Department of Veterans' Affairs
Transcript
Bayonet charge
Dudley Goodwin: We did a bayonet charge. I don 't know the area, I 've forgotten it now. The whole battalion lined up. Ferguson got us to fix our bayonets. I think I must have been the last bloke who fixed his bayonet because I walked up to the front and said to my mates 'What 's going on here? ' A typical digger I said 'What 's going on here? ' 'You 've got to fix bayonets. ' 'Why? Where are we going? ' 'Over the hill. '
The North Koreans were firing a machine gun at us. It was only a little one about as high as this chair. We fixed bayonets and he said 'Charge. ' So we raced across the thing. At the bottom of the hill there was a creek running across there and for some unknown reason I fell in the hole and it was freezing water and Eric Larson that was the platoon commander at the time, he stopped us, he yelled out 'Charge. '
We 're halfway up the hill and he chopped in half across his chest by a machine gun from shoulder to waist. We eventually took the hill, knocked out the machine gun and when we looked over the hill the Americans had been firing their tank shells and there must have been at least 300 North Korean people in that valley. It was damn right disgusting. They were just laid on top of one another and just piled them up and we stayed there all night.
American clothing and frostbite
Dudley Goodwin: We had uniforms that they used in the Second World War and we had them in Korea. We weren 't equipped for the weather in Korea until the Yanks came in and gave us winter clothing.
There was only one thing wrong was with their footwear. They had these snow pack boots and that put me and few others in hospital with frostbite. That was the trouble with the boots. The clothing was good but not the footwear.
Winter in Korea
Dudley Goodwin: What we used to do was take out boots off and take them in our bed with us to sleep to keep them warm because otherwise you left them outside and they were like concrete. No way in the world you were going to warm them up. You 'd light a fire to warm your boots up so you could put them on.
Raymond Deed: The one way we found that assisted a little bit is you got below the surface of the ground. There was always what I call an invisible breeze on the surface of the ground and particularly when the winds came from the Gobi Desert and Manchuria they 'd just about go through you like a knife.
Empathy for enemy POWs
Raymond Deed: Well, our…Well it was minor in comparison to some of the forward companies. I did have a Chinese prisoner there. Age I estimated to be probably in his thirties. He had on him a photo of his wife and three little kids. Up until that time I had looked upon the enemy something just a figure to be eliminated but when he showed me that photo, it was a different perspective of the enemy, him in particular, anyway.
I thought 'He's a human being just like me trying to do his job for his country as I was for mine'. He was later herded off to a prisoner of war camp and I can only hope he made it back to China to his wife and kids. I often think about that and see his face to this day.
That's one aspect. We had quite a number of prisoners at Kapyong. None of them made any attempt to escape. As a matter of fact they helped to carry our wounded out and even some of them were carrying our weapons out. They acted as if they were happy to be taken prisoner.
The heart-breaking sight of refugees
Raymond Deed: There's one other point I'd like to raise and that is the plight of the refugees after the Chinese entered the war. They used to tear your guts out for wont of a better expression. To see people with all their possessions, ages ranging from the elderly down to babies and even some of them born en route carrying everything they owned, snow up to two feet deep in some places and these people were all heading south. I did not see one heading north and that I think tells a story of itself.
There was nothing we could do to help them, just watch the tragedy unfolding. It used to tear us apart and this went on, these people walked for days and days and nights and that's another thing that stays in my memory. Tragically I was to witness similar conditions, except the weather, different weather, in Vietnam about twenty years later. That is another sad sight in war.
The boy on the bridge
Raymond Deed: When we got pushed back by the Chinese over the 38th parallel we were dug in on the southern bank of the stream to protect the bridge while the American demolition team was placing charges underneath to blow the bridge up. On the northern side there was a dirt road coming down to the bridge with a bend onto the bridge just before the road connected with the bridge.
As I said we were in concealed positions and the next thing we saw was a little boy about ten years old. Ragged clothes carrying nothing walking down towards the bridge. It was pretty obvious that his parents had been killed. There was nothing we could do.
As he got on the bridge we were counting his steps and right in the middle up the explosion went, threw him into the air and down into the water. As I said there was nothing we could do. We couldn't reveal our positions or anything.
I did hear later that he wasn't killed, that he was fished out of the water by the American engineers and that he survived. That memory stays with me to this day.
