Roy Rushton
Roy Rushton: Greetings from a Grand Veteran who is Reading for His Hundredth Birthday
Grand Canadian Korean War Veteran, Age 99, send his greetings to fellow veterans all over the world on Canada’s 150th Birthday Roy Rushton, who turned 99 years old in January, is recovering from a serious illness in the veterans wing at Sutherland Harris Memorial Hospital in Pictou, Nova Scotia.
Roy is a veteran of both World War Two and the Korean War. His experience in action in France, Belgium and Holland during World War Two was of inestimable value to the officers and soldiers in D Company, 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry when it went into action in Korea in February, 1951.
Roy has done remarkably well through the years in maintaining a youthful outlook and staying active, but two years ago he suffered a dizzy spell. He fell and fractured his lower spine. He got back to his feet after lengthy treatment, but last winter incurred a serious illness that nearly took him down. These things and his years slow him considerably, but he has sent greetings via his son Robert and family, expressing that he remembers comrades he served with in Korea and would like to send a message of good cheer to all who served in the allied forces during the Korean War:
I have always been proud to have served to free South Korea from the invading armies. I hope all of my comrades from Canada and all the other nations feel the same way. The country and the people were worth fighting for. I went back there many years ago and it is amazing. Seoul was like Toronto, only bigger. The people were free and friendly. Today my country is 150 years old and I have lived through most of those years. I am proud to have served Canada in two wars and I am thankful for our freedom and the freedom we were able to help bring to the people of South Korea and the countries in Europe.
I hope all of my comrades have had as good a life as I have enjoyed. I hope the same for the people of South Korea. It takes a long time for Roy to express his thoughts, as one might expect. His has been a most adventurous life, to be sure, but after both of the wars that he fought in he returned gratefully to his own surrounds in the place of his birth in the county of Pictou, Nova Scotia on the East Coast of Canada.
Time has wearied Roy Rushton, but the years have not condemned. Here his loving family gathers with him on Father’s Day, 2017. Beside Roy is his wife of 65 years, Margaret Ruston, while his sons form Roy’s ever present guard of honor. From left are Robert Rushton, Brady Rushton, Barry Rushton and Roy Rushton, Jr.
After he returned from fighting in Europe during the Second World War, Roy operated a convenience store in the small town of Salt Springs, Nova Scotia. The family lived on a small spread in the country. In August, 1950, the Canadian Government advertised for volunteers for a Special Force infantry brigade to fight in Korea. Roy had been listening to news about the war in South Korea. He gave the keys to the store to his mother and rushed to sign up.
Roy was a veteran parachutist and elected to join the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. He entered the Special Force as a corporal, based upon his World War Two service and infantry skills and knowledge.
As background it is important to know something about Roy’s World War Two service. He enlisted at age 21 in 1939 and served in an infantry unit. In 1942 Canada sought volunteers to take airborne training for the First Canadian Parachute Battalion, which later became part of the 3rd Parachute Brigade of the British 6th Airborne Division.
The Canadian battalion was first to jump behind enemy lines on June 5, 1944, several hours ahead of the Normandy landings on D- Day.
Roy was carried to the drop zone aboard a British Albemarle aircraft. The drop was made through a bottom hatch, not a side door departure as on other aircraft.
The night air was being smashed about by flak and enemy planes had attacked the armada and got the planes off course. The troops dropped in many locations and their formations were scattered.
Roy was wounded and the Protestant chaplain for the battalion was killed when his parachute failed to open. The enemy counterattacked the units and the paratroopers had no heavy support weapons.
Over the next two months the Canadian battalion would lose well over 300 soldiers, roughly half of the number who had dropped into France.
They were returned to England to regroup and get reinforced. Replacements were very hard to come by as the soldiers had to be qualified parachutists.
On Christmas Day they were deployed to the Ardennes forest area of Belgium to help stem the enemy offensive in the Battle of the Bulge. They were the only Canadian soldiers to serve in the Battle of the Bulge.
Later they would drop again in March, 1945, this time into Holland to join in the Rhine offensive. Roy soon was wounded in the thigh and he carried the shrapnel with him even when he sailed for Korea in November, 1950.
Roy Rushton, with his Enfield sniper’s rifle in Holland, in 1945.
In 2015 Roy received France’s Legion of Honor for his role in the earlier 1944 Normandy campaign action. The award was made to surviving veterans of the June 5 D-Day landings, and of course, those who jumped behind enemy lines as a prelude to the landings.
Roy was welcomed back into the Canadian Army in August, 1950, along with many other World War Two veterans from Nova Scotia, and received the rank of corporal, putting him in command of an infantry section.
He put young recruits through their training in Canada, and after they landed in Korea three months later, he trained them some more behind the lines in Mariang, near Pusan. They all gained tremendous benefit from Roy’s knowledge and instincts from serving under fire on three separate fronts during his previous service.
Above photograph shows one soldier from each of Canada’s 10 Provinces serving in the 2nd Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry a day after they arrived for advanced training at Fort Lewis, Washington in September, 1950, prior to departing for Korea in November. Corporal Roy Rushton is fourth soldier from right with parachutist wings on his chest. The 10 soldiers are (left) Johny Sandulescu (Manitoba); Alfred Zurnevra, Ontario; David Benoit, British Columbia: Jack McKee, Manitoba; Charles Young, Prince Edward Island; Edward MacKie, Newfoundland; Roy Rushton, Nova Scotia; Kenneth Umpherville, Alberta; Fred Ruddick, New Brunswick, and Rudy Howitt, Quebec.
The Patricias Battalion had been sent to Korea in November, 1950, while other units of the 25th Canadian Infantry Brigade Special Force remained in Canada until May, 1951.
Assigned to 10 Platoon in D Company, Roy participated in a leadership role in the Patricia’s second attack against an enemy position. It was one in which the Patricias learned to throw away the training manuals and use the knowledge and improvised tactics of veterans like Roy Rushton.
Manuals on strategy held that an attacking unit should hit the enemy two-on-one. But in February, 1951 Roy Rushton’s company learned that having numeral advantage would require attacking with the full battalion against a small, isolated position, which of course, was untenable.
The enemy always outnumbered the available troops, Rushton and his veteran comrades attest. The Patricias were hitting a heavily defended hill with only two platoons of little more than 50 men in total.
Prior to the attack, Roy and his platoon commander, Lieutenant Al Wagstaff had agreed that if Wagstaff went down Roy should take command of the entire platoon.
That happened. Wagner got a near fatal bullet wound in the knee that tore open an artery. Except for the quick action of the medical aide man, Private Donald Copley (who after the war became a medical doctor) he would have perished.
Roy rallied both of the platoons and continued in the attack full force forward, without reserves. He recalls that to reach the enemy’s main position it was first necessary to take a lower hill then cross on a humping razorback to the objective. They were strafed with machinegun fire and bombarded with mortar bombs throughout.
Rushton received an order to withdraw his soldiers while they were still hot in battle and short of the objective. It was obvious that two- thirds of an infantry company could not roust the enemy. His skill at breaking with the enemy while under fire brought the two platoons out with minimal casualties.
Lieutenant Al Wagstaff did survive his serious knee wound on Hill 419, despite medical aide Don Copley being worried that he was too far gone from massive loss of blood and would die with the tourniquet in place. He is shown here aboard an air ambulance, being evacuated to Japan. Crippled from his wound he was later on hand in Vancouver to greet the Battalion when it returned to Canada. More than 20 years later, Sergeant Roy Rushton will meet with him at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa. Rushton will return the map case and papers he removed from him when he took over command of Number 10 Platoon. The field message book had a bullet hole in it. Another reunion in Ottawa will come when Dr. Donald Copley notices Wagstaff’s name in a telephone directory. Wagstaff lives nearby. Copley asks somebody if Wagstaff has a limp, is told that he has and looks him up. After the Korean War Copley had taken studies to prepare himself for medical school. He had graduated as a medical doctor, and was practicing aviation medicine at nearby Rockcliffe RCAF base. He visited his neighbor, Al Wagstaff in Ottawa as Dr. Donald Copley.
Private Donald Copley was awarded a Mentioned in Dispatches for brave conduct. He is shown as an infantry private serving in 10 Platoon. He carried an Enfield rifle into battle, but a pack of medical supplies as well. He dug in like all other soldiers. He had told the recruiters and his fellow soldiers that while he wanted to serve in Korea he had no desire to kill anyone, and wished to go there to help save lives at the front. When he returned to Canada he will brushed up on high school science subjects, attended college, then medical school. He practiced medicine for many years.
A few weeks later, when D Company, reinforced by other soldiers drawn from other companies and with medium machinegun teams attacking with them, attacked the massive Hill 532 position, it was Roy who made the decisive withdrawal decision for the entire company.
At the time Roy was an acting sergeant. Lieutenant Mike Levy had been flown over from Canada to replace Wagner. The attack began with a one-hour march through the snow to the start line, then three hours of climbing to get within firing range of the enemy. The battle then went on for three hours.
The Patricias kept pressing upward under machinegun fire and storms of grenades. They ran out of bullets and grenades several times, but doggedly kept the offensive active. Rushton’s platoon commander, Mike Levy, had been stunned by a bullet that struck his weapon and knocked him down the slope where he sustained a concussion.
Finally, a couple of hundred yards from the summit Rushton advised his company commander, Captain John Turnbull to put the men to ground. The soldiers were beat, many were without bullets, and the enemy still outnumbered them and were entrenched above them. The company runner (messenger) gathered three or four soldiers and of his own volition charged forward past Rushton’s platoon. Roy recalls that he advanced only a few yards to a bunker. The soldier next to the runner was shot dead and the runner was badly wounded. Roy ascertained that if the 20 soldiers left in his platoon made a final charge he would lose half of them, and the enemy would still be in force above them.
Besides, night was coming fast and even if they somehow made the summit, for certain they would be counterattacked in the darkness by larger forces and they would not have enough viable troops to hold out. The lessons of fighting in Korea were slowly being learned. The enemy had many times the number of troops on most positions, and were agile and used to the rugged hills that taxed the strength of soldiers from the western nations.
Roy’s company withdrew under fire as the light faded. His 10 Platoon was last to break contact with the enemy, while it has been first in the attack sequence. B Company of the Patricia’s moved to the base of the position, ready to attack again at first light.
In the morning B Company advanced with only light opposition, because the enemy main force had withdrawn by darkness. They captured two prisoners and counted 40 dead enemy soldiers.
Every hill in Korea has a natural track worn through foliage where wandering farmers and others have trekked from tiny village (dong) to tiny village. Even this extremely high ground in that rugged, snow covered part of the country had one. It was scarlet with blood for more than two hundred yards, almost to the summit.
Rough and ready guys, and then some! Roy Rushton was promoted to platoon sergeant after the battle on Hill 532 in March, 1951. He is shown here in the area of the Fish Hills later, where the 27th Commonwealth Brigade captured three additional enemy hills. Rushton, second from left with binoculars around his neck, and his men are skylarking in a trench taken away from the enemy. They are (left) Pte Kludash (Saskatchewan), Sgt Rushton (Nova Scotia), Cpl Andrews, section leader (Thunderbay, Ontario) and Pte Robertson (Ontario). It may well be that Roy today is the sole survivor of the four. The only known member of his 10 Platoon still surviving is Bernard Cote, of Windsor, Ontario.
In July he led his platoon in assault boats across the swollen Imjin River and rescued starving Korean civilians who had been ravaged by the floods.
His platoon set up a defensive zone on the enemy side of the Imjin while engineers built a Baily bridge across the surging waters. In a few days, when the bridge was completed, he advanced his men and drove off all enemy troops in the area, making possible the rescue of the civilians who had been under control of the enemy force.
Later, in another fire fight, Roy failed to hear one of his sections firing. Only then did it become known to his platoon officer and company commander that he had been leading his soldiers and fighting the battles in Korea with nearly deaf ears. He had lost much of his hearing in the World War Two campaigns. The continuous close-in fire in the attacks in Korea had claimed even more of it.
He continued to serve with the battalion until it returned to Canada in November, usually in a training capacity.
It took an uncanny old veteran soldier to somehow tote a guitar to Korea along with his personal gear, all packed fastidiously in sea bag, great pack, small pack, and ammunition chest pouches. The soldiers wore their gear, lugged their sea bags and carried their Enfield rifles or other personal weapons as they boarded ship under watchful eye of Lt. Col. James Riley Stone, their commanding officer and a stickler for efficiency and effectiveness. Roy serenaded the troops aboard the ship, USS Pte. Joe Martinez, on their way to Korea in November, 1950, and between battles when it was feasible after they had landed. He was a featured performer in an onboard concert before their arrival, first in Yokohama, where they stretched their legs and marched in the city of their former World War Two enemy, then in Pusan where an American band greeted them with the then popular song, “If I knew you were coming I’da baked a cake.” The band played it repeatedly for troops from all countries who arrived in Korea. In Yokohama, though, the ship had been greeted by an American Army band that played the stirring air of Canada’s national anthem. Immediately, all of the boisterous, whooping Special Force soldiers came to silence and attention, and stood proudly, with the realization that some of them would never return from Korea.
Program from concert about the Pte. Joe Martinez. Roy Rushner and his guitar is listed as part of a duet, with Al Millar from Owen Sound, Ontario, in Act 10. The program was signed by some of the performers, including some from the United States, who promised to look each other up after the war. It never happened. Some fell and stayed forever in South Korea.
Roy returned to Korea a single time after the war. He was an honored guest with a Veterans Affairs Canada Pilgrimage in July, 2003, to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Korean War Armistice. He was delighted to walk into the blue conference building at Panmunjom where North Korean delegates and members of the United Nations Command were supposed to hold their meetings (they had stopped doing it).
Roy quickly strode to the end of the long building that is located on North Korean side of Panmunjom. Fierce faced North Korean guards swarmed the windows, glaring at him. And they had much to see in that soldier. He was 85, stood erect as an oak, and was wearing a clanking array of medals under the white parachutist wings on his chest.
The medals included the Commonwealth Korean War Medal, the United Nations Service Medal for Korea, the 1939-1945 Star, the France-Germany Star, the Defence of Britain Medal, the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal and the World War Two Victory Medal.
Roy Rushton, then age 85, speaks to comrade veterans at the Canadian Forces Monument outside of Kapyong (Gapyeong) Korea, in July, 2003. The Monument is located on the site of the former medial aid post that existed during the Kapyong Battle in April, 1951. Now Roy Rushton’s medals include France’s Legion of Honor, which was awarded by the President of France and was approved and registered with the Canadian Chancellery of Honours.
[Roy Rushton, 95, of Westville, with his wife Margaret and chihuahua Rocky outside their Pictou County home. (AARON BESWICK / Truro Bureau)]
Roy Rushton at age 95 in 2014, with his wife Margaret, whom he met at a dance in Pictou in 1952, following his return from the Korean War. Margaret at the time the photograph was taken was 82 and now she is 86. Roy is wearing the blazer and necktie of the Canadian Airborne Battalion. He had been awarded France’s Legion of Honour, but would not receive it until 2015 because he was not permitted to travel more than one mile from his home because of a recent stroke. The dog’s name is “Rocky.” When Roy was asked by a local reporter what the secret was to his longevity, he replied, “Drinking good beer,” which he always did in moderation.
Roy enjoys the company of his second oldest son, Robert, who sits at his father’s side in the hospital for two hours every evening. Robert also followed in Roy’s footsteps and joined the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in 1981. He served a tour of duty in Bosnia, where he was injured, and eventually was medically released from the Canadian Army, following his return to Canada.
Roy Rushton won’t be returning to Korea again, except in his memories, for he thinks about Korea and its challenges and the brave soldiers he served with quite often.
His leadership and gentleman’s example and penchant for fair play not only inspired the men he served with while they were in action at the front, it put something in their characters that was very valuable in civilian life as well. Many were the better for knowing him, and through generations, the example and the lessons of good character have been passed along to their descendants.
And today, on the eve of his Canada’s 150th birthday, the gentleman from Pictou County, Nova Scotia thoughtfully sends his best wishes to all Korean War Veterans, in Canada and all of the other nations, including the Republic of Korea.
Let us all hope that we will have a similar message from Roy in five more months when he attains his hundredth birthday on January 3rd, 2018.
Roy is now resident in the veterans unit at the Sutherland Harris Memorial Hospital, 222 Haliburton Road, Pictou, Nova Scotia.
Those wishing to acknowledge his greeting may also send it by e-Mail to his son Robert at robrushton@bellaliant.net
Roy’s motto while in Korea was, “D Company forward, Number Ten platoon leading!” He is still out in front.