Ships and Units

[Edward Campbell]

This discussion, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from MacLean's, is very interesting, but caveat lector, I know four of the five panelists, one very well, two well and one slightly so my definition of interest may be clouded by personal factors:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/07/25/from-the-archives-pierre-berton-and-the-korean-war/

From the archives: Pierre Berton and the Korean War

by Nick Taylor-Vaisey

on Thursday, July 25, 2013

Pierre Berton reported from Korea for Maclean’s during the height of hostilities in 1951. When he returned to Canada, he convinced his editors to let him write an editorial. “The Real War in Korea,” published Aug. 1, 1951, took a critical view of Canada’s contribution to the conflict. Sixty years after the Armistice that ceased hostilities, we’re re-publishing Berton’s editorial. We asked veterans and historians to react to Berton’s words. Our panel included:

    General (ret’d) Ramsey Withers served in Korea with 1 Battalion, Royal 22e Regiment. He climbed the ranks and served as the Chief of Defence Staff from 1980-83.
    Donovan (Reg) Redknap served in Korea with 4 Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery. He fought at the Battle of Hill 187 in May 1953.
    Berrard (Buzz) Bennett served in Korea with Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. He remained in the country until just after the Armistice was signed in July 1953.
    David Bercuson, a military historian at the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies.
    Paul Evans, a professor of Asian and international affairs at the University of British Columbia’s Institute of Asian Research and Liu Institute for Global Issues.

Berton penned his editorial less than a month after initial armistice negotiations, when the war settled into a vicious stalemate that held for two years until hostilities on the peninsula ceased. He returned home after a year of brutal fighting on the front lines that saw Chinese forces join with North Koreans to drive allied forces back near the 38th parallel, the border that divided the two Koreas before war erupted. Evans says Berton would have witnessed the height of the nastiness. “1951 was about as bad a time as it looked because still, there was the hubris that the Americans and the allies thought they were going to win pretty quickly,” he said. “The Chinese intervention changed that fundamentally in a long, long muddy struggle.”

What complicated matters on the front lines, says Evans, was a lack of understanding about what the fight was all about. “It was guys who were not altogether sure exactly why they were there,” he said. That view doesn’t jibe with Redknap’s own reasons for enlisting. ”People asked me why I joined, and I said, maybe 10 or 15 per cent patriotism—and the rest of it, adventure,” he said. What about the risk attached to fighting a determined enemy? Irrelevant, says Redknap. ”When you’re 20 years old, you do not think that way.” Withers was blunt. A young soldier headed overseas doesn’t think about risk. ”You’re indestructible,” he said. Bennett joined out of a sense of duty. ”It just seemed like the thing to do,” he said.

Redknap recalled a conversation with a veteran of Afghanistan who’d served three tours overseas, and was denied a fourth round with the Canadian contingent. “Strange as it may seem, there are people who want to do these things,” he says.

Before the three vets headed overseas, the war had already reached its stalemate. They’d lived in Canada for much of the war, and said the country wasn’t much interested in Korea. “You’ve gotta appreciate that Canadians were tired of war. We had been in it for six years [during World War 2]. We were the third-largest war-producing nation. And we lost a lot of people,” said Withers. “Five short years later, you’re back to war, so the Canadian public was not so much ignorant as disinterested.”

Not nearly as many Canadians were involved in Korea, said Bennett, and that meant the majority of the population was disconnected from the fighting. “Unlike the Second World War where everybody was impacted and involved for a long time, probably only about one in every 500 or 1,000 Canadians knew somebody directly in the Korean War,” he said.

With that backdrop, Berton got to work.

THE REAL WAR IN KOREA

Pierre Berton

Comments by Buzz Bennett, David Bercuson, Paul Evans, Reg Redknap and Ramsey Withers are in italics.

In the gathering dust of Korea’s weary, bloody war, some things were clear and others still clouded. Certainly the Chinese, some of whom had Spanish-American War rifles and some of whom had only clubs, were moving back up the peninsula through villages roasted by our napalm and cities crumbled by our shells. The long lines of refugees were on the move again, and the rice was green only in those paddies that had survived the tread of marching feet. People were saying that we’d won the war.But had we? Can you win a war in this tragic year of 1951 as you win a prizefight, by brute force in the fifteenth round? To answer that question you’ve got to think back to what the war in Korea was all about. The initial objective was clear enough. It was, as Corporal Karry Dunphy of the Pats put it, “To resist aggression and all that sort of thing.”

    BERCUSON: The army of the day was a very different army than we have now, in the sense that it was an army that was created to win wars. Kill people. Although that’s still the basic mission of any army,
    nonetheless we know today that it’s not the only mission of the army.

    EVANS: Looked at 20 years later, or 60 years later, that whole episode, as ugly as it was, is part of a bigger pattern that has a more virtuous dimension to it: on balance, those guys were doing the right
    thing, even though they behaved in some pretty horrible ways on all sides.

But surely this is a negative objective. What have we done in Korea that is positive? Sure, we’re winning the old-fashioned war of brawn. But what about the newfangled war for men’s minds? Have our actions in Korea made more friends for the Western world? Have we been able to convince the Koreans themselves that the phrase “our way of life” is something more than a slogan? Have we succeeded in selling our brand of democracy to this proud but unhappy race?It is terrifying to report that the answer seems to be an unqualified No!

    EVANS: Even into the 1980s, South Korea was no democratic paradise. It was authoritarianism; elements of a market economy, but only elements. It took a generation for the ideas that looked rather
    hollow in 1951 to actually take root in that muddy soil of Korea.

If we had gone into Korea as an invading army of conquerors with the express purpose of humiliating the citizenry we could have done no worse than we have done in the name of the United Nations, the Western world and the democratic way of life.I have some vivid memories of Korea, and many of them I wish I could forget. There is the memory of the old Korean who stumbled uploading a crate from a C-54 in Pusan, and of the little pipsqueak of a GI private who seized him by the coat lapels and shouted in his face, “You sonofabitch—if you do that again I’ll punch you in the nose!” There is the memory of the wretched young man with his feet half eaten away, dying of gangrene and refused medical assistance by a succession of MOs because he was a Korean and didn’t count. There is the memory of the Canadian private who emptied his Bren gun into a Korean grave, and the memory of the GI in the bus at Pusan who shouted loudly at a comrade about how much he hated the gooks—and the look on the face of the Korean bus driver who overheard him.

    WITHERS: We never got to see the Korean people. The Korean people were kept approximately 20 kilometres behind the front. We never interacted with the Korean people.

    BENNETT: Some of the incidents he relates certainly happened, but they were not widespread. There’s a few people who do this sort of thing, but this was not the sort of thing you saw all the time.[/u]

And always there is the memory of the crowded streets and the khaki river of soldiers flowing through them, many of them drunk, not a few of them arrogant, most of them with too much money to spend: a shifting montage of jeeps driving lickety-split down narrow lanes built for oxcarts, of voices cursing at the men who didn’t move out of the way quickly, of faces leering and winking at the women, of hands dispensing the largesse of democracy—a piece of gum here, a piece of chocolate there—to the ragged hungry children begging on the curb.

    REDKNAP: If I may use a good army expression, that paragraph is bullshit. It annoys me intently to read that. Every Korean that I’ve talked to had nothing but admiration for the Canadians who came to free
    their country. No axe to grind.

There is above all the memory of the serious young Korean university graduate gazing solemnly and sadly at me across the remnants of a chow mein dinner that had cost the equivalent of two months’ wages in Korea, and saying, “You Americans are so stupid. You have made prostitutes of our women and beggars of our children. Surely you are not going to make the mistake of thinking the Koreans love you?”We were eating in a native restaurant because this young man could not eat with me in the officers’ mess where all other war correspondents ate. Yet he was an accredited war correspondent, too, who wore the United Nations patch and uniform. But he was a Korean. Sorry.

Surely this illustrates the stupidity of our policy in Korea. We not only go out of our way to insult a group of Koreans, but we single out newspapermen—the very people who can interpret, or misinterpret, our way of life to their countrymen. In Korea we have given very little thought to anything but the military expediency of the moment, whether it encompasses the breaking of dikes on a paddy field or the tacit support of a government that is about as democratic as Franco’s.

Our soldiers are sometimes referred to as “the ambassadors of democracy,” but the painful fact is that they lack both training and talent for ambassadorship. They have been taught how to fight and they fight well. They have not been taught how to act and they act badly.It seems to me there are two basic principles we must accept. One has already been suggested in these columns by Lionel Shapiro: that these days it is as important to teach a soldier how to get along with other people as it is to teach him the first and second stoppages on the Bren gun. This will take more than just the odd lecture and the occasional pamphlet. The idea needs to be drilled into the troops as surely as the manual of arms.

    WITHERS: We were taught to fight. Bloody right, we were, and I’m glad we were. We wouldn’t have survived. That’s why we went there: to fight, to restore the stability of the south. Ambassadorship came
    later in the history of the Canadian Forces with peacekeeping operations, and we did rather well at that, too.

    BERCUSON: I don’t think we really learned, really until the last 10 years, that when you’re fighting a war that is a limited war, your soldiers have to be prepared for what they’re about to encounter. We really
    didn’t get into that until after Somalia. We started to really make an effort to teach our soldiers about the social and political context of the countries into which they were going—and try to make them more aware
    of, more sensitive to, the larger issues that they were dealing with.

The great lesson of the new decade is already clear: that the ends of military expediency are not enough, that you can’t burn away an idea with gasoline jelly but can only destroy it with a better idea. But this lesson hasn’t been put into practice.

    EVANS: The training our soldiers get, in most instances, they’re much better prepared—or at least somewhat prepared—for the situation they’re going into. I worked with some of our guys before they went
    to Afghanistan… They had at least a little bit of a sense of what that conflict was about. And though some of their generals sometimes put it in pretty ugly terms, on balance Canadian soldiers are now much better
    prepared to go into civil war conflicts.

I agree with Reg Redknap that much of what Pierre Berton wrote in this piece was starry eyed bullshit which told us much more about Berton's social views than it did about Korea, Koreans or Canadian soldiers.

 

[Edward Campbell]

HMCS Regina (Lt J.W. Radford, RCNR) was sunk on 8 Aug 1944 about eight miles off Trevose Head, Cornwall, England, while escorting convoy EBC 66 (Barry to Seine Bay). Regina turned and slowed down to pick up survivors, thinking that a merchant ship had hit a mine. The U-boat (U-667) fired a Gnat at the corvette, which blew up and sank within 30 seconds. One officer and 27 men were lost. The commander and 65 crew members were picked up by a RN armed trawler.

 

[Edward Campbell]

2nd Canadian Infantry Division

Dieppe ~ 19 Aug 42

 

 

 

 

[Edward Campbell]

HMCS Alberni, (A/Lt.Cdr. Ian Hunter Bell, RCNVR) was hit and sunk in in the English Channel about 25 nautical miles south-east of St Catherine's Point, Isle of Wight. Fifty-nine of the crew were killed in action. Alberni was sunk by U-480 commanded by OLtzS Hans-Joachim Förster. Three officers and twenty-eight sailors were rescued by the RN motor torpedo boats 469 and 470 which saw the explosion on the horizon while returning to port from their own mission.

A picture of HMCS Alberni's ship's company taken sometime between Oct 42 and Aug 44 when LCdr Bell was in command.

 

[Edward Campbell]

HMCS Racoon (LtCdr J.N. Smith, RCNR) was sunk in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence on the night 6/7 Sep 42 while escorting convoy QS-33. She was lost with all hands - 37 officers and sailors.

HMCS Racoon, was built in Bath, ME in Jun 31 as Halonia for Charles A. Thorne, Chicago MI.
In Mar 40 she was bought by the Canadian Government and commissioned in Jun 140 as the armed yacht HMCS Raccoon in the Royal Canadian Navy.
The class of armed yachts were named for animals.

 

[Edward Campbell]

HMCS Charlottetown (T/Lt.Cdr. John Willard Bonner, RCNR) was torpedoed and sunk on 11 September 1942 by U-517 6 nautical miles (11 km) off Cap Chat in the St. Lawrence River along the northern shore of the Gaspé Peninsula. She had been returning to base with HMCS Clayoquot after escorting convoy SQ-35 and was not zigzagging. She was struck aft by two torpedoes. She went down fast and though most of her crew got off the ship, some died in the water when her depth charges went off as she sank. Her captain, LtCdr John W. Bonner, and 8 other crew were killed out of her crew of 64. The survivors were picked up by the Clayoquot.

HMCS Charlottetown

 

[Edward Campbell]

HMCS Ottawa, (LtCdr C.A. Rutherford RCN), was sunk in the mid-Atlantic, in the "black hole" on the night of 13/14 Sep 1942 while escorting convoy ON-127. She was hit twice by torpedoes, possibly fired by two different U-boats. 114 officers and sailors were killed, including LCdr Rutherford, 67 survived.

Ottawa was built in 1932 in Portsmouth as HMS Crusader (H 60), she was
transferred to Canada on 15 Jun, 1938 and renamed HMCS Ottawa retaining
the designation of H 60.

HMCS Ottawa ship's company in Jun 42. Cdr (later Capt) Colin Donald is in command in this picture. LCdr Rutherford did not assume command until Ju 42.

 

[Edward Campbell]

HMCS Levis (T/Lt C.W. Gilding, RCNR) was sunk by a german U-boat 120 miles of Cape Farewell (near the South tip of Greenland). Nineteen sailors were lost.

HMCS Levis

HMCS Levis, after she was hit, showing some of the damage. Levis was taken in tow by HMCS Mayflower, but at about
19.10 hours, she capsized and sank.

Some of the crew of HMCS Levis

 

[Edward Campbell]

HMCS St. Croix (A/Lt.Cdr. Andrew Hedley Dobson, DSC, RCNR) was torpedoed and sunk south of Iceland on 20 Sep 43 while escorting convoy ON.202.

Of the 5 officers and 76 men picked up by the British frigate HMS Itchen (sunk by German U-boat U-666), only one, Leading Stoker William Allen Fisher, survived the sinking of the Itchen a few days later. One of the ST. CROIX seaman, lost in the ITCHEN, was Surgeon Lt W.L.M. King, RCNVR, Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s nephew.

St Croix was one of the "four stack" destroyers built for the US Navy in World War I and sent to the RCN under "lend-lease." She was laid down on 11th September 1918 and launched on 31st January 1919. Commissioned on 30th April 1919 for US Naval Service she was deployed in the Atlantic until 1922 when she was laid up in Reserve at Philadelphia. In December 1939 she was brought forward for US Navy use and deployed in the Atlantic until transferred to the Royal Navy under the UK/US Lend/Lease Agreement on 3rd September 1940. Commissioned on 24th September that year this destroyer was selected for use by the Royal Canadian Navy and renamed HMCS ST CROIX at Halifax.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The 265 ton HMCS Bras d'Or was built at Sorel, Quebec in 1918. She was employed as a Naval Service Trawler, Lightship #25 and, finally, a minesweeper. She joined the St. Lawrence Patrol in June 1940, being based at Rimouski, Quebec.

On the night of Oct 18-19, 1940, while keeping the Romanian freighter Ingener N. Vlasspol under surveillance in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the minesweeper disappeared. Investigation determined that: the Bras d'Or was not rammed as there was no damage to the freighter; the minesweeper was seen by a pilot of the Rimouski Pilot Service on Oct 17, who said that she seemed to be grounded just offshore; a report from the mate on the Ingener N. Vlasspol stated that the lights on the Bras d'Or were extinguished at 3:50 a.m. Oct 19 and that a search was later made but nothing was ever found and no bodies were ever found. The complement was 30
sailors under the command of Lt C.A. Hornsby, RCNR.

HMCS Bras d'Or

Some of Brad d'Or's crew

 

[Edward Campbell]

HMCS Chedabucto (J 168, a Bangor class minesweeper) (T/Lt. John Herbert Bowen Davies, RCNR) was lost in a collision with the cable vessel Lord Kelvin on the St. Lawrence River on 31 Oct 43.

HMCS Chedabucto

HMCS Chedabucto was run down by the cable ship Lord Kelvin, a British ship on lease to Western Union Telegraph.

The Lord Kelvin was southwest of Anticosti Island doing cable work for the RCN when Chedabucto was ordered to escort her as far as Rimouski, Que. After that Chedabucto patrolled in the river while waiting for her assignment, which was to escort the fire tug Citadella to join convoy QS-68A. In the early hours of Oct. 21, 1943, Chedabucto rounded Bic Island with Sub-Lieutenant J.R. Morrison, Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve, on duty as officer of the watch. Morrison was not yet a qualified watch keeper and despite the captain’s protests that Chedabucto was short of qualified officers, no replacement was provided. It was Morrison who held the 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. watch on that fateful morning. The ship’s 1st lieutenant and navigating officer checked on him at 5:20 and found things well under control. Several ships were nearby and the radar was tracking them. Visibility was good, at six miles, and at 5:40 Morrsion reported by voice pipe to the captain, Lieutenant J.H.B. Davies, RCNR, that all was well. Fifteen minutes later, the Lord Kelvin slammed into Chedabucto’s side, near the wardroom.

What happened in those 15 minutes is not entirely clear. Chedabucto was running in blackout state, and the captain of Lord Kelvin later testified that no one saw her until the very last moment. But lookouts as well as Morrison reported a series of lights from ships around them. Radar confirmed vessels on both port and starboard sides at ranges of 2,200 to 2,500 yards. All of that put the onus for avoidance on the minesweeper. As Morrison moved to the port bridge wing to check on things at 5:40 a.m., the Lord Kelvin sudden emerged from the darkness on a collision course.

Alarms sounded and reaction was swift, but by the time Davies arrived on the bridge the Lord Kelvin’s bow was deeply embedded in Chedabucto’s side. Davies’ call to the larger ship to stay where she was, in order to keep the gash in his ship’s side closed as much as possible, went unheard. As Lord Kelvin backed away she opened up a 20-foot-long hole to the sea in the minesweeper’s side. The after section of Chedabucto quickly flooded and the ship listed 10 degrees. Her own collision mat and some canvas sent over from the Lord Kelvin all proved too small to fill the hole, and the ship’s pumps had lost suction due to broken lines. Davies transferred most of his crew to the Lord Kelvin and had Chedabucto’s boilers blown-down to reduce the risk of explosion from cold sea water. Eventually the United States Coast Guard armed light house tender Buttonwood took Chedabucto in tow and headed for Rimouski, 20 miles away.

Initially, the tow went well. One boiler was relit to provide power to pumps. But the flooding could not be controlled and as Chedabucto settled in the water and increased her list, course was altered to put her aground on Bic Island. When her stern struck bottom a mile and a half from shore efforts at salvage were abandoned: Chedabucto soon turned over and sank. The only casualty was Sub-Lt. (Engineer) D.W. Tuke, RCNVR, killed in the initial collision.

The Board of Enquiry censured Davies and his 1st lieutenant for negligence, primarily in leaving Morrison on the bridge without qualified supervision: Morrison, it was observed, did the best he could. The findings of the board were protested by Naval Service Headquarters in Ottawa, which wanted a court martial. Admiral L.W. Murray in Halifax refused, being content with the “severe displeasure” of the department recorded in Davies file. Meanwhile, lawyers for Western Union Telegraph sent a bill to the RCN for the time she spent out of service repairing her hull. As McKee and Darlington concluded, the whole thing “was a sad and unsatisfactory affair.”

Source: The Accidental Enemy: Navy, Part 41, October 22, 2010 by Marc Milner

The attempt to save Chedabucto failed

 

[Edward Campbell]

Slightly off topic, but worth remembering:

Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, kiled in acion at sea on 21 Oct 1805.
Painting by Lemuel Francis Abbott

This is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/trafalgar_01.shtml

The Battle of Trafalgar

By Andrew Lambert
Last updated 2011-02-17

Global power

The Battle of Trafalgar was to witness both the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte's plans to invade Britain, and the death of Admiral Lord Nelson. It was never going to be any ordinary battle, and quickly acquired a heightened, almost magical, reality.

During the engagement at Trafalgar, on 21 October 1805, the Royal Navy annihilated the greatest threat to British security for 200 years, but lost Britain's national hero in the process. Little wonder the battle transcended the mundane calculation of ships and men, victory and defeat. It guaranteed Britain's control of the oceans, the basis of her global power for over a century.

By 1805 Nelson was already a national hero, and considered the ultimate naval commander. His elevated conception of war ensured that every battle he fought was used to solve major strategic problems, and his many successes ensured he was the only contemporary to rival Bonaparte as ultimate exemplar of total war. Nor did Bonaparte disagree - he kept a bust of Nelson in his private quarters.

Nelson developed the art of war at sea to the new, terrible form he characterised as 'annihilation' to counter the war effort of Napoleonic France. He did so by taking the command system of Admiral Sir John Jervis, the tough old officer who taught him how to keep a fleet efficient, and melding it with the genius for battle and strategy he developed while serving under Admiral Lord Hood.

Nelson used this combination of strategic flair and practical management to help Britain survive the 22 year struggle with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. He understood that invasion by France was the least of Britain's worries - the real threat was the destruction of her global commercial system.

Defensive strategy

In 1803 the Peace of Amiens - a temporary armed truce between Britain and France - broke down, and for nearly two years British strategy rested on the defensive, waiting for the French navy to make the first move. Late in 1804, however, Spain joined the war as an ally of France, giving Napoleon the ships he needed to challenge Britain.

This was the context of Trafalgar. Napoleon was looking for an opportunity to strike at Britain, without having to fight Nelson and the Royal Navy - while all his attempts to attack British interests were thwarted by expert seamen who countered his every move.

Thus, when Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, Commander of Napoleon's Franco-Spanish fleet bottled up in a safe haven at Toulon, broke out into the Atlantic in early 1805, Nelson chased him all the way to the West Indies in the most daring of all his campaigns.

By September 1805, however, Villeneuve's fleet had found shelter at Cadiz, and was ideally positioned to attack British trading ships or Britain itself. It had to be destroyed.

Battle plan

Nelson joined the British fleet off Cadiz in late September. His very presence electrified the men under his command, while his new battle plan, explained at his table on HMS Victory, was key to decisive combat. If the enemy put to sea Nelson wanted to be able to annihilate them completely, ending the need for Britain to stand on the defensive.

Nelson's arrival unsettled Admiral Villeneuve, who was already being bullied by Napoleon, who wanted his fleet to support an attack on Naples. Thus under pressure Villeneuve, believing Nelson's fleet to be weaker than his own, put to sea on 19 October. In fact his 33 ships of the line faced 27 British vessels.

Nelson anticipated his enemy's every move. At dawn on the 21st the fleets were in visual contact. Nelson's fleet was formed into two columns, for a risky head-on approach that exposed the unarmed bows of his leading ships to the full weight of enemy broadsides. He knew a storm was coming, and he had to engage the enemy quickly.

He was to lead the first column into the attack and destroy the enemy flagship, leaving his opponents, leaderless and confused, to be destroyed by the second column, led by Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood. With the enemy admiral disabled, Nelson knew his skilled captains could wipe out the rest of the opposing fleet in the remaining hours of daylight.

'England Expects ...'

As his vessels approached their enemy, Nelson walked around his flagship, talking with the crew - having sent the immortal signal 'England expects that every man will do his duty' to the fleet. All his men cheered this example of courage and confidence that they had but to follow.

The enemy had reversed course during the morning, heading back to Cadiz, leaving their line confused. Now the fleets were off Cape Trafalgar, and the British sailors had time to eat a good meal in preparation for the engagement - although their opponents may not have had such healthy appetites. Nelson waited for Villeneuve to show his flag, so he would know where to strike.

As Victory bore down on the enemy line she had to endure heavy fire from the allied line, without being able to reply. Round shot came smashing through the flimsy bow of the ship, killing and wounding the men on the upper deck. John Scott, Nelson's Public Secretary, was standing on the quarter deck talking with Captain Thomas Hardy, when a shot cut him in two.

Then the steering wheel was smashed, and a double-headed shot scythed down a file of eight marines on the poop. Still Nelson and Hardy paced up and down on their chosen ground, the starboard side of the quarterdeck, with splinters flying around them.

When a splinter hit Hardy's shoe, tearing off the buckle, Nelson observed: 'This is too warm work to last for long'. Fifty men had been killed or wounded, and the crew of the Victory had yet to open fire.

The battle

At 12.35pm the concave enemy line allowed the Victory to open fire at last, shrouding the ship in smoke. Soon afterwards the Victory ran right under the stern of the French flagship, the Bucentaure, and fired a double shotted broadside that made the enemy ship shudder, and killed or wounded over 200 men. Admiral Villeneuve was the only man left standing on the quarter deck.

The Redoutable then blocked Victory's way through the enemy line, and Nelson was immobilised on a ship fighting three opponents in the middle of the combined fleet - but he had administered the decisive stroke. Villeneuve was trapped on a crippled ship, and the Franco-Spanish centre was reduced to chaos, lacking the leadership to meet the irresistible British.

Nelson, his work done, continued to walk with Hardy, while the captain of the Redoutable tried to clear Victory's upper deck with musket fire and hand grenades. Then, at about 1.15pm, Nelson was hit by a 0.69in-diameter lead ball, which cut an artery in his lung and lodged in his spine. He was knocked to the deck, and it was clear the wound was mortal. Hardy had his chief carried below, where Surgeon William Beatty was hard at work on the mounting list of casualties.

Meantime the battle raged, with the faster and more effective British gunnery steadily wearing down the enemy. Over the next three hours the Franco-Spanish force would collapse. Nelson's attack had broken all the rules of tactics, treating a fleet waiting for a fight like one running away, substituting speed for mass, precision for weight, and accepting impossible odds.

At the start of the battle, when the first British ships arrived, they were initially fighting a far greater number of enemy ships. They won the day because of their speed and flexibility, and by the time they were weakening, a later wave of vessels was in place to administer the coup de grace.

In fact the battle was won while the enemy had far more ships in the fight than the British. The real triumph was not of 27 ships against 33, but of 12 against 22. British casualties tell the story - 12 ships fought the early and decisive phase of the battle, suffering some 1200 deaths and injuries.

Nelson's death

As Nelson lay wounded, the battle with the Redoutable reached a crescendo. The French repeatedly tried to board the Victory, only to be driven back by heavy fire, and at 1.30pm the captain of the Redoutable surrendered.

At 2.15pm Villeneuve surrendered. The genius of his opponent, the power of the Royal Navy and the failure of his lead squadron to come to his aid had doomed his brave effort. He lived to return to France, only to be murdered by Napoleon.

By 2.30pm Hardy was able to go below, to report to Nelson that 12 or 14 of the enemy were taken, and no British ship had surrendered. That last answer betrayed Nelson's anxiety about the outcome of the battle. Hardy, however, could not linger, the lead enemy squadron was belatedly trying to join the battle, only to be bettered by Edward Codrington's brilliantly handled Orion, the Minotaur and the Spartiate. Hardy went back on deck and signalled the ships nearby to support the flagship.

Hardy visited Nelson again at 3.30pm to confirm a glorious victory, but could not satisfy Nelson's determination to have 20 prizes. 'Anchor, Hardy, Anchor!' the dying man demanded, as the rising sea reminded him of his weather forecast.

Hardy knelt and kissed him, as Nelson struggled to breathe and kept repeating his motto: 'Thank God I have done my duty.' Unable to endure his grief at his leader's plight, Hardy went back to the upper deck, burying his feelings in the fighting. Nelson died shortly before 4.30pm, as the battle died down. Nineteen enemy ships had been taken.

Cost of victory

The cost of victory was high. Some 1,700 British were killed or wounded, with 6,000 enemy casualties and nearly 20,000 prisoners. Many of those lives, as well as Villeneuve's flagship, were lost in the storm that followed the battle.

The following day, Nelson's oldest friend, Admiral Collingwood, opened his wonderful Order of Thanks for the men of the fleet with the following lines:
Cost of victory

The end of the Battle of Trafalgar - fleeing French and Spanish ships on the horizon End of the battle - with fleeing enemy ships in the distance  © The cost of victory was high. Some 1,700 British were killed or wounded, with 6,000 enemy casualties and nearly 20,000 prisoners. Many of those lives, as well as Villeneuve's flagship, were lost in the storm that followed the battle.

The following day, Nelson's oldest friend, Admiral Collingwood, opened his wonderful Order of Thanks for the men of the fleet with the following lines:

          'The ever to be lamented death of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, Duke of Bronte, the Commander in Chief, who fell in the action of the 21st, in the arms of Victory, covered with glory, whose memory will be ever
          dear to the British Navy and the British Nation; whose zeal for the honour of his King, and for the interests of his Country, will ever be held up as a shining example for a British seaman.'

This powerful document only heightened the emotional impact of the news across the nation - for Britons the triumph over Napoleon was cancelled out by the loss of Nelson. The loss, however, provided a national hero to help enhance the newly formed British identity. Trafalgar, as the battle was named by George III, had crushed the naval power of a deadly enemy, and - although they had fought like heroes - the Spanish and French had been annihilated.

Trafalgar was the coda to Nelson's achievement. He had destroyed Napoleon's maritime strategy and invasion plans when he pursued Villeneuve to the West Indies and back. This had set the limit to Napoleon's empire, and plotted the course of his downfall.

Other British admirals could have won at Trafalgar, but only Nelson could have settled the command of the sea for a century. Trafalgar was the product of one man's obsessive genius and unequalled commitment to his country.

 

[Edward Campbell]

HMCS Margaree (Cdr. Joseph Wilton Rouer, RCN) was sunk in the North Atlantic while escorting convoy OL-8, in position (approx.) 53º24'N, 22º50'W after a collision with the freighter Port Fairy.
142 of her crew were lost with the ship.

Ordered in 1931, the ship was constructed by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, and entered naval service in 1932 as HMS Diana (H49). Diana was initially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet before she was transferred to the China Station in early 1935. She was temporarily deployed in the Red Sea during late 1935 during the Abyssinia Crisis, before returning to her duty station where she remained until mid-1939. Diana was transferred back to the Mediterranean Fleet just before the Second World War began in September 1939. She served with the Home Fleet during the Norwegian Campaign. The ship was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1940 and renamed HMCS Margaree but retained the designation H49. She served for just over a month as a Canadian ship before being sunk in a collision with a large freighter she was escorting on 22 October 1940.

 

[Lightguns]

HMCS Restigouche  (affectionately known as "RUSTYGUTS" by her crew)

My childhood best friend's father was a stoker on her in WW2.  She was an RN transfer named HMS COMET.

On 11 June she was commissioned by the RCN and renamed Restigouche, although her refit was not completed until 20 August. Restigouche was assigned to the Canadian Pacific Coast and arrived at Esquimalt on 7 November 1938.[6] She remained there until she was ordered to Halifax, Nova Scotia on 15 November 1939 where she escorted local convoys, including the convoy carrying half of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division to the UK on 10 December.[9] Restigouche was ordered to Plymouth on 24 May 1940 and arrived there on 31 May. Upon arrival, the ship's rear torpedo tube mount was removed and replaced by a 12-pounder AA gun and the 2-pounders were exchanged for quadruple Mark I mounts for the QF 0.5-inch Vickers Mark III machine gun.[10]

On 9 June, Restigouche was ordered to Le Havre, France to evacuate British troops, but none were to be found and the ship investigated the small port of Saint-Valery-en-Caux some 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Le Havre on 11 June. They found some elements of the 51st Infantry Division, but had not received any orders to evacuate and refused to do so. Whilst recovering her landing party, the ship was taken under fire by a German artillery battery, but she was not hit and returned fire. After returning to England, Restigouche escorted several troop convoys on the last legs of their journeys from Canada, Australia and New Zealand in mid-June. On 23 June, the ship escorted the ocean liner SS Arandora Star to St. Jean de Luz to evacuate Polish troops and British refugees trapped by the German Army in south-western France (Operation Ariel). On 25 June 1940, Restigouche, her sister HMCS Fraser, and the light cruiser HMS Calcutta were returning from St. Jean de Luz when Fraser was rammed by Calcutta in the Gironde estuary at night. Struck forward of the bridge by the cruiser's bow, Fraser was cut in half, although the rear part of the ship did not immediately sink. All but 47 of the ship's crew and evacuees were rescued by Restigouche and other nearby ships.[11] The rear portion had to be sunk by Restigouche.[12]

The ship was transferred to the Western Approaches Command afterwards for convoy escort duties. She sailed for Halifax at the end of August for a refit that lasted until October.[13] Upon its completion, Restigouche remained at Halifax for local escort duties until January 1941 when she sailed for the UK where she was reassigned to the Western Approaches Command. The ship was ordered to St. John's, Newfoundland on 30 May to reinforce escort forces in the Western Atlantic.[14] Whilst guarding the battleship Prince of Wales at Placentia Bay on 8 August, Restigouche damaged her propellers when she struck bottom and required repairs that lasted until October. She was not out of dockyard hands for very long before she was badly damaged by a storm while en route to join Convoy ON-44 on 12 December. Repairs at Greenock lasted until 9 March 1942[13] and her director-control tower and rangefinder above the bridge had been removed by this time in exchange for a Type 271 target indication radar.[15]

Other changes made during the war (exactly when these occurred is unknown) included the replacement of 'A' gun by a Hedgehog anti-submarine spigot mortar, exchanging her two quadruple .50-calibre Vickers machine guns mounted between her funnels for two Oerlikon 20 mm AA guns, the addition of two Oerlikon guns to her searchlight platform, and the removal of her 12-pounder AA gun. Type 286 short-range surface search radar was also added. Two QF 6 pounder Hotchkiss guns were fitted on the wings of her bridge to deal with U-boats at short ranges.[16] 'Y' gun was also removed to allow her depth charge stowage to be increased to at least 60 depth charges.[17]


Restigouche picking up U-boat survivors, September 1944.Restigouche was assigned to the Mid-Ocean Escort Force when her refit was finished and served with a variety of escort groups. The ship was permanently assigned to Escort Group C4 in April 1943 and received a refit between August and December. She rejoined the escort group upon completion of the refit until she was transferred to Escort Group 12 in early 1944 for anti-submarine operations in the Western Approaches. In June–July 1944, Restigouche patrolled in the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay hunting for German submarines trying to sink Allied shipping.[13] On the night of 5–6 July, the ship and the rest of the 12th Escort Group sank three small German patrol boats off Brest. The following month, the 12th Support Group, including Restigouche, engaged three minesweepers on 12 August, without sinking any.[18] The ship is sent to Canada for a lengthy refit later in the month. After working up in Bermuda, she arrived at Halifax on 14 February 1945 and began escorting local convoys. This lasted until the end of the war in May, after which the ship was used to transfer returning troops from Newfoundland to mainland Canada until she was paid off on 5 October. Restigouche was sold for scrap in 1946.[13]

 

[Edward Campbell]

1st Battalion The Royal Canadian Regiment supported by A Battery 1st Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery
23 Oct 52 The Battle for Kowang-San (Hill 355)

Extracts from a paper by Capt Ross A. Appleton, The RCR

In April of 1952 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment (1RCR) had arrived in Korea to relieve 2 RCR. Lieutenant-Colonel P.R. Bingham was the Commanding Officer (CO) of 1RCR and had been since December 1948. The Battalion would be part of the 25th Canadian Infantry Brigade, along with the first battalions from the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) and the Royal 22nd Regiment (R22eR or the “Vandoos”).  The 25th Brigade was commanded by a longtime RCR officer, Brigadier M.P. “Pat” Bogert, DSO.

On 10 August, 1 RCR relieved the 1st Battalion, The Welch Regiment (29th Infantry Brigade), assuming the defence of Hill 355 or Kowang-San as it was known locally.  It was also referred to as ‘Little Gibraltar’ by the Americans.  It was a dominating feature and a key to the U.N. Line.  Control of Hill 355 conferred control of the highways running south to Seoul. To the immediate left of 1 RCR was 1 R22eR and to the right was 1 PPCLI. Over the next three months the 25th Canadian Infantry Brigade would experience the heaviest shelling and mortaring of any period that it spent in the front lines. The Battalion was opposite a junction point in the enemy lines that marked the boundary between the Chinese 39th and 40th Armies (commanded by Generals Xinquan and Yucheng respectively). On 25 August, from the highest point on Hill 355, Company Sergeant-Major Richard McNally of D Company unfurled the Regimental banner, a challenge that sooner or later would be answered by the Chinese.

On 01 October the Chinese began a relentless bombardment of Hill 355 that increased rather than decreased in violence as the days passed.  Enemy raids and patrols were now probing our main defensive positions on a nightly basis.  Kowang-San became so dangerous that American brass stopped visiting it.  Chinese prisoners, captured by 1RCR patrols, revealed that an all-out assault on Hill 355 was in the offing.

As of 22 October, Hill 355 was divided into five defensive sectors, each held by one of the five rifle companies of 1RCR (the fifth rifle company, E Company, had only recently been raised, in September).  Area 2 lay directly between the main feature of Hill 355 and the Chinese-held Hill 227, less than two miles to the west.  It was the closest sector to the enemy and the most exposed.  Area 2 was forward-centre in the 1RCR defensive line and had borne the brunt of the Chinese bombardment since 01 October.

At this time Area 2 was manned by B Company under the command of Major J.E.L.Cohen.  He had deployed his three platoons forward with no company reserve.  4 Platoon commanded by Lieutenant S. MacDonald was on the left and in contact with E Company (Captain H.G. “Herb” Cloutier); 5 Platoon under Lieutenant John Clark was in the centre, and Lieutenant Russ Gardner’s 6 Platoon was on the right and in contact with A Company (Major George G. Taylor).  D Company (Major R.S. “Bob” Richards) and C Company were dug in in depth, left-rear and right-rear respectively, and both available as necessary for counter attack.  With battle looming, the CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Bingham was on leave and command had devolved on the Deputy Commanding Officer (DCO), Major Frank Klenavic (Klenavic commanded the Battalion from 10-25 October).

As of last light, 22 October, B Company’s field defences had been reduced to a deplorable state by the continuing Chinese bombardment.  Many bunkers had caved in, most of the reserve ammunition buried and telephone lines cut.  With enemy mortar and artillery fire continuing to intensify on Area 2 an attack was anticipated that night.  As a result B Company remained at 50% alert throughout the night with one man up in each weapon pit while his partner slept.  Chinese sappers worked in close to B Company’s positions, destroying wire obstacles with crude bangalore torpedoes.

At 1845 hours (hrs), a Chinese infiltration group blundered into 4 Platoon’s trenches on the left and was shot down to a man.  At 2045 hrs A Company, 1st Battalion, The Royal Fusiliers, arrived to take over the defense of Area 5, freeing D Company for a possible counter-move.  There was no further contact with the enemy on this night, though the heavy shelling and mortaring continued.

By dawn on 23 October, the situation in Area 2 was precarious in the extreme.  All communication with the rear had been cut and enemy shelling had destroyed all of 6 Platoon’s bunkers, forcing the soldiers of this platoon to move to their left and take shelter with 5 Platoon.  Lieutenant Gardner assumed command of the two combined platoons and Lieutenant Clark acted as a runner to Company Headquarters (HQ) and Battalion HQ to the rear.  The weight of Chinese fire kept B Company pinned down during the day; any movement above ground was next to impossible.  As a result, neither food nor ammunition could be pushed forward to the beleaguered platoons of B Company.

At great personal risk Lieutenant Clark finally reached Battalion HQ and advised Major Klenavic of the desperate situation confronting B Company.  The acting CO promptly ordered that 5 and 6 Platoons withdraw from their forward positions and re-organize.  Major Cohen and Lieutenant Clark made their way to 5 and 6 Platoons to organize their withdrawal.  They arrived towards sunset at 1800 hrs.

At this precise moment the enemy barrage on  B Company increased dramatically for ten minutes then rolled on to the rear and flanks.  A massive Chinese infantry assault on Area 2 was only minutes away and withdrawal was impossible.  Major Cohen and Lieutenants Gardner and Clark and Sergeant Gerald E.P. Enright (5 Platoon Sergeant) hurriedly organized the 30 survivors of 5 and 6 Platoons into some semblance of defense.  Blocking positions among the shattered trenches were established and men who had lost their weapons organized into bombing parties.  Enemy small arms fire was heavy to their front and large numbers of Chinese began to move in from the flanks.  Area 2 was now being attacked by the equivalent of two enemy battalions.

On the left 4 Platoon was overwhelmed, the loss of their position being reported to Major Klenavic by survivors at 1830 hrs.  On the right Lieutenant Clark and twelve men stubbornly fought on but were eventually forced to take up a blocking position further to the north where B Company’s trenches met A Company’s.  They were able to hold this position for the rest of the battle, successfully fighting off swarms of Chinese.

In the centre Lieutenant Gardner and another small band of B Company men fought desperately against hundreds of Chinese attacking from the south.  On the verge of being overrun, Gardner ordered his men to make for the safety of A Company’s trenches.  He bravely remained to cover their retreat emptying his automatic carbine at the oncoming Chinese.  In this action Lieutenant Gardner was repeatedly hit by enemy fire and eventually went down, but not before he personally shot five Chinese soldiers.  He pretended to be dead as hundreds of Chinese moved through B Company’s position, ruthlessly bayoneting the bodies of any fallen Canadian soldiers that they found.  In the darkness and confusion Lt. Gardner was able to crawl to A Company’s trenches, dragging with him a wounded comrade.  They had been the last Canadians alive in Area 2.

By 1943 hours the news had reached Major Klenavic that there were now no friendly troops left in Area 2.  He immediately brought down a fire mission on B Company’s former position and ordered every available support weapon in the Battalion, including mortars, machine guns, and recoilless rifles to engage the enemy in Area 2.  The heavy and accurate Canadian fire now stopped the Chinese dead in their tracks.

At 2100 hrs developing enemy attacks on A Company in the north and E Company in the south were broken up by artillery salvoes from 1st Commonwealth Division, including A Battery, 1st Royal Canadian Horse Artillery (1RCR had a very special relationship with this particular Battery throughout the tour in Korea).  At 0110 hrs, 24 October, Major Klenavic ordered D Company to counter-attack and drive the Chinese from Area 2.  The assaulting platoons from D Company were at first heavily engaged but as they pushed home their attack Chinese resistance crumbled and the enemy evaporated into the night. D Company re-occupied Area 2.  By 0330 hrs the Battalion’s forward lines had been re-established and the battle was over.

The Battle of Kowang-San, fought between 22 and 24 October, 1952 had lasted 33 hours.  In that period 1 RCR had suffered 18 killed, 14 missing, and 35 wounded.  Enemy casualties were unknown but believed extremely heavy.  In fact, in the aftermath of the battle, helicopter observers counted up to six hundred Chinese bodies scattered across the battlefield.  As a result of the action at Kowang-San soldiers of the Battalion won three Military Crosses and four Military Medals for gallantry. The Military Crosses were won by acting Major George Taylor, OC of A Company; Captain Cloutier, commanding E Company;  and by Lieutenant Clark of 5 Platoon, B Company. It is also worth noting that for his sterling service as the Forward Observation Officer (FOO) during the battle, Captain D.S. Caldwell was also awarded the MC. Sergeant Enright, also of 5 Platoon, was one of the recipients of the Military Medal (MM), as was Warrant Officer 2nd Class (WO2) George Fox, CSM of E Company. For his strong leadership throughout the battle Major Klenavic won the award of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). At the conclusion of the Battalion’s tour in Korea, Lieutenant-Colonel Bingham would be awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), in recognition of the outstanding achievements of 1 RCR over the past 11 months.

The defence of Hill 355 had been the bloodiest and most significant action fought by 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment during its eleven month combat tour in Korea. Throughout this period, the Battalion would suffer a total of 282 casualties, including 51 killed in action, 204 wounded, and 14 taken prisoner. The Korean War, 1950-1953, had only been the second occasion in its history that The RCR became a three battalion regiment (the first being during the South African War, 1899-1902). Each Battalion in its own turn would serve a combat tour in the theatre of conflict. Total casualties suffered by the Regiment in Korea were 117 killed and 408 wounded.

Pro Patria

 

[Old Sweat]

Edward, another first rate account by Ross. Thanks for posting it. However, there is a small glitch - Captain Caldwell, the FOO, had departed on R&R just before the battle and had been replaced by Lieutenant Bob Smyth. While Caldwell's MC was for his "fearless courage on many occasions," it unfairly entered RCHA lore as a medal for an absent FOO (that's how I heard it as a teenaged gunner in the late fifties.) Smyth did receive an immediate MID.

Oh, and the other FOO, who was with C Company, was Captain Denny Crowe.

 

[cupper]

From the Stokers.ca website  http://www.stokers.ca/hmcskootenay23october1969.htm

On 23 October 1969, Kootenay lost nine of her own in one of the worst peacetime disasters suffered by the Canadian Forces.  She was westbound out of the English Channel in a Task Group with Bonaventure, Terra Nova, Fraser, St-Laurent, Ottawa, Assiniboine, Margaree and Saguenay.  By today’s standards, it was a huge and powerful group.  The new Canadian Ensign, the Maple Leaf, flew at the mastheads.

200 miles west of Plymouth, Kootenay and Saguenay were detached to conduct routine full power trials.  At 0810, the order “Full Speed Ahead Both Engines” was given, Kootenay surged forward.

The Engineer Officer, Lt(N) Kennedy, had just come back down to the Engine Room after a quick visit to the Boiler Room.  The Chief ERA, CPO1 “Ski” Vaino A. Partanen, was on the deck plates with thewatch.  The Engine Room I/C, CPO2 W.A. “Billy” Boudreau, was there too.  PO1 John MacKinnon was at the starboard throttle, PO1 Eric Harmon at the Port.  LS Pierre Bourret was recording at the console while AB Michael Hardy and AB Allen Bell were recording the Main Engine temperatures for the trial.  LS Gary Hutton had just taken the Torsion meter readings abaft the console while LS Tom Crabbe worked below on the Fire and Bilge pump.

At 0821, eleven minutes after the “Full Speed Ahead” order was given, disaster struck.  A blast came from the after end of the Engine Room.  Instantly the Engine Room was engulfed in flames.  Kennedy and MacKinnon tried immediately to spin the throttles closed.  The choice was to evacuate the Engine Room immediately or die.  That first desperate effort would have an important effect.  It would be found that they had miraculously managed to close both throttles about three or four turns each.

The fireball burst up through the after Engine Room hatch and filled Burma Road.  The Main and C&PO’s Cafeteria just above was also flooded with smoke almost immediately, trapping the Morning Watchmen still inside.  Some of those in the Main Cafeteria got out by vaulting the galley counter.  About fifteen of them, however remained there in the dense smoke until a Damage Control Party could get through to them.  In AB Nelson Galloway’s case this would come too late.  He would be found later, collapsed by the Main Cafeteria, PO Stringer, trapped in the galley, would make it out only to die later of smoke inhalation and his injuries.

Kootenay was hurt, badly.  The Captain, Cdr Neil Norton, would later write that a less professional crew could easily have finished the day in life rafts.  The Chief ERA, was dead and too, was most of the Forenoon watch.

So suddenly had the carnage struck that the Boiler Room crew, just forward, was unaware of the damage.  The Safety Valves had lifted briefly and the fires in the Starboard boiler were extinguished, but PO Bussiere immediately got them re-lit. Lacking any other orders, he kept his people close to the deck when the smoke came in, breathing through damp cloths as they maintained steam still driving the ship onwards at better than twenty knots.  At about 0900, forty minutes after the explosion, PO Bussiere tripped the Main Steam Stop Valves to the Engine Room.  Even then, they didn’t evacuate the space but continued to auxiliary steam to supply important steam driven alternators until they were assured that the diesel generators could take the load.

The fireball burned and charred the flats.  A sizable bulge was now beginning to form in the ship’s starboard side where the intense heat in the Engine Room deformed the very metal of the hull.  In the Engine Room, the fire still raged.

Kootenay’s crew was fighting.  CPO2 Hawkings got LS McLeod into a Chemox before diving down the hatch to start #1 diesel generator.  WO Gerald Gillingham rushed in to take part of the rescue effort, perilously close to the heat and flame.  The Cox’n had cleared the forward area of the ship and has heading aft.  Before collapsing, Lt(N) Kennedy made it clear to those on the bridge that it was imperative that the Emergency Shut-Offs in the flats had to be activated to stop the steam flow to the still charging engines.

SLt Reiffenstien, the navigator, was sent to check the after magazine spray located behind the Engine Room.  When he returned, he asked if he could try to get to the Emergency Shut-Offs.  With diving tanks, he crawled down through the passageway to find the box that contained the handles.  In the heavy smoke, he couldn’t see the locking levers that prevent accidental opening of the valves and his attempts to activate them were thwarted.  But his bravery paid off, he found one man and got him forward to the wheelhouse and clear.  Two other divers, SLt Cyril Johnston and SLt John Montague went forward to the Boiler Room.

The ship’s firefighting organization was now in full force with one attack from forward led by Lt(N) Schwartz and another led by Commissioned Officer Moffat from aft.  The sky was filled with helicopters bringing firefighting supplies and evacuating injured.

At 1015, one team with C2HT Robert George, entered the Engine Room, but intense heat forced them back.  C2 George would stay in Chemox for several hours and keep fighting the fire until it was out and then help the removal of the casualties.  It would be another 45 minutes before they would gain entrance and remain.  At 1215, the Engine Room was finally cooled enough to allow for the grim assessment of the day’s terrible cost.

When it was all over, the investigations determined probable cause to be a bearing that had been improperly assembled in the gearbox, robbing it of sufficient supply of oil to cool.  The board, impressed with the heroism shown, went so far as to state that “No evidence of improper engineering practice by those serving in HMCS Kootenay has been found.”

Doug McLeod

Gone, but not forgotten: 

CPO Vaino Olavi Partenean
CPO William Alfred Boudreau
PO Lewis J. Stringer
PO Eric George Harman
LS Thomas Gordon Crabbe
LS Pierre S. Bouret
LS Gary Wayne Hutton
OS Michael Allen Hardy
OS Nelson Murray Galloway


This post has a personal tie for me as my father was one of the survivors. It was less than a month after my third birthday, but I've grown up hearing about the tragedy. But I didn't realize just how close I came to losing my dad until I read his contribution in "We Are As One" by LCdr Gordon Forbes.

And some men made side trips from their normal routine in which , in at least one case, probably saved his life, namely LS Brian Galletly.
"On Oct 23 1969 I had morning watch, I was to do the port side ER monitoring for the full power trial. I did the first rounds and the CERA sent me up for a coffee at 0815 as the next rounds would be at 0830"

Six minutes later the gear box exploded, all hell broke loose, 9 lives were lost, and many more were effected in ways that are still showing even 44 years later.


CBC footage (no audio) from one of Bonaventure's helos. Shows the Bonnie running along side Kootenay.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Digital+Archives/War+and+Conflict/Defence/ID/1491981293/


Another website with some photos from the investigation.

http://www.hazegray.org/navhist/canada/postwar/restigou/kootenay-explosion/

 

[Edward Campbell]

I attended Staff College with (then) LCdr DB (Davey) Jones, MMM, CD who was the Marine Engineering Officer in Kootenay when the explosion occurred. He was decorated for his actions that day; he didn't tell us much about his own actions, except to say that he did what needed doing, but he did explain the whys and wherefores of the day - pretty horrifying.

 

[Edward Campbell]

HMCS Skeena (A/Lt.Cdr. Patrick Francis Xavier Russell, RCN) was lost in a storm on the night of 24 October 1944. She was anchored off Reykjavík, Iceland and dragged her anchor and grounded in 50-foot (15 m) waves off Viðey Island with the loss of 15 sailors.

Her hulk was written off and sold to Iceland interests in June 1945; she was then raised and broken up. Her propeller was salvaged and used in a memorial near the Viðey Island ferry terminal.

Skeena was built by John I. Thornycroft & Company at Woolston, Hampshire and commissioned into the RCN on 10 June 1931 at Portsmouth, England. Skeena and her sister HMCS Saguenay (D79) were the first ships specifically built for the RCN. She arrived in Halifax, on 3 July 1931.

____
On a personal note: my father served in Skeena in the 1930s ~ in fact he "crossed the line" in her during a deployment to the South Pacific and China Station in 1938 (in company with Fraser, Saguenay and St Laurent).

 

[Edward Campbell]

2RCR
Battle of the Outpost at Song Gok Spur
2-3 November 1952

http://www.kvacanada.com/stories_canadianboy.htm

CANADA BOY, YOU DIE TONIGHT!

By Captain Duncan McMillan

2 November 1952 was a warm and sunny day after a cold night previous on the Jamestown Line in Korea. As evening approached Lieutenant  Ed Mastronardi, the platoon commander of 2 Platoon, A Company, 2RCR,
had just finished a beer with his section commanders in the 28-man platoon outpost position on the Song-gok Spur in Korea.2  It was Mastronardi’s birthday. He told his section commanders that he had a feeling they were in for a hard night.  He was right. The following verbatim excerpts from citations for three decorations (Lt Mastronardi MC, Pte Bauer DCM and Pte. Johnson MM) awarded for valour that night tell the tale. The footnotes are additions.

  “…2 Platoon would gallantly conduct the defence of their outpost position some six hundred yards beyond the company forward defended localities for a period of eight  hours on the night 2/3 November 1951 whilst under a full-scale enemy battalion attack.  At 2040 hours, Lieutenant Mastronardi reported considerable movement on both his flanks.  At 2100 hours his platoon came under heavy fire from the flanks, the front and the rear.

Between 2115 hours and 0100 hours the enemy made two very determined assaults, wave after wave of Chinese storming the wire around the position.  Throughout the assaults, despite enemy shell, mortar and small arms fire, Lieutenant Mastronardi moved around his platoon encouraging his men to hold firm and at the same time securing information on the enemy’s disposition in order to call down defensive fire tasks.  Private Bauer was acting as a section commander of the forward section that first became engaged.  Private Bauer’s employment of his section and in particular his Bren gun was so skilful that the enemy were driven back time after time and forced to commit a great number of men.  His fire control was a magnificent display of leadership; on two occasions, the enemy succeeded in blowing up the wire in front of his position, and still the section held its fire until the enemy rushed into the gap in the wire.  After the second enemy attack Private Bauer’s Bren gun jammed and he immediately picked up a Sten gun and without thought for his own personal safety moved forward from his trench to a position where he could cover the gap in the defensive position.

During the enemy’s second intense attack, the Bren gun in No 6 Section, which was the forward section, became jammed.  Private Johnson was acting as Platoon Headquarters Bren gunner for 2 Platoon. He immediately asked the platoon commander for permission to go forward to that section with his own Bren gun.  Private Johnson took up his new position and used his Bren gun in a most skilful manner, completely routing the enemy of his sector.  In addition, Private Johnson took over the jammed Bren gun and in the darkness, during moments of lull in the fighting, completely stripped it, cleaned it with petrol, and put the weapon back into operation.  Both these assaults were repulsed by the gallantry, control and magnificent fire discipline displayed by Lieutenant Mastronardi and his platoon.

At 0200 hours the platoon again came under heavy enemy attack by an enemy force estimated at three hundred in number.  Heavy, accurate enemy artillery and mortar fire pounded the position.  Under cover of this fire the Chinese succeeded in blowing several holes in the defensive wire and poured wave after wave of men through the gaps.  Time after time the enemy were beaten back.  Pte Bauer personally moved about his section encouraging his men, controlling their fire, and serving as an inspiration to all.  He with his section kept at bay an enemy company and (he) is credited with personally killing five Chinese.  His actions are in keeping with the highest traditions of Gallantry and Selflessness. Three Chinese succeeded in getting within a few feet of Lieutenant Mastronardi.  He killed two of them with his pistol and, pistol empty, fired his Very pistol killing the third.  During the third and final attack, involving three enemy companies, Private Johnson twice was called upon to strip and clean other guns that had jammed.  He did so, again in the dark, enabling the platoon to inflict heavy casualties on the assaulting enemy.  The superb personal courage of Lieutenant Mastronardi, his absolute control over his platoon, forced the Chinese to deploy more and more men in assault after assault, until so many were committed that the limited fire power of a single platoon was insufficient to hold off all the enemy, attacking from front and rear.

By 0320 hours, the platoon had twice been completely overrun by the enemy, and ammunition was in short supply.3  The company commander ordered Lieutenant Mastronardi to withdraw to the main defences of the company.  The platoon had suffered fifty percent casualties and Lieutenant Mastronardi, with complete disregard for his own safety, in the midst of fierce attack, moved about his platoon area and organized them into three groups.  One group was the wounded, of which there were fifteen.4  Private Johnson although wounded in both arms and hands, assisted Private McDougall who had been wounded in the leg over the fire swept ground to the company defences.  With the additional burden progress was slow and the danger increased but never at any time did Private Johnson lose sight of what he took to be his responsibility.  He finally arrived into the battalion area through “D” company lines.  Without Johnson’s assistance, Private McDougall would have been unable to return. A second group was detailed to assist the wounded back to safety and to give them protection enroute.5  The third group, which Lieutenant Mastronardi commanded acted as rear guard and covered the withdrawal, fighting their way back step by step.6

Lieutenant Mastronardi’s superb courage and outstanding leadership enabled him to return to the company with only one more casualty, despite the fact he had to fight for the entire route back.  He brought out all of his casualties except one man who had been killed.7  He personally fought the rearguard action and he was the last of his platoon to return.  His platoon returned with all weapons intact.  On arriving in the main company position, he quickly reorganized and checked the roll.  He reformed his platoon and placed it in a fighting position.

After the withdrawal, the Chinese did not press their attack against the company position, probably due to the severe losses they had suffered.  Throughout the remainder of the night the remainder of the Chinese force could be heard carrying away their dead and wounded.  Had the attack against 2 Platoon been a quick success, it is evident, that, with the large force they had at their disposal, the enemy would undoubtedly have assaulted the main defences of the battalion.  The platoons success in holding them off for a period of eight hours prevented such action, and very probably called a halt to an attack that might have engaged the brigade and the division.

At 0630 hours Lieutenant Mastronardi and the remaining men under his command returned to the outpost position without opposition.8  21 dead enemy were found and five wounded prisoners were taken.9  From interrogation of prisoners it was learned that 2 Platoon had engaged over a period of nearly eight hours, a full-scale enemy battalion attack.  It is impossible to estimate closely the injuries inflicted on the enemy, but it was out of all proportion to casualties suffered by the platoon.  Lieutenant Mastronardi’s personal courage during this eight-hour engagement was of the highest order and his personal leadership and example very greatly contributed to the excellent showing made by his platoon.  The men under his command were extremely confident of his leadership and they followed his every order with enthusiasm and pride.  To the last man they have the highest words of praise for his courage, his leadership and his skill…

Captain Ed Mastronardi has gone on record as stating that if he takes pride in anything it is in the fact that they brought out all of their wounded. 2 Platoon that night made the Third Rule of Conduct that applies to all Royal Canadians under all conditions of service in the Regimental Catechism a reality. No wounded member of the Regiment will ever be left on the battlefield!

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    1 Telephone conversation with Ed Mastronardi – Ed recalled that the Chinese calling through the darkness in English in an effort to unnerve the defenders.  It did not work.
    2 After conversation with Ed Mastronardi I would judge that his position was on the spur that was occupied by B Company of 3RCR in 1953 and by other units in between.  The defences dug by 2RCR were dug into virgin earth...
        the defences occupied by 3RCR had been built up over a year and a half only to be half destroyed by constant shelling.
    3 Mastronardi stated in an interview later that they had thrown “Toc San” (Japanese for a lot) of grenades – some 350 of them
    4 Under the Platoon Stretcher Bearer, Pte J.D.Sharp of Toronto Ontario
    5 5 men led by Cpl Jack Sargent MM (awarded for his actions at the Battle of Chail-li earlier that year) of Owen Sound Ontario . Cpl Sargeant was the senior Section Commander and de facto Platoon 2ic as that position was vacant at the time of the attack.
    6 3 men including the Platoon Signaller, Pte R.D. Kilpatrick of St John NB and Pte. C.W. Baker of Lunenburg NS
    7 Pte J.J. Campeau MM (Pte Campeau’s MM had been awarded to him in WW II – he was not with The RCR during WW II).
    8 See “Welcome” a story by Art Johnson posted on the KVA website – he states that Lt. Miller’s platoon from A Company was sent to re-occupy the outpost position the morning of 3 Nov 51 .  Art is correct.  This is confirmed in
        the Battalion War Diary.  Lt Mastronardi and those of his men fit for combat accompanied Lt Miller and his men.  Art also comments on the artillery supporting fire that night.  Bill Boss stated in a newspaper article that 2RCHA fired
        over 3,700 rounds of 25 pounder that night in support.
    9 Bn War Diary - 35 enemy bodies had been found by 5 Nov 53 .

Capt McMillan is the Regimental Adjutant of The Royal Canadian Regiment at the Regimental Home Station of London, Ontario . He was commissioned in 1978 and was first posted to 2RCR in CFB Gagetown , NB.  Because part of the Regimental Adjutant’s role is to act as a point of contact between serving and retired members of the Regiment, he came in contact with many veterans of the Regiment who served in the Korean War.  The decision of Captain Ed Mastronardi MC, CD to donate his medals to the Regimental Museum caused McMillan to look into the details of what happened during what Colonel G.R. Stevens called “perhaps 2nd Battalion’s finest hour” in Volume II of the Regimental History of The RCR. Reading these citations left him speechless.  Regimental histories tend to be a bit dry without too much emotion and intensity. The citations seemed to tell the tale better.  Fortunately the Regimental Adjutant is also the Editor of the Regimental Newsletter PRO PATRIA and this story resulted.  This is a revised version of the PRO PATRIA story.

And see this, too.