Don Sudden
The following is from Intergenerational Integrities 2021 Anthology. Intergenerational Integrities involves 18 like-minded, passionate secondary students of British Columbia and Alberta who share a common love for writing, history and learning. Their purpose is to connect youth and seniors, especially during the Covid-19 global pandemic, where many have been physically and socially isolated. For this initiative, each student has been paired with a veteran of the Korean War.
Don joined the military on June 7, 1951 and served with the Royal Canadian Artillery, 216 Battery at Petawawa to train for Korea. Don went to Korea in January 1953 and fought in hand-to-hand combat in The Battle of Hill 187 as a front-line gunner in the artillery, alongside the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment. He was on Forward Line Crew until the Armistice in July 1953; then was assigned Peacekeeping duties on the white front, now the DMZ. He left Korea in March 1954 and returned to Canada. From 1965 to 1966 he was in Vietnam as part of International Control Commission, and from 1966-67 in Cyprus as part of a peacekeeping mission. In 1972 he retired from the Canadian Armed Forces. He is a member of Royal Canadian Legion, Preston, #126, KVA of Canada, Unit 13, Cambridge, currently serving as Secretary and Editor of Honeybucket (newsletter), and was a past President for 2 yrs. He is also the President of KVA Heritage Unit.
Olivia Wong is a grade 12 student at Dr. Charles Best Secondary School in Coquitlam, B.C. She wanted to participate in the Intergenerational Integrities project because of her interests in history, writing and conversation. She feels that stories from the Korean War are too important to be forgotten, so she wanted to be involved in a project that could help pass them on. In her free time, she enjoys playing the piano, swimming and playing soccer.
Don Sudden: A Humble Hero
By Olivia Wong
Don Sudden says that in war, there is a fine line between being a hero and a wingnut. However, if one ever received the chance to speak to Don about his life in service, it would quickly become obvious that he was a humble hero of the Korean War.
Don’s home base of Petawawa, Ontario was where he received his first opportunity to fight in a war. Anyone wanting to go to a place called Korea was ordered to take a step forward, and with his desire for excitement and adventure, Don advanced. He had no clue as to the whereabouts of Korea, and as a response to his fellow enlistees’ shared confusion, his sergeant major simply replied by asking, “do I look like a geography teacher? They’ll take us across the pond to a place called Japan, then Korea!” Never looking back, Don received his needles and a red combat patch on his arm; then was shipped to Korea.
Don would like to clarify that the military was strictly voluntary. Often, one cannot fathom that 27,000 Canadians were crazy enough to fight in a place they had never heard of. He explains that Syngman Rhee, the first president of South Korea, figured soldiers would have to be “a little dingy in the head” to make such a decision, but Don believes that trait helped him fight the war. Despite how dingy the soldiers might have been, Don’s experience as a part of the forward line crew confirms that he was truly a hero.
During the war, communication between branches took place in the form of long telephone lines running “on the ground, in trenches and over the hills.” When the bombs and mortars came in and shrapnel cut through the lines, he found the broken ones and hooked them back together. Suddenly, when the enemy advanced too close, he was forced to put his work aside, fight for his life, and then promptly return to the line crew. However, Don downplays how horrific and gruesome the job really was; instead, he prefers to compare it to a game. The shelling, bombs and mortars are “what the game’s all about.”
Don played his most significant “game” on May 2nd, 1953, the Battle of Hill 187. Four hundred Canadian soldiers were positioned in front of a line of Americans who were to fire twenty-seven miles into the enemy area before they could advance. An additional three machine guns were placed on all sides to fire at the enemy, in a crisscrossed, scissor type motion. However, the Chinese fought in continuous waves of three hundred soldiers, and Don recalls that the Chinese had so many men at a time that “every time you knock one out, another guy takes his place.” Despite the fact that both sides were running out of ammunition, the Chinese kept coming, so they both resorted to hand-to-hand combat. Ultimately, it came down to the use of bayonets and pure physical ability. At 5’o clock in the morning, even though the Canadians were outnumbered four to one and outrun, the whistles blew, signifying that the Chinese were on the verge of retreating. The machine guns stopped firing, because they began picking up the dead and throwing them down the hill to be picked up at the bottom. With a laugh, Don affirms that the gory act is simply “all part of the game.”
The battle was declared a Canadian victory and with pride, Don quotes Syngman Rhee, who stated that “Canada was the only country in the world that never lost ground in all the battles they had.” When the war ended, Don stayed on Hill 187. According to him, the last shots of the war were fired by both sides to symbolize that “they fired their guns, we fired ours,” and the guns on both sides were now empty.
Months later, Don returned from Korea to Petawawa, to learn that Korea was slowly rebuilding itself. At the end of the war, the Korean people put down their rifles and built a country. Therefore, Don throws away any notion that he played any part in Korea’s success. He affirms that truly, “the real heroes are the Korean people.” On a return visit with other veterans in 1987, Don noted the regrowth of the forests with pride. When leaving Korea in 1953, the hills had been stripped of their forests, but when he returned, trees from Canada, Norway, Sweden and other Commonwealth countries were scattered all over the hills.
Don’s humility shines through when describing the heroic acts of the Korean people, by explaining, “you can’t beat that, you can’t say any better. They’re the heroes as far as I’m concerned.” However, Don remarks that not all traces of the war were eradicated, as during his second visit in 2017, it was amusing to see “a nice green tree up there, then you see a gun barrel, pointing out loud and clear.”
At eighty-seven years old, Don reflects on his twenty-one years in service. He explains that he has not been affected by his negative experiences in combat due to group therapy but reveals that some of his friends had trouble coping. They were ashamed to admit their mental health issues, but again, Don confirms that sometimes in war, “it helps if you’re a little cuckoo in the head.” Reminiscing over everything he has experienced for the past eighty-seven years, Don explains, “I had a good life, to me I did. Lot of people think I’m a little dingy; I said that’s ok. It helps.”
It does not happen often that a self-confessed wingnut steps up to become a hero for his country.