Exhibit honours Canada’s veterans of ‘forgotten war’
Lloyd Hamilton wanted to travel after high school. He ended up in the midst of war-torn Korea at the 25th Field Dressing Station.
“They used our camp at the end of the way for receiving the prisoners of war,” said Hamilton.
“Every night we would get these prisoners brought back, not just from Canada, but from New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom. About five or six every time.”
That was 60 years ago. Now, Hamilton is part of a dwindling number of Canada’s Korean War veterans telling the stories of a three-year conflict that left a country divided.
The collective stories of the Canadian experience in the Korean War are found in a Military Museum exhibit premiering Saturday, Defending a Nation: Canada and the Korean War.
“It’s not just me telling the story of Korea. It’s them telling the story with their own words and with their own objects,” said Rory Cory, senior curator for the Military Museums.
More than 100 artifacts from the Korean War are on display. Some are from the private collections of the veterans themselves. Included are cigarette lighters, medals, travel passes, uniforms and an arsenal of guns.
Cory grades the flight suit worn by the only Royal Canadian Air Force pilot shot down in the conflict, Andrew Mackenzie, as one of the more memorable pieces in the exhibit.
“People who come to this visit would pique their interest and gain some knowledge on something that’s not very well known,” said Hamilton.
Hamilton, who donated a handful of his items to the collection, said an exhibit dedicated to the stories of Korean War veterans should have been around long ago.
“It’s overdue,” he said. “Why they waited 60 years to display something is all part of the setup of being part of the forgotten war.”
A tense truce to the war that left Korea divided and 516 Canadians dead was signed in 1953.
Since then, Canadian veterans who fought in Korea have drifted out of the country’s consciousness. Cory said there are more books and movies chronicling the Vietnam and World Wars than the Korean War.
“The Korean War veterans have tried really hard as a lobby group to try and get their proper recognition,” he said.
Those efforts are paying off, as Veterans Affairs Canada named 2013 the Year of the Canadian War Veteran.
“They seem to be paying more attention,” said Hamilton, who returned to his home in Calgary after the war. “Trouble is, so many of us are gone now.”
Of all the United Nation countries that participated in the Korean War, Canada, per capita, had the largest contribution to the effort.
In Korea that’s not easily forgotten.
“They don’t forget. It’s as if it just happened yesterday,” said Hamilton.