Commemorating Anzac Day with Korean War heroes

A digger returns to his hometown to remember a battle fought 70 years to the day.

It is 70 years to the day since Kevin Harper fought for his life on a snowy Korean peak above the Kap­yong River, side by side with his mates from 3RAR. Blink and he could be back there with them.

Yet this is a story Mr Harper, 89, doesn’t like to tell. His family spent decades coaxing out of him what happened in the fraught 72 hours leading up to Anzac Day 1951 at the Battle of Kapyong, a feat of arms ranked with Gallipoli, Villers-Bretonneux, Tobruk, Kokoda and Long Tan as among the Australian Army’s finest.

Mr Harper marched on Sunday in his hometown of Benalla, three hours’ north of Melbourne, taking it slow and steady on his walker.

What a time for the family. The great-grandkids flew in from Cairns and others drove up from the city to be with him.

“It was special,” Mr Harper said. “For a long time what we did in Korea has been a bit forgotten … there’s WWI, WWII and then they jump straight to Vietnam, but we were there fighting our guts out, mate. People should remember that.”

His 54-year-old daughter Lynne, one of the four children he raised with his late wife, Elaine, after returning home profoundly grateful to have survived, is pleased her father is finally opening up.

Kevin Harper, 89, with great-granddaughters Jordyn Adams and Charlee Adams and, below, aged 20. Picture: Aaron Francis

The family is all too conscious the clock is ticking for the Korea veterans, who like Australia’s great WWII generation are fast fading away.

Of the 18,000 Australians who served and fought in the 1950-53 war, 2200 remain with an average age of 90, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs estimates.

Mr Harper and comrade John “Bluey” Holford, 91, of Ashwood, Victoria, are two of the last 3RAR men standing from the Battle of Kapyong, where the battalion helped blunt a massed attack by Chinese forces. Dug in with Can­adians and New Zealanders on the flanks, part of a commonwealth brigade, the Australians were all that stood between the advancing communists and the South ­Korean capital, Seoul.

When he wasn’t transporting the wounded, Mr Harper was in the thick of the action. The men in their gun pits fought furiously, knowing if they gave way the whole battalion would be overrun; he had mates among the 32 Australians who died at Kapyong.

Kevin Harper, 89, standing at the Benalla Memorial. Picture: Aaron Francis

The flame-haired Mr Holford, a mortar man, was covered in the blood of the man hit beside him. He got him to the aid station and had only just returned to the position when an enemy soldier jumped in. “We had a bit of a struggle and I took him prisoner,” he ­remembered.

Mr Holford approached an ­officer. “What do I do with him?” he asked, motioning to the battered Chinese. “Shoot him,” the ­officer said. “I can’t do that,” the young Digger replied.

There are still things Mr Harper won’t discuss — such as the mates he lost — but his family is gradually teasing out of him the story of what he did after he joined the regular army in 1949, aged 18. He was one of six brothers, five of whom fought in wars spanning WWII to Vietnam.

It’s a fitting tradition when Mr Harper, like many Korea veterans, sees that conflict as Australia’s forgotten war.

“There’s not much mention of it … it gets a bit lost in the history,” he said, even though 340 Australians were killed and more than 1200 wounded after the US-led forces of the UN went in.