The other Anzac Day heroes

TODAY marks the anniversary of Korea's Battle of Kapyong, sadly, all but forgotten.

Kapyong

IN the moonlight, in the cacophony of noise and smoke and dust, Mick Servos had about as long as it took to count to five before he got his shot in. If he missed, it might have been his last.

The first he would see of the on-rushing Chinese would be shadowy heads and shoulders less than 10m away. In as long as it took the charging attackers to get to him; he had to shoot, and shoot to kill.

Every 20 minutes through the night -- once in an unbroken six-hour stretch -- the massed attacks kept coming at the Australians defending the low hills over the Kapyong Valley.

For the young Servos, a rifleman and forward scout for the 3rd Royal Australian Regiment, he had far too close a view of his Chinese attackers. Unlike general Douglas MacArthur who dismissed Mao's army as "Chinese laundrymen" who would flee at the first encounter with the Allies in Korea, Servos knew better.

Servos, now 84 and living in Brisbane, raises a trembling hand and points towards an imagined ridge.

"They were a tough and clever enemy and they just charged in, wave after wave after wave."

Kapyong was Australia's most vicious battle of the Korean War. Servos and other veterans conjure horrific images to describe a battle that pitted 10,000 Chinese against 700 Australians on one hill and a similar number of Canadians on another. Major Ben O'Dowd, the commander of the Australians on Hill 504, recalls: "Some of them did not carry weapons, just buckets of grenades. They had the job of keeping my Diggers' heads down so their rifleman and machinegunners could rush in and get among us."

Rush in, they did. The Battle of Kapyong was a close-in encounter and often at the end of a bayonet. It lasted from April 23, 1951 until Anzac Day and marked the last major Chinese offensive of the Korean War.

Sixty years later it is mulled over by instructors in military academies: described as "the perfect defensive battle", and yet the heroism of Kapyong elicits a blank response from most Australians. Despite this, Kapyong remains an epic story.

The Chinese and the Australians were both seasoned opponents. Many of the Diggers were World War II veterans from North Africa and the jungles of New Guinea.

The Chinese were veterans of their own bloody civil war, accustomed to bitter winters and rugged terrain. They could survive for days with just a bag of boiled rice tied to their belts. Their stealth was legendary, moving vast distances in darkness and by day sleeping in ditches covered only by the bushes or grass. Massed armies could avoid detection for weeks.

The amazing story of the Battle of Kapyong pitted these two groups against each other. The valley where they fought is a traditional invasion route to Seoul.

If Seoul had fallen to the Chinese, we can only imagine what course history might have taken. Could the Chinese have pushed the foreigners off the Korean Peninsula ?

Would the Americans have wrought a nuclear holocaust on China?

This was indeed the ambition of MacArthur. He led the UN forces in Korea, until he was sacked two weeks before Kapyong. US president Harry Truman summed it up like this: "I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son-of-a-bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals in the US army. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail."

The story of the Battle of Kapyong begins in the sunlight of a spring day. The 3rd Royal Australian Regiment was camped in a wood after months of savage winter warfare. The Diggers at rest enjoyed unaccustomed luxuries: hot baths, extra rations, sleeping under canvas and a canteen that provided a beer each day. The merriment they enjoyed in the grove where they camped prompted the men to christen the place Sherwood Forest.

By Anzac Day of 1951, the war was 10 months old. UN troops from 16 countries were sent to Korea after the communist North invaded the democratic South. The Chinese entered the war on the side of the North Koreans in late 1950 and after four largely successful campaigns, forced the UN's predominantly US army back down the length of Korea.

Approaching Anzac Day, the Chinese were expected to mount a decisive offensive but South Korean troops held the front line 18km to the north of Sherwood Forest. The Australians in reserve and enjoying the rest, hoarded their beer rations for an Anzac Day barbecue. They had invited not just local New Zealanders but also a nearby brigade of Turks.

But on April 23, the idyll of Sherwood Forest was broken. The Australians were ordered to survey defensive positions should soldiers of the Republic of Korea -- ROKs -- break. They were sent to a narrow point in the Kapyong Valley to assess a hill called 504 as a potential fall-back defence.

The Canadians surveyed an adjacent hill. Their task was innocuous. They dug cursory trenches in the hard shale and awaited orders. Hot meals were brought forward in insulated boxes and by late afternoon the men were reading letters from home, and wondering when they might return to make final adjustments for Anzac Day.

Then they saw something horrifying. Hundreds of South Korean soldiers were fleeing not just down the valley but scrambling up and through the Australian and Canadian lines. Canadian lieutenant Hub Gray, now a resident of Calgary, remembers his dilemma.

"Were they really ROKs or were they Chinese? Were they suddenly going to open fire shooting us in the back? How did we differentiate? What an unholy muddle it all was."

When the ROKs were followed by a terrified column of refugees, O'Dowd expected the worst.

"I knew that Chinese soldiers would mix in with the civilians. They would be in civilian clothes or in uniform, in the half-light and be penetrating to the rear in numbers. I rang the commanding officer and requested permission to open fire with the machineguns, to stop all movement on the road. This was refused on the grounds Republic of Korea soldiers could still be coming through.

"The odd shot rang out and I repeated my request. Nevertheless the panic became justified as firing broke out around battalion HQ. The enemy was at our rear."

O'Dowd and his men were surrounded, as were the Canadians of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry on the hill beside them. To move on Seoul, the Chinese needed to wipe them out.

The Australians took the brunt of the fighting that first night. They were attacked viciously but, despite suffering heavy casualties, they held. They had little food and water, limited ammunition and no mines or barbed wire to place between them and their attackers.

O'Dowd summarised it later as a battle that simply pitted "man against man in the dark".

O'Dowd, now 92, lives in Melbourne, and though a little bent and unsteady on his legs, he still has a fierce look in his eyes. His surviving comrades treat him deferentially. They look off at something far away when asked to describe him. "That O'Dowd, he's a savage!" Savage or not, O'Dowd was obviously one hell of a soldier. He's a man who deflects praise while lavishing it on the men he commanded.

"There was absolutely nothing I could do to help my men, beyond walking up and down, watching for the possibility of a break-in, and shouting encouragement while attacks were in progress."

O'Dowd's commander at Kapyong was lieutenant-colonel Bruce Ferguson. He had set up his command caravan further down the valley but when it was attacked and later in the night attacked again, Ferguson was forced to move back. His command was intact but beset by problems of communication and uncertainty. The battle was to be largely O'Dowd's.

Daylight revealed the Chinese in the floor of the valley, and O'Dowd called in NZ artillery. Amid this devastation the Australians mounted a bloody bayonet charge (one of several at Kapyong). But it was plain they couldn't survive another night in such an exposed position, and planned a staged night withdrawal along a ridge. But as they waited for nightfall, disaster struck. A US Corsair aircraft lined up Hill 504, believing no one could have survived the attacks of the night before, and hit it with napalm.

Two Australians were killed immediately, and several were seriously burned. Despite this, the Australians gathered up their wounded and began their withdrawal. They engaged the enemy as they went.

The Chinese were so close that as the last of 3RAR crossed the Kapyong River to safety, the Canadians above opened fire with heavy machineguns. O'Dowd ordered the firing stopped, assuming the Canadians were killing his men, but the dead were Chinese (about 80 of them), who "spreadeagled like little water beetles" floated past in the night.

The night-time battle faced by the Canadians was no less savage. Gray is still haunted by it.

"The nauseating smell of death, comrades falling like flies and yet the Chinese did not fail to charge forward into the hell of battle. How did they persuade their troops to commit mass suicide, wave after wave, until their bodies littered the battlefield?"

The Canadians fought through the night as the Australians had done. They, too, fought man-to-man with bayonets fixed. The assaults mounted in ferocity and in the early hours of Anzac Day, one company was almost overrun.

Platoon commander Mike Levy called in NZ artillery on his own men. In their shallow trenches they had a better chance of survival than the Chinese. The Kiwis accurately delivered thousands of shells and the attackers were wiped from the battlefield. Levy claimed the final victory. The Australians, the New Zealanders and the Canadians had triumphed.

As the sun rose, Anzac Day had another set of heroes. The US government awarded the first US Presidential Citation to the 3rd Royal Australian Regiment and the 2nd Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.

Remarkably, the heroes of Kapyong returned to an Australia disinterested in their struggle. Australia after World War II already had its heroes and war stories. The Korean conflict was largely brushed aside.

The heroes of Kapyong received little public recognition and found it difficult to gain repatriation benefits. More than one veteran remembers being turned away from RSL clubs because "that wasn't a proper war".

Their fight, their stolid determination and discipline earned them survival but little else.

Each Anzac Day we remember Gallipoli and we remember the sacrifice of thousands. Rarely do we recall the Battle of Kapyong and those Australians who, for a few days before Anzac Day 1951, stemmed a tide that could have changed the course of history.

Dennis Smith wrote and directed the documentary Kapyong -- The Forgotten Battle of a Forgotten War, broadcast last night and today on The History Channel.