pusan on the assumption that 

it would have several weeks more training in Korea before it became 

operational. The deliberate speed with which Brigadier Rockingham 

planned to enter the battle also reflected his knowledge that his brigade, reunited with the 2d PPCLI, would soon become part of the First 

Commonwealth Division, a concept approved by the Commonwealth 

political and military leadership after long negotiation in April. Instead, 

Eighth Army wanted the 25th CIBG to join the battle against the Chinese as an independent brigade. Rockingham carried instructions from 

his government not to enter the fighting until he was sure that his Canadian identity was secure and his brigade battle-worthy in all respects. 

His next likely commander, Major General A. J. H. Cassels, a smart 

and determined Scotsman, supported Rockingham’s reluctance to go 

directly under US Army corps command as the 27th and 29th Brigades 

had fought since January. Having served in India and northern Europe, 

Cassels had commanded a division in World War II and had been an 

admired “Pommy” (British officer) as the senior UK representative in 

Australia after the war. Sensitive to Canadian reservations about Commonwealth amalgamation, Cassels did not challenge Rockingham’s political guidance to preserve a Canadian identity.29

By May 1951 Commonwealth senior commanders agreed that being 

part of an American division or a corps carried substantial risks. Brigadier B. A. Coad, commander of the 27th Brigade until March 1951, 
26

Figure 6. The Action at Kapyong, 24-25 April 1951.

Hill 504



Hill 577



Hill 794



II

II

after 1800

24 APR

Res Bn

1 A & SH then

1 KOSB

24 APR

23–26 APR

Bn

5 US

Cav Regt

after 1800

24 APR

Bn

5 US

Cav Regt

1 MX

3 RAR

with Coy

72 US Tank Bn

16 NZ

FD Regt

C

A

B

D

Somok-tong

Kap’yong

Tungmudae

27 BRITCOM

X

2 PPCLI

II

TAC

HQ

0 1 2

miles

Naeochon

1 9

656 feet/200 meters

1,312 feet/400 meters

Attacks against 27 BRITCOM (24 April)

Attacks against 2 PPCLI (pm of 24–25 April)

Creek/stream

Symbols

Elevation

N
27

described his deep reservations about the Eighth Army operational style 

in his post-command report of April 1951. US Army commanders did 

not issue mission orders, only imprecise statements of intent defined by 

geography and terrain. They dispersed artillery, air, and transportation 

support in a capricious manner with little attention to time-space factors. They allowed units to be road-bound, yet assigned frontages that 

were too wide and flanks that gaped open. Ridgway had attacked this 

problem but thus far with limited success. Commanders and their staffs 

did not visit their units down to the battalion-level or explore the terrain 

except, perhaps, by air. The GIs themselves did not help themselves 

in the defense, but waited for engineers to dig, plant mines, and string 

barbed wire. Americans ignored their organic crew-served weapons and 

expected instant, massive artillery support. The Eighth Army had many 

fine units, especially armor, artillery, and engineers, but it was an uneven, inconsistent, and poorly-commanded force. General Cassels and 

Brigadier Rockingham agreed with Coad’s analysis. Faced with paper 

orders from distant commanders, Cassels cautioned his division that 

Americans “look at military problems in a very different light to us.” 

He even published guidance on “Relations with United States Formations” that focused on risk-avoidance and excessive casualties. Rockingham got his first taste of Eighth Army operational carelessness when 

he had to take his troops north by train while their heavy weapons and 

ammunition went forward 

by truck with inadequate 

security in a guerrilla-infested rear area. American 

officers seemed too busy 

to explain missions or to 

ask others’ opinions.30

Rockingham’s nervous entry into the Korean War, shared with 

General Cassels, received 

ample justification in the 

three months between 

25th CIBG’s arrival and 

the creation of the First 

Commonwealth Division. 

Assigned to the US IX 

Corps during the second 

Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

Figure 7. Brigadier J.M. Rockingham inspects 

Corporal Rocky Prentice and other soldiers.
28

phase of the Chinese Fifth Offensive, Rockingham resisted a mission 

until he recovered his vehicles, including 20 Sherman M4A3E8 tanks 

for his armored squadron, and heavy weapons from a railhead. He then 

learned his brigade had to move west without clear march routes and assembly areas to join the 1st Cavalry Division. Rockingham and his staff 

and subordinate commanders conducted their own reconnaissance as an 

advance party and found the routes and then called the brigade forward 

by echelon. In the meantime he received more orders to replace the US 

3d Infantry Division (ID) at the front, orders then changed by General 

Cassel’s intervention to put the Canadians in US I Corps reserve behind 

the other two Commonwealth infantry brigades. The US I Corps, however, received Eighth Army orders to attack towards Chorwon on 30 

May, and the corps commander, Major General Frank W. Milburn, sent 

the Canadians to join the US 25th ID in an advance up the Hantan river 

valley northeast of Seoul. Worn out by corps command since September 1950, Milburn had a reputation for high anxiety and professional 

sloppiness. To complicate the operation, I Corps attached the 10th Battalion Combat Team (BCT), Army of the Philippines, to the 25th CIBG. 

Thus far most noted for its inability to function in cold weather and its 

reluctant tactics, the 10th BCT needed nearby allied help, in this case 

provided by the R22°R French-Canadian battalion. Rockingham thus 

had only the 2d RCR for an advance, and this battalion’s attack became 

a one reinforced company affair since two other companies had to seize 

and hold a flank on the Hantan River to the west and the dominant Hill 

467 to the east. The Chinese, however, had decided to organize a major 

defensive position south of the Hantan, and a fresh Chinese regiment 

blunted the 2d RCR’s advance of tanks, mounted infantry, and vehicles 

with heavy weapons. The shells of the 2d RCHA and a supporting US 

Army 155mm howitzer battery kept the Chinese at bay, but the Canadians could not hold their objectives, and the whole brigade risked 

encirclement. The company on Hill 467 had to hold the high ground to 

allow the mobile task force that occupied the road junction of Chail-li 

to withdraw. The 2d RCR escaped what might have been a disaster with 

31 casualties. 

The 2d RCR commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert A. Keane, 

confessed that he underestimated the Chinese Army’s military expertise and the importance of holding hills, not road junctions. He and 

Rockingham were not unhappy to bid the front goodbye to spend much 

of June in corps reserve while sending tank-infantry patrols toward the 

base of the “Iron Triangle,” a critical area in central Korea. The brigade 
29

awaited better times than these after the summer rains abated and the 

First Commonwealth Division became operational.31

As he awaited the arrival of the equipment, supplies, service units 

and division staff that would turn three different infantry brigades into 

a division, General Cassels also assumed the responsibility of dealing 

with the US Army’s senior commanders in Korea. Brigadier Rockingham and his British counterparts — Brigadier Thomas Brodie of the 

29th British Infantry Brigade, Brigadier George Taylor of 28th British 

Commonwealth Brigade, and Brigadier William G. H. Pike, Commander Royal Artillery — faced enough internal organizational problems 

that they welcomed Cassels’ efforts to integrate the division into the 

US I Corps, the division’s higher headquarters for the rest of the war. 

For his part, Rockingham, backed by his own battalion commanders, 

shared Cassels’ reservations about the US Army’s operational style and 

the leadership of the new corps commander, Lieutenant General John 

W. O’Daniel. Ridgway requested O’Daniel as a corps commander because he valued “Iron Mike” for his aggressiveness and loyalty, not his 

professional sophistication and charm. O’Daniel’s claim to successful 

battlefield leadership rested on his World War II command of the US 3d 

ID, arguably the US Army’s best standard infantry division when commanded by Lucian K. Truscott, Jr. Only an incompetent, which O’Daniel 

was not, could have failed as the 3d ID commander. More importantly, 

a US Eighth Army corps headquarters was well stocked with able and 

energetic staff officers eager to please their general. There was a deputy 

corps commander (a general), a chief of staff and four G-staff assistants 

(G1, G2, G3, G4), a corps artillery group commander (a general) and 

group staff, and a host of special staff officers, normally colonels and 

lieutenant colonels. Cassels’ staff had only two principals, the GSO 1 (a 

combination of chief of staff and operational director) and the Assistant 

Adjutant and Quartermaster General (AA&GQM) (whose duties combined those of a US Army G1 and G4). The GSO 1, a Canadian, was 

Lieutenant Colonel (then Colonel) E. D. Danby and the AA&GQM, 

a British lieutenant colonel, A. W. N. L. Vickers. In dealing with its 

own units, Cassels’ staff proved adequate, but in dealing with the US I 

Corps it was undermanned and overwhelmed by paperwork and meetings. At the brigade level, the Commonwealth commanders and their 

small staffs worked outside the formal hierarchical corps structure and 

relied on informal, personal relations with American officers who were 

inclined to be helpful for reasons both effective and affective. These lateral contacts made Commonwealth Division-Eighth Army cooperation 
30

a reality. The most obvious example of this association was the shared 

comradeship between the Commonwealth Division and the US 1st Marine Division, assigned to the US I Corps in early 1952.32

The First Commonwealth Division spent late August, September, 

and October 1951 moving northwest between the Samichon and Imjin rivers in order to occupy the hill mass between the two rivers. The 

northernmost of 11 peaks along the ridge gave the hill mass its name, 

Maryang-san. The final goal was to seize the western or reverse slope 

of the ridge, designated the Jamestown Line. The initial objective was 

the eastern lower ridges that would serve as the start line for Operation Commando and adequate cover for vehicles, supporting machineguns and mortars, and some advanced artillery batteries. Starting with 

tank-infantry probes across the flooded Imjin, the 25th CIBG pushed 

back the weak Chinese patrols and outposts to occupy the Wyoming 

Line, the start line by the end of September. The final phase of Commando, the capture of Maryang-san, required the commitment of all three 

brigades. Tirelessly supported by the three division artillery battalions, 

a reinforced 4.2-inch mortar company, and four tank companies, the 

Commonwealth infantry companies took position after position with 

patient skill and occasional ferocity. None of the Canadian battalions 

failed to take their objectives. In completing Operation Commando on 

3-8 October, the division suffered 58 dead and 262 wounded. The contemporaneous assault on Heartbreak Ridge cost the US 2d Infantry Division 2,900 casualties. Problems within the Commonwealth Division 

were small and correctable except for the slow flow of replacements. 

The division had made itself a formidable killer of Chinese soldiers. 

The division’s professionalism impressed Lieutenant General James A. 

Van Fleet, who had no complaints about the performance of the division 

and no desire to challenge its new reputation for operational success, 

victories that contrasted with the lethargic advances and high casualties of the flanking US 1st Cavalry Division. In addition, Cassels made 

no pressing demands on the US I Corps since his scheme of maneuver allowed his own artillery to mass its fire against sequential battalion objectives. Only five corps artillery batteries provided occasional 

reinforcing fires. The major contributions from the US Eighth Army 

came before Commando, hundreds of trucks and additional engineering 

equipment to build bridges across the Imjin and scrape roads across the 

flood plain to the Wyoming Line.33

Although the officers of the First Commonwealth Division could 

not have known that the Battle of Maryang-san would be the division’s 
31

only major offensive of the war, they certainly knew that they would 

hold the high ground they had captured in Operation Commando since 

the Jamestown Line gave the US I Corps operational depth above the 

Imjin and deprived the Chinese of direct observations of the sector. The 

US I Corps’ mission was the defense of Seoul and the Han River valley. Prospects of an armistice were uncertain at best in the autumn of 

1951 but another Korean winter arrived and froze the front for months. 

Commonwealth officers of a historical bent began to wonder if they 

were besieging Sevastopol or manning a mountainous version of the 

Western Front. Italy also came to mind. In any event, the division had a 

sector to defend and an American corps commander to appease, please, 

and deceive.

Figure 8. The 2d Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, equipped with American 

half-tracks and British 25-pounder howitzers, provide fire support in the Iron 

Triangle, June 1951.

 Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.
32

The War on the Jamestown Line, 1951-1953

Even though the armistice talks had resumed at Panmunjom, peace 

was not at hand. The Commonwealth senior officers assumed that speculating about how near or far away a ceasefire might be was a futile 

hobby, so they began to organize their sector for protracted defense. 

Over the winter of 1951-1952 the 25th CIBG endured a harsh Korean 

winter while the Canadian government faced the dilemma of replacing 

the 18-month Special Force volunteers, first the 2d PPCLI. The eventual 

plan, designed by Secretary Claxton and General Simonds, was to send 

the First Battalions (regular) of the three standing infantry regiments 

with similar plans to replace the artillery battalion, armored squadron, 

the engineering squadron, and the brigade’s service and technical units. 

The rotation scheme would provide unit phasing so that no unit would 

be inexperienced. Individuals and units would ease into the war beside 

their departing counterparts. Thus the new Canadian infantry were the 

First Battalions of the PPCLI, RCR, and R22°R regiments, while the 1st 

Field Regiment, RCHA, and C Squadron, Lord Strathcona’s Horse assumed the duty of direct fire support. Even as the 25th CIBG recreated 

itself in early 1952, Rockingham conducted exercises when the brigade 

went into division reserve, established demanding schools for NCOs, 

and even shifted the brigade to the division’s left (western) flank in 

the Samichon River valley where the 1st PPCLI occupied a vulnerable 

bit of terrain, “The Hook,” in February. The three-division 63d CPVF 

Army, roughly 30,000 fighters, faced the 7,000-man Canadian brigade. 

As the war dragged on, the Chinese increased their lethality by building 

deep field fortifications and observation posts, deploying battery after 

battery of Russian artillery and mortars, and training special nighttime 

units that mirrored the German strumtruppen units of 1917-1918. The 

Chinese tactics reflected a niupitung (sticky candy) tactical doctrine that 

would reduce the destructiveness of UNC air and artillery by stressing 

local surprise and “hugging” UNC infantry positions.34

General Cassels turned over his command to Major General 

Michael M. Alston-Roberts-West, a personable infantryman who had 

commanded two brigades in World War II, in September 1952. Mike 

West inherited a toxic relationship with the commanders of the US I 

Corps, General O’Daniel, and then Lieutenant General Paul Kendall 

and Lieutenant General Bruce Clarke. The tension was not simply a 

matter of personality and style, but a reflection of serious disagreement 

about how to wage defensive war. The three wartime commanders of 

the 25th CIBG — Rockingham and then M. P. “Pat” Bogert and Jean 
33

V. Allard — supported their General Officer Commanding (GOC). 

The problem started with the Eighth Army commander, James Van 

Fleet, a personality with a fixed commitment to attacking and killing 

Chinese. No one (except ordnance supply units) objected to Van Fleet’s 

orders to increase the use of artillery. The issue was holding a combat 

outpost line (COPL) well beyond (a mile or more) the Main Line of 

Resistance (MLR). The corollary operational concept was to patrol 

the considerable gaps and spaces in the COPL and MLR, designing 

the patrols (almost always at night) to become raids against Chinese 

outposts to take prisoners. The I Corps commanders made the patrolling 

program unacceptable by stressing that the patrolling would keep the 

troops aggressive and active, a goal Generals Cassels and West thought 

superfluous and dangerous. To avoid the lethargy of trench warfare, 

they instituted strenuous offensive exercises for formations in reserve. 

The difficulty was that the excessive frontage of the division (15,000 

Figure 9. American-supplied Sherman tanks of C Squadron, Lord Strathcona’s Horse, 

return from patrol in the Iron Triangle, 1951.

 Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.
34

Figure 10. 1 Commonwealth Division Front, 31 March 1952.

Kulchon

Yong-dong





Hill 166



Kulchon

THE HOOK

Naeochon

Un-gol

Hill 227





Hill 163

1 PPCLI

II

3 RAR

1 KSLI

1 KOSB

2 R/22E R



Hill 132

2 RCR

I

I

I

I

I

I

I

I

I

Enemy locations taken from Intelligence

Report 234, dated 16 March 1952.

Chinese attack against

C Coy 1 PPCLI

26 March 1952

D(-)

A

C(-)

A

D

B

C

1 9

393 feet/120 meters

525 feet/160 meters

Creek/stream

Symbols

Elevation

0 1⁄2 1

mile

II

II

II

II

II

N
35

meters) made it difficult to create an operational reserve. Cassels and 

West protested constantly about the US I Corps’ operational priorities. 

Had they been US Army generals, they might have been relieved for 

non-cooperation. Since all four Commonwealth national commanders 

in the division had orders to inform their national chains of command of 

operational and administrative conflicts in United Nations Command, 

the GOC had a powerful weapon with which to pressure the I Corps 

commander into some modification of the outpost defense-active 

patrolling orders. As a result the Commonwealth Division managed to 

avoid the worst excesses of the “Stalemate War,” but it nevertheless 

took unnecessary casualties in a series of “forlorn hope” outpost 

and patrol battles. General West even found 25th CIBG a reluctant 

patroller beyond his own cautious guidance. This experience enabled 

the Canadian CGS, General Simonds, to reorient the whole Canadian 

Army back to its historic association with the British Army, perhaps the 

lesser of two evils.35

The patrolling policy of the US I Corps aggravated Brigadier 

Rockingham, who backed Cassels’ resistance movement. Eighth Army, 

O’Daniel insisted, wanted every division to capture one Communist 

Soldier every three days and could use up to a battalion to raid and 

set up ambushes. The division conducted company raids, but produced 

dead Chinese, not POWs. O’Daniel then ordered each battalion to send 

out one company-sized “fighting patrol” each week, seeking POWs. 

Throughout March 1952, Rockingham ordered out patrols of platoon 

and section strength and objected to their casualties from mortar fire 

and Chinese patrols. The patrolling lapsed as the 25th CIBG began 

to replace battalions. Now commanded by Brigadier Bogert, the new 

battalions sallied forth in June with unhappy results. The division approved multiple reconnaissance patrols as security measures but only 

200 yards beyond the outposts. 

The “fighting patrols,” less than ten percent of all patrols, produced 

no great results except experience for the new Canadians and some attrition of Canadian infantrymen. The ultimate futility came in raids by 

1st RCR on 21-24 June, one of which lost 23 of 32 patrol members. 

The summer rains and tours into reserve status reduced the patrolling. 

General West, the new GOC, was loathe to execute large raids that had 

no defensible purpose and carried obvious risks. 

The patrolling controversy ballooned for the 25th CIBG when it 

moved across the Samichon to occupy the hills dominated by one hill 

mass labeled “The Hook.” The 1st PPCLI occupied the defenses and 
36

became a principal target of Chinese artillery and of Chinese trench 

raids. Rockingham persuaded Cassels to negotiate a change of boundaries, which the GOC did by mid-April 1952. “The Hook” and its neighboring ridges became the responsibility of the 1st Marine Division, 

whose élan and skill impressed the Canadians. They also learned these 

strange Americans shared a similar lack of respect for the US Army. 

When Major Harry Pope finally reached Korea in 1952 as a company 

commander in Third Battalion, R22°R, he discovered an outpost war 

shaped by Eighth Army’s patrolling policies, which he found appalling. Supposed to support active patrolling, the small, vulnerable combat 

outposts served only as hostages and easy targets for Chinese artillery. 

The US Army’s disregard for Chinese tactical skill had spread to the 

Commonwealth Division’s senior commanders and staff, and led to 

carelessness by association. American visitors, easily observed by the 

Chinese, drew unwelcome shelling and sniping. Already short-handed 

to cover all the positions he had to man, Pope resented the Americans’ 

casual attitude to UNC infantry casualties. Only the neighboring 1st 

Marine Division seemed dedicated to husbanding the troops’ lives.36

The strongest argument the First Commonwealth Division had for 

more operational freedom was its artillery employment. This excellence 

did not depend on the number of tubes (72 of 1,832 guns in the Eighth 

Figure 11. Brigadier Rockingham shows the incoming Canadian brigade commander, 

Brigadier M.P. Bogert, the forward position on the Jamestown Line, August 1952.

 Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.
37

Army) nor the weight of shell in which an American division artillery 

group (four battalions) was superior. The British system of mission request and fulfilling fire missions depended on experienced officers serving as observers. Commonwealth batteries could answer fire requests in 

about a minute with admirable accuracy. Very practiced gunner officers 

held every key place in the fire request and response process. The 2d 

and 1st RCHA met the highest standards of division gunnery. The Canadian gunners knew their infantry counterparts and targets by direct 

contact; the FOO (Forward Observation Officer) could call for artillery 

and mortar fire from any division battery within range. A FOO could 

make any requests and call the missions; a Commonwealth observation 

post was a Spartan three- or four-man team who manned the request 

nets; the Americans deployed one team for every type of weapon. Within a brigade the artillery battery commanders massed and shifted fires 

while the CRA massed fires for the division, seldom a necessity. The 

beauty of Commonwealth artillery was the rapidity and accuracy of the 

shells that winnowed out the attacking Chinese. The neighboring 11th 

Marines (at least one battalion) and the I Corps artillery could fire with 

1st RCHA target data with confidence. The gunners’ union worked on 

the basis of lateral respect, regardless of infantry doctrinal disputes. 

Massed artillery saved the outposts and main strongpoints of 1st RCR 

on “The Hook” in October 1952 in a battle in which 1st RCR lost twice 

as many casualties (67) as the 2d PPCLI had suffered at Kapyong in 

1951. Artillery superiority covered many flaws of tactics in the 25th 

CIBG.37

Operational excellence did not protect the Canadians from other 

unpleasant episodes with UNC’s senior officers. Two events stood out as 

stressful enough to attract the attention of the national Army headquarters. 

The first was the dispatch of two Commonwealth Division companies 

to Koje-do, the island POW camp, to participate in Operation Breakup, 

the division of the prisoners into repatriate and non-repatriate groups. 

Anxious to give a coat of UN blue to the force he had sent to Koje-do 

to crush a POW rebellion, General Mark W. Clark ordered General Van 

Fleet to send four allied infantry companies to the embattled island. 

The JCS actually encouraged Clark to “internationalize” the new guard 

force. Clark made his request for two Commonwealth companies to 

Lieutenant General Sir William Bridgeford, the new BCOF, who turned 

the request into an order to General Cassels, who chose Company B, 

Kings Shropshire Light Infantry and Company B, 1st RCR to go to 
38

Koje-do. This half-battalion, codenamed Peterforce, left for Pusan on 

24 May 1952.38

Learning about Company B, 1st RCR’s new mission from press 

reports, Mike Pearson, Brooke Claxton, Charles Foulkes, and Guy Simonds angrily concluded that the United States, especially its Machiavellian generals, had violated an implied agreement to consult on any 

“special” use of Canadian Soldiers. Ottawa’s unhappiness started with 

Brigadier B. A. Connelly, Commander CMMFE, who learned of the 

deployment after it began from a FECOM liaison officer. Ignorance 

soon cost Connelly his job. The Ottawa “Gang of Four” made noises 

about removing Company B from Peterforce and the 25th CIBG from 

the Eighth Army if the Americans did not promise future consultation 

of any controversial deployments that touched POWs or internal peacekeeping in the ROK. Empty threats against General Bridgeford only 

produced charges of political naiveté and immaturity directed at Ottawa by the US State Department, the British Foreign and War Offices, 

and the Australian government. The Pearson-Claxton-Simonds-Foulkes 

group lapsed into dismay, but the Canadians and British agreed that 

the Americans did not appreciate the domestic political implications of 

POW mistreatment. Pearson believed that the United States would now 

be more careful about dragging its allies into the bog of POW segregation and repatriation. In the meantime Company B helped breakup one 

compound of Communist diehards and ended its Koje-do service of 

8-14 July without incident.39

Caught in the Peterforce incident, Brigadier Bogert received no 

comfort from Eighth Army on the issue of putting Koreans in his depleted infantry platoons. In 1950, desperate for replacements, Walton 

Walker accepted a proposal negotiated between FECOM and the South 

Korean government to put Korean Soldiers into the ranks of American infantry companies. The program was Korean Augmentation to the 

United States Army (KATUSA). Throughout 1951 other UN units accepted Korean fillers in various ways. The First Marine Division adopted the First Regiment, ROK Marine Corps. The French added a Korean 

company to their battalion as did the Belgians and Dutch in platoon 

strength. Within American divisions some KATUSAs joined machine 

gun and mortar teams as ammunition bearers. Most infantry company 

commanders assigned the Koreans as riflemen to a GI foxhole buddy, 

the least satisfactory option. The First Commonwealth Division resisted the KATUSA program until General West decided Korean Soldiers 

might be useful trench fillers and rear area patrollers. The Canadian 
39

government had objected to the KATUSA program on a cost and control basis, but it would not object if the division thought the Koreans 

might be useful. General Cassels had thought so without much enthusiasm, and General West accepted the plan somewhat more favorably. 

In late 1952 the division agreed to take Korean fillers, who entered the 

ranks, one hundred to each infantry battalion, in March 1953. Brigadier Bogert and his battalion commanders welcomed the Koreans without much confidence. The KATCOMs — or Koreans Augmented to 

the Commonwealth — were not the first Koreans to join the division. 

In October 1951 each infantry brigade added a Korean Service Corps 

(KSC) battalion as bearers and laborers. The KSC “riceburners,” spared 

military service for age and disability, did good work under close Canadian and Korean military supervision. The KATCOMs were another 

matter.40

The Canadians had many cultural and practical reasons to dislike 

the KATCOMs, who were ill-trained, spoke little or no English, and did 

not have much motivation for combat or the sanitary needs of bunker 

warfare. The Koreans did not like or respond well to Western rations. 

They were undependable and surly, but beyond standard moral appeals 

or Western field punishment. Their basic motivation (if given a choice) 

 Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada.

Figure 12. The Royal 22d Regiment mortar platoon ready to fire in Korea.
40

was to escape service in the draconian ROK Army. The KATCOMs and 

KSC bearers did not get along, in part because the bearers earned far 

better pay than the ROK soldiers. The KATCOMs wanted to eat Korean 

food, as KSCs did. Even though the KATCOM program faded in urgency, Eighth Army did not change its lenient KATUSA policies on food, 

alcohol consumption, and terms of service and discipline, which were 

borrowed from the US Army. In a word, the Commonwealth Soldiers 

had to deal with overfed, underpaid, generously supplied, constantly 

ill, and unwilling Koreans. Bogert and his successor, Brigadier Jean V. 

Allard, had no leverage to improve the Koreans’ performance or reduce 

their troops’ antipathy to the KATCOMs. When Syngman Rhee prolonged the war by releasing 27,000 internees on 18 June, the Canadians retaliated by cutting off the KATCOM’s food, rum, and cigarettes. 

The Canadians also did as few local civilian construction projects as 

they could. Misbehavior against Koreans increased. The KATCOMs 

remained in the Commonwealth Division’s ranks but not in its plans. 

The Canadians saw the KATCOMs as another burden forced on them 

by the US Army.41 

In the spring of 1953 the real enemy remained the Chinese Army that 

faced the US I Corps, an Army that remained active and dangerous even 

though an armistice appeared near in April. The First Commonwealth 

Division and its Marine, US 25th ID, and ROK neighbors became 

the target of heavy outpost attacks in May. The sporadic but violent 

attacks were designed to keep the I Corps engaged and fixed while the 

Chinese mounted offensives to the east against the exposed Kumsong 

River salient. The 3d RCR lost 82 soldiers (including 22 KATCOMs) in 

one outpost battle, and Brigadier Allard and his battalion commanders 

judged their junior officers and NCOs not up to professional standards 

in tactical skill and ardor. Fortunately, the armistice ended the Chinese 

threat but it did not prevent Allard from continuing an arduous training 

program and leadership screening process, organized to the norms of 

the British Army.42
41

Getting Along in Korea and Japan with the US Army

Away from the war along the MLR, the Canadians of the 25th 

CIBG and their personnel and logistical support system in Korea and 

Japan dealt with the US Army as a cornucopia of resources that could 

be exploited to the benefit of the Canadian expeditionary force. Korea 

was a world of two acquisition systems; one was the structured military 

system of requirements, requisitions, warehouses, trucks, consumables 

and non-consumables, Ammunition Supply Points, more trucks and 

military trains, repair depots, and gasoline parks. The other system had 

been born to make the first system work more responsively. It was a 

“gray exchange” system that sometimes cultivated theft (especially by 

Korean “slicky boys”) to supply the black markets in Seoul and Pusan. 

The open “gray” system, however, involved barter for things someone 

wanted and had something to trade. Besides their ability to speak English, the Canadians had special advantages that made them formidable 

traders.43

At the heart of the Canadian gray economic system was the 1950 

agreement to eat American rations and be paid in the US dollar equivalents in Military Purchasing Equivalents (also known as MPCs and 

“Mickey Mouse” money) that could be used anywhere for anything in 

Korea or Japan. When money drove a transaction, the Canadians had 

money, their own and their Army’s. They were provisioned to generous 

American standards, for which the Canadian government reimbursed 

the Department of Defense. The Canadians did not especially like US 

Army rations except the fresh food. They liked British and Australian 

rations even less — and so did the British and Australians, who could 

trade with the Canadians for GI chow.44

The ultimate items of barter could be purchased in either the US 

Army post exchanges or the British Navy, Army & Air Force Institutes 

(NAAFIs) (military shopping centers). Canadians were the only Soldiers with legal access to both. The coin of the realm was NAAFI liquor 

for the Americans and American cigarettes and electrical goods for everyone else. Colonel E. C. W. Myers, Chief Royal Engineers, praised 

the Canadian field engineering squadron for its ability to draw, borrow, 

or barter for the US Army’s best equipment and for materials for bunker 

construction, some of which came from civilian projects. The Canadian artillery battalion traded whiskey on the standard of one bottle for 

one tent with a wooden floor. Foragers and whiskey traders brought in 

two Turkish mules, a jeep, and a TD-18 heavy bulldozer. The Canadian 

engineers rebuilt Korean schools and hospitals because they could take 
42

home cement, timber, steel reinforcing rods, and sand bags. A bottle of 

gin bought a camp cot and folding chairs. A 3d PPCLI lieutenant braved 

student anti-armistice mobs to rescue a boxcar full of Pepsi Cola from 

a siding inside Seoul, declared off-limits because of the spring 1953 riots. The RCOC officers who ran the Commonwealth Division’s Mobile 

Laundry and Bath Unit learned that they had a service in high demand 

everywhere and a lever for high value, fast bartering. The high number of US Army logistical units and the vast accumulation of supplies, 

1952-1953, provided wide options for bargaining. The Canadians exploited the logistical opportunities like their frontier forebears, happily 

encouraged by their southern cousins. 

Creature comforts, even with GI collusion, remained rear area treats, 

but Korean rear areas were not without the perils of homemade soju

(liquor) capable of dealing out death and blindness. Canadian Soldiers 

(like the GIs) could be hard on the Koreans, whom they blamed for the 

war. Caught in a gang rape, four Patricias killed three and wounded four 

men of the victim’s family. In addition to the buildup of service units in 

Seoul, 1951-1953, the 25thCIBG sent an inordinate number of men to 

the Commonwealth hospital in Seoul for venereal disease, a varied mix 

of Asian fevers, and self-inflicted wounds. The Commonwealth military police, well supplied with Canadians, patrolled Seoul and the rear 

areas with hard hearts and quick nightsticks. The “Redcaps” made sure 

their mates stayed out of the hands of American MPs and the Korean 

National Police. The requirement to keep the peace in Korea meant that 

Canadians required a “rest and recreation” (R&R) center in Japan, built 

at Camp Ebisu near Tokyo, and another center in the Commonwealth 

logistical enclave at Kure.45

The Canadian support base in Japan created its own set of problems 

in relations with the US Army Far East sprawling base system. Reducing the Commonwealth logistical footprint along Tokyo Bay helped, as 

did strict law enforcement. Although the 25th Canadian Reinforcement 

Group (CRG) had its share of processing transients to and from the 25th 

CIBG, the directing staff developed an autonomous system of R&R 

facilities, pre-deployment training, and administrative processing that 

ensured control of the troops and amicable relations with the Japanese. 

Keeping the troops busy and the Japanese of the Kure-Hiro employed 

made the 25th CRG immune from FECOM interference. Nevertheless, 

the Canadians and Americans split on several issues related to the Japanese. One was US Army regulations on marrying Japanese women, 

which were more restrictive than Canadian practice, conditioned by 
43

different immigration laws. Another was more pay and fewer working 

hours for the Japanese in US Army employment than the Canadians 

could afford. Access to both PXs and NAAFI shops remained a sore 

point for the British and Americans. Living conditions in Japan were 

so good for rear echelon troops that one Canadian officer observed that 

the base officers lived in fear — of going to Korea or being sent back to 

Canada. Brooke Claxton encouraged other ministers (government and 

religious) to visit Japan and Korea. They reported the US Army’s praise 

for Canadian fighting skill and discipline compared to the GIs. The Canadians wondered if that was good enough. The 25th CIBG, however, 

was a model of professionalism compared with the new 27th CIBG that 

had deployed to Germany. Brooke Claxton and Guy Simonds monitored 

newspaper reports on both brigades and worried far more about the bad 

publicity and low morale of Canada’s first NATO ground force.46
44

Conclusion

The Korean War put the US Army and Canadian ground forces in 

closer contact than their association had been before 1950. The results 

were mixed, but in balance the degree of integration that Brooke Claxton 

had mildly proposed did not occur. If anything, their experience with 

the US Eighth Army and the Japan-based US Army Forces Far East 

helped put the Canadian Army back in the Anglophile camp championed 

by Generals Charles Foulkes and Guy G. Simonds. The NATO 

commitment, in which the 27th CIBG took up a position in northern 

Germany with the British Army of the Rhine, put the Canadians back 

into the British Army professional culture. In matters large and small, 

like the adoption of US Army small arms, the two armies remained 

separate and unequal and liked it that way. The mindset or mentalite

(with a bow to the R22°R) of the US Army remained rooted in the 

mass, conscripted Army of World War II, an Army led by an inner corps 

of career officers and senior NCOs whose attitude towards short term 

citizen officers and Soldiers could be described best as late Prussian. 

The US Army, however, even when it did not fare well in post-Korea 

defense budgets, remained a well-supplied monster, equaled in size only 

by its designated enemy, the Red Army. The weapons programs funded 

during the flush fiscal years of the Korean War produced a new rifle (the 

M-14), a new machine gun (the M-60), a new self-propelled 155mm 

howitzer (the M-109), a family of mechanized combat vehicles (the 

M-113) and more. None of them went into Canada’s arsenals, stocked 

instead with British-Belgian weapons. Interoperability disappeared as 

a land forces goal because Canada focused on NATO defense first and 

United Nations peacekeeping missions second, the “wicked problem” 

embraced by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson in his self-proclaimed 

role as the anti-interventionist wise man who would lure the United 

States and Great Britain away from foreign follies. 

At the national-fiscal level the United States had no better ally in 

Korea than Canada. When the US Department of Defense tallied the 

bills, twenty nations owed it for Korean War support. Great Britain 

owed the most, $77.6 million, and received a bill in 1954 for $61 

million. It paid $342, 385 as of 30 November 1954. The next three 

debtors were Canada ($59.9 million), Turkey ($57.9 million), and the 

Philippines ($54.5 million). Only Canada paid its bills. By 30 November 

the Canadian government had paid $44.7 million of its adjusted $52.3 

million bill. 
45

All but $6 million had gone to the Canadian ground forces. Turkey 

and the Philippines had paid virtually nothing. Of all the nations only 

the Union of South Africa had paid its bill in full ($15.6 million) for 

support of its aviation squadron. Canada’s fiscal heroism is even more 

remarkable than its debt service. Its defense budget surged from $372 

million (Canadian dollars) in 1949 to $495 million in 1950, then shot up 

to $1.2 billion (1951), $1.97 billion (1952), and $1.97 billion (1953).47

Far East Command praised the Canadian Military Mission Far East 

for performing its liaison and support missions with quiet efficiency. 

Even though their governments paid their bills, the national military 

missions, eleven in Tokyo by January 1951, made time-consuming 

and financially-complex demands on FECOM. The UN liaison groups 

claimed diplomatic status and US Army PX and commissary privileges. 

The senior officer of each national mission exercised the right of direct 

access to Commander in Chief UNC as well as direct communication 

with his parent government. Only the British Commonwealth nations 

took care of their own business. Canadian support units processed replacements, hospital patients, trainees, prisoners, visitors, and press 

members with patient efficiency. Only Great Britain had a larger troop 

base to manage.48

Force integration had few champions across the Niagara River. 

The military assistance programs Congress loved most went to Cold 

War allies in the Middle East (Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia) or Asian allies 

with authoritarian regimes like Taiwan, Thailand, Pakistan, and South 

Korea. The modest Canadian arms industry looked like a competitor, 

not a co-partner, except in the case of tracked arctic vehicles. The US 

Army regarded the Canadians as a quaint semi-British elite force, a 

very small distant cousin whose Soldiers sometimes spoke a language 

understood only in Louisiana. On NATO staffs the Canadians became 

gentle ombudsmen who adjudicated differences between American and 

British senior officers into the 1980s. The Canadians, it is true, went 

strange in the 1970s when clever politicians forced all the services into 

a single green uniform with Army ranks and Navy rank insignia, but 

this bit of confusion disappeared by 2000. 

The performance of the 25th CIBG in Korea produced a relationship 

of mutual respect best maintained by limited contact by each Army’s 

professional officers, attending schools and serving on NATO staffs. 

Judging by the US Army’s analysis of problems with allies within the 

Eighth Army, the Canadians, indeed the First Commonwealth Division 

as a whole, were valued comrades who posed no special problems. 
46

The US Army is now more likely to welcome not only infantry brigade 

groups, but military missions heavy with trainers, advisors, logisticians, 

communicators, medical personnel, transportation specialists, and electronics technicians. Such forces need to be self-defending and trained to 

rigorous Special Forces standards. The performance of the 25th CIBG 

in Korea established the Canadian Army’s reputation as a steadfast 

ally that stressed excellence on the battlefield and self-sufficiency in 

its support requirements. Perhaps the Korean War should have its own 

inter-allied motto (with apologies to the R22°R): nous nous souvenons 

(we remember).

49
47

Notes

1. The two basic political and strategic histories of Canada’s Korean War experience remain Denis Stairs, The Diplomacy of Constraint: Canada, the Korean War, 

and the United States (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974) and Lieutenant 

Colonel Herbert Fairlie Wood, Strange Battleground: The Operations in Korea and 

Their Effects on the Defence Policy of Canada (Ottawa: Minister of National Defence, 1966). Both are limited for different reasons. Stairs depends upon the Lester 

B. Pearson papers, memoirs, and interviews with some use of Brooke Claxton’s 

papers from the Department of National Defence. He did no research in the Truman 

and Eisenhower Presidential libraries, but depended on printed (and suspect) American sources. Many US State Department records were closed to him because the 

Korean War volumes of Foreign Relations of the United States for 1950, 1951, and 

1952-1954 had not yet been published. A new study is overdue. As the DND official 

historian, Wood knew the Canadian officers well and served as the CSF brigade 

major in Canada and (later) a battalion commander in Korea. Writing so close to 

the events, Wood had special documentary access and an intimate knowledge of the 

Canadian Army. He is silent on some issues of importance, but his book remains an 

essential source. Among the many celebratory works occasioned by the war’s 50th 

anniversary, two stand out, both written by respected Canadian scholars, David J. 

Bercuson, Blood on the Hills: The Canadian Army in the Korean War (Toronto: 

University of Toronto Press, 1999) and William Johnston, A War of Patrols: Canadian Army Operations in Korea (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 

2003). Both cover Canadian military operations in detail, but do not replace Stairs 

or Wood. For a more critical view of the 25th Canadian Infantry Brigade Group’s 

experience, see Brent Byron Watson, Far Eastern Tour: The Canadian Infantry 

in Korea, 1950-1953 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 

2002), a primary source-based history that provides coverage on subjects related to 

training and troop behavior that Wood avoids. Watson, however, patterns his work 

on the literary, ahistorical “cultural approach” championed by Paul Fussell, which 

means collecting the critical memoirs of junior officers and other ranks and matching their remembered complaints with contemporary hostile reports. Such evidence 

can be important, if used carefully. There are two more dispassionate studies of 

the Canadian military experience by Commonwealth historians: F. W. Perry, The 

Commonwealth Armies (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1988) and 

Jeffrey Grey, The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War (Manchester, UK: 

Manchester University Press, 1988). Desmond Morton, A Military History of Canada (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1985) devotes only part of a Cold War chapter 

to the Korean War and only because of its influence on defense spending and the 

NATO commitment. His summary does not do justice to the UNC conduct of the 

war or 25th CIBG’s experience. I have also drawn on recent studies of the Canadian political principals: John English, The Life of Lester Pearson (2 vols., Toronto: 

Lester & Orpen Dennys, Ltd., 1989 and Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1992) and David 

J. Bercuson, True Patriot: The Life of Brooke Claxton, 1898-1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).
48

2. JCS to Secretary of Defense, memo, “Joint Chiefs of Staff Views on Proposed State Department Request for Assistance in Korea from Certain U.N. Nations,” July 14, 1950, CCS 383.21 (Korea 3-19-45), Records of the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff, RG 218, NARA II; DepAss’t SecState for Far Eastern Affairs to Ass’t 

SecState for Far Eastern Affairs, Subj: “Aid from UN Members in Support of the 

Operation in Korea,” July 19, 1950 with Annex 1, “Preliminary Views of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff re: Ground Force Contribution,” reprinted in Historical Office, Bureau of Public Affairs, Dept. of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1950 

(7 vols., Washington: GPO, 1974-1980) Vol. VII, Korea, 432-434; SecDef to Service Secs and JCS, memo, “Utilization of Offers of Foreign Assistance to Korea,” 

September 1, 1950, File 091 (Korea) 1950, Decimal Files AC/S G-3 (Ops), Records 

of the Army Staff, RG 319, NARA II; Herman Katz, HO/8th Army, “Background 

Data on UN Forces in the Korean War,” December 13, 1967, File 200.402, Archives, 8th Army Research Center (hereafter 8th ARC), US Army Base, Yongsan, 

Seoul, ROK. 

3. Stanley W. Dziuban, Military Relations between the United States and Canada in Special Series: US Army in World War II (Washington: Office of the Chief 

of Military History, 1959), 241-272. 

4. CGS, “Summary of Canadian Army Staff,” June 13, 1952, a background paper on Canadian military policy since 1945, and DND, memo, “Canadian Defence 

Data Prepared for General Eisenhower,” 1952, both in Minister’s Correspondence 

Files (MCF), Brooke Claxton Papers, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Ottawa. 

See also Wood, Strange Battleground, 16-19, and Bercuson, True Patriot, 207-239. 

5. B. Claxton to Amb. to the US Hume Wrong, April 4, 1950; B. Claxton to 

SecDef L.A. Johnson, September 14, 1950; Claxton to Sec of the Army Frank Pace, 

Jr., 1950-1953, General Files 32-88, MCF, Claxton Papers. 

6. JCS, “Record of Actions Taken by the Joint Chiefs of Staff Relative to United Nations Operations in Korea from 25 June 1950 to 11 April 1951 Prepared by 

Them,” April 30, 1951, copy, Korean War Files, President Secretary’s Files (PSF), 

Truman Papers, Truman Presidential Library; Stairs, Diplomacy of Constraint, 26-

60.

7. L.B. Pearson to Ambassador H. Wrong, July 20, 1950, File: “Korea: Canadian Policy, 1950,” Pre-1958 Open Files, Pearson Papers; English, Lester Pearson, 

II, 42-63; Lester B. Pearson, Mike: The Memoirs of the Right Honourable Lester 

B. Pearson (3 vols., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972-1975), 2, 135 190; 

Stairs, Diplomacy of Constraint, 3-28, 61-91. 

8. L. B. Pearson, memoranda, “Land Forces for Korea,” August 1 and 3, 1950, 

File: “Korea: Canadian Policy, 1950-1951,” Pearson Papers.

9. Wood, Strange Battleground, 24-32; Watson, Far Eastern Tour, 3-7; Bercuson, True Patriot, 207-239.

10. In addition to Wood’s descriptions of the 25th CIBG senior officers, 

I have used Major General J. M. Rockingham, “Recollections of Korea,” 1975, 

Rockingham Papers, LAC, and remembrances of Stone and Dextraze in John 

Gardam, ed., Korea Volunteer: An Oral History from Those Who Were There 
49

(Barnstown, Ontario: General Store Publishing Company, 1994); John Melady, 

Korea: Canada’s Forgotten War (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1988); and Ted 

Barns, Deadlock in Korea: Canadians at War, 1950-1953 (Toronto: Macmillan of 

Canada, 1999). Stone and Dextraze feature large in two regimental histories: David 

G. Bercuson, The Patricias: The Proud History of a Fighting Regiment (Toronto: 

Stoddard, 2001) and Serge Bernier, The Royal 22° Regiment, 1914-1939 (Montreal: 

Art Global, 2000). Keane is appreciated in an exceptional memoir by one of his 

platoon commanders, Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) John R. Woods, Episodes: A Young 

Officer in the Korean War, 1951-1952 (The Author, 2009). Stone appears often in 

the memoir of one of his lieutenants, Hub Gray, Beyond Danger Close: The Korean 

Experience Revealed (Calgary, Alberta: Bunker to Bunker Publishing, 2003). No 

Stone admirer in every respect, Gray commanded 12 Platoon, Company D, 2d

PPCLI. See also Charley Forbes, Fantassin (Sillery, Quebec: Septentrion, 1994), 

257-346, the memoir of a captain, R22°R.

11. Wood, Strange Battleground, 82-92; Watson, Far Eastern Tour, 32-46.

12. Lieutenant General C. Foulkes to General J. L. Collins, August 21, 1950; 

General J. L. Collins US Army to Lieutenant General C. Foulkes, September 8, 

1950; memo, AC/S G3 (ops), “Regarding Canadian Assistance in Korean Situation,” September 1, 1950 AC/S G3 (ops), memo for C/S USA, “Canadian Army 

Special Force for Service in Korea,” September 23, 1950, with Appendix B, “Facts 

Bearing on the Problem and Discussion,” all in Decimal File 091 (Korea) (ops) 

1950 or JCS 1776/113 (1950), Records of the US Army Staff, RG 319.

13. Foulkes-Collins correspondence, February, 1951, especially Lieutenant 

General C. Foulkes to General J. L. Collins USA, February 21, 1951 with Rockingham letter attached; US Embassy Canada to State Dept., December 13, 1950; 

memo, AC/S G-3 (ops), “Discussion of Canadian Subjects,” February 19, 1951, all 

AC/S G-3 (ops), File 091 (Canada), 1950-1951, RG 319.

14. Woods, Episodes, 5-10; Major General Bob Rigma, RCOC, MLBU: Full 

Monty in Korea (Barnstown, Ontario: General Store Purchasing House, 2004), 29-

42; Major Harry Pope, MC, Leading from the Front: The War Memoirs of Harry 

Pope. (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University, 2002), 131-151. 

15. Brigadier H. E. Taber to US Army G3, October 26, 1950; Secretary of 

State D. Acheson to Secretary of Defense G. G. Marshall, October 20, 1950; JCS 

to SecDef., October 27, 1950; SecDef. To JCS and SecState, November 27, 1950; 

memo, G3 (ops) File 091 (Korea) 1950, “Canadian Army Special Force,” October 

25, 1950, all in G-3 (ops) Army Staff, Decimal File, 091 (Korea) 1950, RG 319.

16. Transcript and memos, 128th Meeting, US Army Policy Council, June 17, 

1952; “Summary of Activities of Canadian Army Staff,” June 13, 1952; memorandum to the Cabinet Defence Committee: “Report of Washington Trip, September 

30-October 4, 1952,” October 8, 1952, all Washington Trips File, MCF, Claxton 

Papers; Bercuson, True Patriot, 207-239.

17. War Diaries, September and October, 1950, CMMFE, RG 24 (18441), 

CL/A; Cmdr. CMMFE to CGS, No. 1, October 4, 1950, reprinted in Wood, Strange 

Battleground, Appendix 1, 261-262; Cmdr. CMMFE, Reports 1 and 2, October, 
50

1950, CMMFE File, DHH Archives. The US Department of the Army agreed to 

take the 2d PPCLI to Pusan on October 21.

18. Interviews, Major General J. M. Rockingham with Lieutenant Colonel H. 

F. Wood, March, 1960, File 112.3H1.001 (D13), DHH Archives; Major General J. 

M. Rockingham, “Recollections of Korea,” 1975, 10-12.

19. Major C. J. A. Hamilton to Lieutenant Colonel C. P. Stacey, July 26, 1955, 

Stacey Book Notes, File 681.013, DHH Archives; GOC, 1St Commonwealth Division, Periodic Report 1 (May 2-October 15, 1951), DHH Archives: War Diaries, 

October-December, 1950, CMMFE.

20. War diary, 25th CIBG, November-December, 1950; Rockingham-Wood 

interview, March 1960, Rockingham Papers; Wood, Strange Battleground, 82-92.

21. War Diary, December, 1950, CMMFE; Lieutenant Colonel J. R. Stone to 

CGS, “Report on Operations to Date,” 2” PPCLI, March 9, 1951, CGS File 5-1/25, 

Canadian Infantry Brigade Files, Vol. 4, DHH Archives; Barns, Deadlock in Korea; 

Gray, Beyond Danger Close, 137-140. Stone discusses the Yokohama incident in 

Melady, Korea: Canada’s Forgotten War, 51-52.

22. Lieutenant Colonel J. R. Stone to CGS, “Report of Operations to Date,” 

HQ, 2d PPCLI, March 9, 1951, CIB Files; Adjutant General to CGS, March 6, 

1951, quoted in Wood, Strange Battleground, 68.

23. For a comprehensive account of Eighth Army operations, January-May 

1951, see Roy. F. Appleman, Ridgway Duels for Korea (College Station: Texas 

A&M University Press, 1990).

24. This analysis is based upon Briefing Papers for Brigadier R. E. A. Morton, 

Cmdr. CMMFE, 1952, File 683.023 (D2), DHH Archives; War diaries, January-December 1951, CMMFE War Diaries; Canadian Special Force Policies, 1951-1952, 

File 112.3M2, DHH Archives; Major C. J. A. Hamilton CO, CSF Advance Party, 

to Colonel C. P. Stacey, July 26, 1955, Stacey Book Notes; Cmdr. (Brigadier M. P. 

Bogert) 25th CIBG to CGS (Lieutenant General G. G. Simonds), March 12, 1952, 

File 683.023 (D2) DHH Archives; Minister-Counselor S. Morley Scott, Canadian 

Embassy Japan, to Undersecretary of State-External Affairs, “Report of Visit to 

Canadian Forces Korea and Japan,” January 4, 1954, File “Korean-Canadian Policy, 1953-1954,” Pre-1958 Open Files, Pearson Papers. The American perspective, 

complimentary to the Canadian forces, may be found in Military History Section, 

Hdqs., FECOM, “History of the Korean War — Interallied Cooperation during 

Combat Operations,” 1951-1952, mss. history, library, 8th ARC. See also James 

A. Huston, Guns and Butter, Powder and Rice: US Army Logistics in the Korean 

War (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1989), 308-330, and B. 

Franklin Cooling, “Allied Interoperability in the Korean War,” Military Review, 68 

(June, 1983), 26-52.

25. In addition to Wood’s descriptions of the battles of Kapyong and Maryangsan in Strange Battleground, I have consulted General Anthony Farrar-Hockley, The 

British Part in the Korean War (2 vols., London: HMSO, 1995), in this case Vol. 

II, An Honourable Discharge, 138-150 and 217-231, and Brigadier C. N. Barclay, 

The First Commonwealth Division (Aldershot: Gale and Poldean, Ltd., 1954), 58-
51

98, both British Army-sponsored. The Australian official history is Robert O’Neill, 

Australia in the Korean War (2 vols., Canberra, ACT: Australian War Memorial 

and Australian GPS, 1985) with special reference to Vol. II, Combat Operations, 

131-160 and 181-207. All of these books describe the campaign of 1951. Another 

valuable contribution is Bob Breen, The Battle of Kapyong (Canberra, ACT: Army 

Doctrine Center, 1992).

26. Appleman, Ridgway Duels for Korea, 140-197; Billy C. Mossman, Ebb 

and Flow: November, 1950 — July 1951 in the series United States Army in the 

Korean War (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1990), 228-377.

27. Colonel J. R. Stone and Jacques Castonguay, Korea, 1951: Two Canadian 

Battles (Ottawa: Canadian War Museum, 1988), 1-11; Colonel J. R. Stone, lecture 

notes to officers, 3d PPCLI, “Kapyong,” December 18, 1973, File 800.32, archives, 

8th ARC; Hub Gray, Danger Close; Melady, Korea: Canada’s Forgotten War, 70-

80. Informed or not by the officers of the 1st Middlesex who found the Chuam-ni 

battlefield, Stone exaggerated the GI “massacre.” The two companies had been surprised and lost 114 KIA and 98 WIA of an initial force of perhaps 270. The bodies 

the Patricias saw had been looted and stripped of outer clothing by the Chinese. 

These KIAs were non-walking wounded wrapped in sleeping bags for protection 

who had died of wounds or exposure when their eight ambulance jeeps had been 

riddled at a destroyed bridge. Other bodies had been scattered over several miles of 

battlefield. In fact, GIs of both companies had fought their way out with two light 

tanks and two tracked personnel carriers. See Appleman, Ridgway Duels for Korea, 289-292, based on the investigation of the 2d Infantry Division IG, Lieutenant 

Colonel Ray W. Horton, report to General Ridgway, May 13, 1951, Matthew B. 

Ridgway Papers, USA MHI.

28. Stone lecture, “Kapyong,” to officers, 3d PPCLI, December 18, 1973; 

Stone and Castonguay, Korea, 1951, 12-25.

29. CGS to Brigadier J. M. Rockingham, Cmdr., 25th CIBG, “Command Instructions,” April 13, 1951, Appendix B, Wood, Strange Battleground, 263-264; 

Wood interview with Major General Rockingham, March, 1960; CGS to Commander 25th CIBG, May 10, 1951, copy, File “Korea-Ceasefire, 1950-1951,” 

Pre-1958 Open Files, Pearson Papers. On Cassels, see Grey, The Commonwealth 

Armies and the Korean War, 105-107.

30. Brigadier B. A. Coad, “Report of the 27th Commonwealth Brigade, 1950-

1951,” April, 1951, Korean War Files, Major General B. A. Coad Papers, Imperial 

War Museum; GOC, First Commonwealth Division, Period Reports No. 1 (May 

2-October 15, 1951) and No. 2 (October 15, 1951-February 1, 1952) DHH Archives; Major General J. M. Rockingham, “Recollections of Korea,” 1975, 29-77. 

Grey summarizes this issue in Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War, 135-

142.

31. Farrar-Hockley, An Honourable Discharge, 207-214; Johnston, A War of 

Patrols, 108-137; Major General J. M. Rockingham, “Recollections of Korea,” 

1975; J.M. Rockingham, “Canadian Participation in the Korean War,” July, 1953, 

File 410B25.009 (D5), DHH.
52

32. Grey, The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War, 88-108; FarrarHockley, An Honourable Discharge, 207-214, 355-358; Lieutenant Colonel Pat 

Meid, USMCR, and Major James M. Yingling, USMC, Operations in West Korea, 

Vol. V of US Marine Corps Operations in Korea, 1950-1953 (Washington: HQMC, 

1972), 93.

33. GOC, First Commonwealth Division, Period Reports File, No. 1, May 

2-October 15, 1951; Johnston, A War of Patrols, 138-171. In addition to Bercuson, 

The Patricias, see also Bernier, The Royal 22° Regiment, 192-271, and the account 

of Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Dextraze in John Gardam, ed., Korea Volunteer: 

An Oral History from Those Who Were There (Barnstown, Ontario: General Store 

Publishing House, 1994), 45-61. See also Pierre Vennat, Baptiste au pays du matin 

calme: les militaries canadien-francis en Coree, 1950-1953 (Montreal: Meridien, 

2000) and Charly Forbes, Fantassin (Quebec: Les editions du Septention, 1994). 

The history of the Royal Canadian Regiment is G. R. Stevens, The Royal Canadian 

Regiment (2 vols., London, Ontario: London Printing and Lithography, 1967). For a 

detailed account of 3d RAR’s experience, see Bob Breen, ed., The Battle of Maryang San (Georges Heights, New South Wales: Army Training Command, 1994), 

basically accounts by RAR’s officers.

34. For an overview of the First Commonwealth Division operations, 1952-

1953, see Farrar-Hockley, An Honourable Discharge, 354-386, as well as Wood, 

Strange Battleground, 154-210. Chinese tactics are analyzed in Special Intelligence 

Aspects, 1953, attached to GOC, First Commonwealth Division, Periodic Report 

No. 6 (1953). I also consulted the CMMFE monthly war diary summaries. See also 

Major General M. M. Alston-Roberts-West, “CCF Tactics in Korea,” 1953, General 

Sir M. West Papers, Imperial War Museum.

35. Grey, Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War, 135-166, provides a 

good summary of these problems, but I have relied most on Rockingham, “Recollections of Korea,” 29-30, 41-45, and GOC, 1st Commonwealth Division, Periodic 

Reports No. 2 (Oct. 15, 1951-Feb. 1, 1952), No. 3 (Feb. 15-June 30, 1952), No. 

4 (July 1-Nov. 1, 1952) and No. 5 (Nov. 1, 1952-April 1, 1953). A full discussion 

of US-Canadian differences may be found in an inspection report by S. Morley 

Scott, Canadian minister counselor in Japan, to Undersecretary of State External 

Affairs, January 4, 1954, File, “Korea-Canadian Policy — 1953-1954,” Pre-1958 

Open Files, Pearson Papers. General West discusses these problems in six lectures 

and interview, 1953-1957, West Papers.

36. GOC, First Commonwealth Division, Periodic Reports, No. 3 (15 February-30 June 1952 and No. 4 (1 July-1 November 1952), DHH Archives; Rockingham, “Reflectons on Korea,” 1975; Pope, Leading from the Front, 153-190; Major 

H. Pope, MC, “Paper on Infantry Defences in Korea,” September 19, 1953, File 

681.009 (D11), DHH.

37. n.a., “1st Battalion: The Royal Canadian Regiment,” Duty First 1 (December, 1992), 105-11; Rockingham, “Reflections on Korea,” 1975; Standing Orders 

for Battle, l’t Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, 1952, RCHA Collection, 

LAC; memoir, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew C. Moffat (Lt. 1st RCHA, 1952 53), 
53

RCHA Collection; Hdqs., 2d RCHA, report, “A Brief History of the Second Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery,” 1952, RCHA Collection; Lieutenant Colonel W. E. Sills, “Korea-1 RCHA-May 1952 to May 1953: Anecdotes from Sills,” 

n.d., RCHA Collection; Major G. D. Mitchell, RCHA — Right of the Line (Ottawa, 

Ontario: RCHA History Committee, 1986), 170-194; Entry, March 11, 1952 in 25th 

CIBG war diary, quoted in Johnston, War of Patrols, 252-253; Artillery Officer, 

Eighth Army, “Employment and Effectiveness of the Artillery, Eighth Army, October 1951-July 1953,” January, 1954, copy USAMHI Library.

38. The accounts in Farrar-Hockley, An Honourable Discharge, 283-292, 

and Wood, Strange Battleground, 192-196 are accurate but incomplete, although 

Wood’s account is good on the military confusions in Tokyo and Korea. See also 

Bercuson, Blood on the Hills, 199-203; documents, Koje-do 1952, File A 816, including report by OC Peterforce, “Experiences on Koje-do Island,” September 15, 

1952, Australian Archives, Canberra.

39. The Allied political flap can be followed through war diaries, May and 

June, 1952 CMMFE, RG 24 LAC; memo, “Assignment of Canadian Troops to 

Koje, May, 1952, and SecState Lester B. Pearson, speech and memo, “Korea,” 

to Canadian Parliament, May 26, 1952, copies, File: “Korea: Canadian Policy-2,” 

Pre-1958 Open Files, Pearson Papers; Lieutenant General C. Foulkes to the Minister, May 29, 1952, Claxton Papers; Cmdr. CMMFE, memo, “Korea Affairs,” July 

3, 1952, MCF, Claxton Papers.

40. The most detailed studies of the KATUSA program are unpublished: Alfred 

H. Hausrath and David S. Fields, “Integration of ROK Soldiers into US Army Units 

(KATUSA),” 1958, Technical Memorandum ORO-T-363, Operations Research Office, The Johns Hopkins University, copy, USAMHI Library, and Hdqs., 8th US 

Army Korea, “Special Problems in the Korean Conflict,” 1954, copy, USAMHI 

Library.

41. S. Morley Scott, minister-counselor, Canadian Embassy Japan, to Undersecretary of State for External Affairs, January 4, 1954, File: “Korea-Canadian Policy — 1953-1954,” Pre-1958 Open Files, Pearson Papers; Wood, Strange Battleground, 220-221; Watson, Far Eastern Tour, 62-70. 

42. GOC, First Commonwealth Division Periodic Report, No. 6, 1 April-1 

August 1953, DHH Archives; Major General J-V Allard with Serge Bernier, The 

Memoirs of General Jean V. Allard (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press, 1988), 171-190. The experience of 3d PPCLI can be found in Vincent R. 

Courtney, Hold the Hook: With the Princess Patricias Canadian Light Infantry in 

Korea (Leanington, Ontario: North American Heritage, 1996).

43. Headquarters USAFFE and US 8th Army (Rear), “Logistics in Korean 

Operations,” 4 vols. mss. history, File 500.004, library, 8th ARC; Hdqs., Japan Logistical Command, “Logistical Problems and Their Solutions,” February 15, 1952, 

USAMHI Library. 

44. Major C. J. A. Hamilton, CO Advance Party 2d PPCLI to Colonel C. P. 

Stacey, July 26, 1955, File 601.013 (D70), DHH; entries, January-April, 1951, 

CMMFE, War Diaries, RG 24; Briefing Papers For Brigadier R. E. A. Morton, 
54

Cmdr. CMMFE, 1952, File 683.023 (D2), DHH Archives; Rockingham, “Recollections of Korea,” 1975; Allard, Memoirs, 171-190.

45. I have based this analysis on a wide range of personal testimony: Colonel E. C. W. Myers to engineer officers, lecture, “Work of Divisional Engineers 

in Korea,” September 8, 1952, File 681. (D2), DHH Archives; S. Morley Scott, 

minister-counselor, Canadian Embassy, Japan, to Undersecretary of State for External Affairs, January 4, 1954, File: “Korea-Canadian Policy — 1953-1954,” Pre1958 Open Files, Pearson Papers; Robert S. Peacock, Kim-chi, Asahi, and Rum: A 

Platoon Commander Remembers Korea, 1952-1953 (Privately published, 1994); 

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew C. Moffat, RCHA, memoir, RCHA Collection; oral 

memoirs, Lieutenant Norman Crowder and Lieutenant Gordon Macdonald in Gardam, ed., Korea Volunteer, 200 203: memo, “Notes on Welfare” by Captain J. Vallely, RCC, Chaplain, 2d PPCLI, Dec. 1951, 25th CIBG Morale File, MCF, Claxton 

Papers; Ringma, MLBU: The Full Monty in Korea, 53-64, 125-130; Lieutenant 

Colonel John R. Woods, Episodes, 21-25; memoirs and dairy, Lieutenant Colonel 

V. A. Thompson and Lieutenant Colonel J. E. de Hart, RCHA Collection; memoir, 

Lieutenant Colonel W. E. Sills “Korea — 1 RCHA. Anecdotes from Sills,” RCHA 

Collection; Robert Hepenstall, Find the Dragon: The Canadian Army in Korea, 

1950-1953 (Edmonton: Four Winds Publishing, 1995) passim.

46. Lieutenant Colonel D. S. F. Bult-Francis to Adjutant General DND, report, 

“Liaison Visit — Far East Theater, 22 March-6 January 52,” June 25, 1952, File 

410B 25.093 (D1), DHH Archives; Hdqs., CMMFE, Reports No. 1 and 2, 1951, 

RG 24, LAC; Brigadier M. P. Bogert to CGS, March 12, 1952, File 683.023 (D2), 

DHH Archives; oral memoir, RSM Jim Holland CPC, in Gardam, ed., Korea Volunteer, 140-141; Ringma, MLBU, 118-124 on duty with British rd Base Depot; A. 

R. Menzies to CGS, Report, December 1, 1951 as Dispatch 941, Canada Liaison 

Mission, Tokyo, CGS File, Claxton Papers; R. W. Mayhew, Minister of Fisheries 

to CGS, November 22, 1951, Claxton Papers; Barris, Deadlock in Korea, 73-74, 

124-129; memoir, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew C. Moffat, 25, 113-125; 25th CIBG 

and 27th CIBG, Morale Files, November 1952-December 1953, Vol. 97, MG 32, 

Claxton Papers. Interviews with Major J. M. R. Gendren, Major F. E. Kendrick, and 

Lieutenant Colonel G. 0. Tachereau, all by Captain F. R. McGuire (HO 25th CIBG, 

July-March 1953), “The Administration of 25 Canadian Reinforcement Group,” 

1953, File 401B25.056 (1), DHH. Watson, Far Eastern Tour, 125-174, describes 

medical problems, abuse of Koreans, and excessive drinking.

47. OSD Comptroller, memo, “Logistical Support Furnished to United Nations 

Forces in Korea by the Army, Navy and Air Force as of 30 November 1954,” January 11, 1955, copy, NSC Briefing Notes, 1955, White House Office of the Special 

Assistant for National Security Affairs, PSF, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential 

Papers, Eisenhower Library; memo, OSD, “North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” 

1954, File 200.407, Archives, 8th ARC.

48. History Office, FEC, memo, “Activities of UN Liaison Groups during the 

Korean Conflict,” June, 1975, copy, File 200.407, archives, 8th ARC. 
55

49. Neither of the US Army’s immediate postwar “lessons learned” reviews 

described the 25th CIBG as a problem: Headquarters, 8th Army, Special Problems in the Korean Conflict, 1952, rev. 1954, copy, library, 8th ARC Library, and 

Military History Section, Hdqs., Far East Command, “History of the Korean War 

— Interallied Cooperation during Combat Operations,” 1952-1954, copy, library, 

8th ARC.

For Canada’s military internationalism, see Christopher R. Kilford, The Other Cold War: Canada’s Military Assistance to the Developing World, 1945-1975 

(Kingston, Ontario: Canadian Defence Academic Press, 2010). 
56

About the Author

Allan R. Millett, Ph.D., and Colonel (Ret.), USMCR, served thirtyseven years (1969-2005) as a professor of history at The Ohio State 

University before he was named Director of the Eisenhower Center for 

American Studies at the University of New Orleans and Senior Military 

Advisor to the National World War II Museum. At Ohio State, Millett was 

Associate Director of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies 

and General Raymond E. Mason Professor of Military History. He directed 

sixty-nine doctoral dissertations to completion, and his students have 

published more than seventy books. Millett has written five books and fortyeight essays and articles on various aspects of military history, and is the coauthor of a military history of the United States now in its third edition (with 

Peter Maslowski) and a history of World War II (with Williamson Murray). 

For more than twenty years, Millett has specialized in Korean War history, 

producing another five books and seventeen essays and book chapters. He 

has been awarded seven prizes for teaching and scholarship, two honorary 

degrees, and the 2008 Pritzker Military Library Award for Lifetime 

Achievement in Military Writing. He has been a Fulbright Distinguished 

Visiting Professor in Korea and a senior fellow of the Korea Foundation.
US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas