Crisis in Korea has local man remembering his time as soldier
As worldwide tensions escalate once again on the Korean Peninsula, a diminishing band of brothers in Calgary understand what’s at stake more than most.
Calgary was at the very heart of the mobilization and training of young Canadians when thousands of them volunteered to fight in Korea 65 years ago after troops from the North had swarmed across the 38th parallel and came so close to conquering the entire country.
Afterward, a shocked United Nations called upon countries to band together and push back the invaders. Canada immediately joined the conflict and it was after training in Calgary’s Currie Barracks that many of our country’s first soldiers went overseas with the renowned Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry as part of the 1st Battalion.
Among them was a then-24-yearold Roly Soper, disappointed in being a few months too young to “do his bit” and serve during the waning months of the Second World War in 1945.
Today, now a sprightly 89, Soper is president of a Calgary and southern Alberta branch of the Korean Veterans Association. Time is taking its toll on the membership but the memories of a war in which 26,000 Canadians served and 516 never returned, are still fresh.
“The world war ended just as I turned seventeen and a half, which was then the age at which you could serve. I was disappointed that I’d missed out while some of my older friends had served, so when the call came for Korea I volunteered. I wanted that military experience,” said Soper.
After completing his training in Calgary, he was shipped off to Japan and then, a few weeks later, to South Korea. He was soon fighting at a spot that would become infamous to Canadians during that war — Hill 355. The battleground soon became a military throwback to the First World War with each side dug in — Commonwealth troops on the southern hills and, by then, the mainly Chinese opposition in the hills to the north — shelling each other night and day across a wide valley. It soon became a stalemate.
“Both sides would shell each other every night but it was really a war of patrols, listening and maybe capturing, but not to take land by then,” said Soper.
Hill 355 would prove the bloodiest spot for Canadians during that war. Soper knew several who never made it home.
And of those who did make it back to Canada he stands unique — the only Canadian soldier of that time to set foot on North Korean soil. In happened eight years ago when he was on a trip to China with his wife and, on a whim, joined a five-day excursion over the border into the north. He told no one that he had once fought against these people.
“As far as I know I’m the only Korean War veteran to do that visit. I took no documents that could show I’d once fought, nothing. I didn’t even mention anything to my fellow travellers,” he said.
Oddly the war that Soper fought in never really ended. There was a ceasefire but no peace treaty.
“It was a ceasefire that never turned into a formal peace treaty,” he said. But, having fought the fight, he is under few illusions about today’s issue.
“For me, the best that can be hoped for is putting a lid on North Korea’s ambitions and that of its leadership. Then silence them from the point of view of seeking extended territory. Of course, I don’t know the North Korea leadership, still I think they have ambitions beyond their borders,” added Soper.
The lessons of Hill 355 are not easily forgot.