Saturday, July 27, marked the 60th anniversary of the signing of the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War (1950-53). With Remembrance Day less than a week away, Herman Barkemeyer reflects on a war that claimed more than 1.2 million lives in battle and left about 2.5 million civilians dead or injured. Barkemeyer is the only known surviving Korean War veteran in the area.
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When darkness fell, Herman Barkemeyer knew the Chinese would attack. They often came in massed hordes, a ferocious enemy scaling the hillside under a sky lit up repeatedly by flares.
They advertised their approach, blowing bugles to strike dread in the dug-in Canadian forces or those soldiers out on night patrol.
It was a psychological tactic that worked. What Korean War veteran can ever banish from his head that shrill sound?
Not Barkemeyer, then a 17-year-old from Barrhead who had lied about his age to join South Korea’s fight against its Chinese-backed northern neighbour.
He recalls vividly the Chinese Communist Forces, who swarmed over terrain rendered treeless by the dropping of napalm bombs and other toxic agents.
They seemed much better equipped for fighting in temperatures that plummeted to -35 degrees or lower.
It was so cold that soldiers could not crack shells of frozen eggs with rifle butts, nor could they eat without removing icicles from their moustaches. They tried to keep warm by wearing pajamas under their uniforms.
The Chinese appeared at home in such an environment. They wore padded clothes to beat out the howling winds, brandished automatic weaponry and were tenacious.
“They would come across a valley, just six miles away,” Barkemeyer says. “They would toot their horns and attack us in the hills.
“They really wanted to engage the Americans. They always used to say ‘Canadians lay down, we want the Americans.’ They hated the Americans because Americans were the first ones to go to war against North Korea. There were some bad fights, and I was involved in a couple of them.”
The Chinese would throw grenades and fire their burp guns.
“There were thousands of Chinese,” says Barkemeyer. “Without dropping an atomic bomb, nobody is going to beat the Chinese – there are just too many of them.”
Nevertheless, the allied forces supporting South Korea held firm in those grim months in 1951, giving as good as they got, protecting the fleeing civilian population.
For Barkemeyer, the real terror came when he left the trenches to go on night patrol. That was when soldiers tested the position of opposition defences, ran the gauntlet of minefields, tried to capture prisoners and harass the enemy.
Artillery and mortar duels were a regular feature of front line life, resulting in many casualties.
“Anyone who says they weren’t scared must have been nuts,” says Barkemeyer,
Now 80, Barkemeyer finds it emotionally taxing to remember the 18 months he spent in Korea with a Canadian special force. Sixty years may have passed since the guns went silent, but the memories and sensations are still fresh and tender.
Barkemeyer was born on April 6, 1933, in Innisfail, Alberta, just 20 minutes before his twin brother, Johnny.
While Johnny decided to join the airforce after school, Herman chose the army for two compelling reasons.
“I was only 17 and I heard that if you spend 20 years in the armed forces you get a pension,” says Barkemeyer. “That meant I would have a pension at 37. I suppose I also saw it as an adventure. It turned into one hell of an adventure.
“You could say I grew up in the army. I arrived in Korea as a boy and returned as a man.”
Barkemeyer went to Edmonton in 1950 to enroll as a volunteer. He joined the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, which was part of the Canadian special force.
“You had to be 18, but I lied about my age and they didn’t ask too many questions,” he says. “I told them I wanted to go in the infantry. A lot of Second World War veterans also signed up. Many of them didn’t know what to do with their lives and had had a hard time adjusting to civilian life.”
Barkemeyer was sent to Calgary for five or six whirlwind months of training. He learned how to conduct himself as a soldier, from dressing correctly to deportment. There was also weapons instruction, although Barkemeyer was already familiar with guns, he and his brother being keen hunters.
In early 1951, Barkemeyer went with his Canadian unit to Korea as part of a United Nations coalition dominated by the US. Some of the other countries involved were Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, France, Greece, Netherlands and Turkey.
“We travelled in a rickety old boat,” he says. “It took nine days for us to go from Seattle to Yokohama in Japan. There were many American soldiers on the boat and they thought we were all nuts to be volunteering to fight.”
Barkemeyer spent about two weeks in Yokohama. In that time he visited Hiroshima, devastated by an atomic bomb six years earlier at the conclusion of the Second World War.
“There was nothing there,” he recalls. “It was very flat. I don’t know where the people were.”
From Yokohama, Barkemeyer was flown to Seoul to replace troops in the front lines, positioned in the hills.
When he arrived the war was already reaching an impasse. The North Koreans had chased the South Koreans through Seoul, before being driven back by the Americans, South Koreans and UN forces.
What unfolded for Barkemeyer was an experience not dissimilar to First World War trench warfare.
Soldiers on the front lines stayed 30 or 40 days, before being sent away to rest.
“We lived in bunkers underground and shared those bunkers with rats,” says Barkemeyer. “We wore balaclavas when we slept so the rats wouldn’t bite us.
“Rats were in the walls of the bunkers. We would shoot them and when they fell into the bunker we would throw them out. If they went back into the bunker, you moved out.
“There were two of us to a bunker. We made beds out of iron and telephone wire.
“We didn’t take our clothes off when we slept, just removed our shoes. We changed our socks, but never stripped to have a bath, although we managed to shave every day.
“We would use the hot water we boiled noodles in to shave.”
Food was obtained from a mess tent. As a front line soldier, Barkemeyer was on rations.
He would carry his food up to the trenches, but by the time he could eat it was cold.
“I remember you would always put the instant potatoes first into your mess tin, then a hamburger, vegetables, and finally fruit cocktails. You kept your other mess tin for coffee.
“I was hungry all the time, but my parents and sisters would send me parcels containing food from home. I would get soups, sardines and chicken. I would also be sent books.”
Occasionally soldiers would receive military provisions such as cigarettes, shaving cream, Hershey’s chocolate bars and tobacco for chewing. Barkemeyer – part of an 11-man section – remembers all too well the stench of the terrain.
“The Koreans always used human waste for fertilizer and you could smell it everywhere,” he says.
“You found yourself laying it when you are out on patrol.
“When we first went to the front lines there was much more action. Then there were peace talks, which went on for two years while the killing continued.”
Although most fighting took place at night, daytime was far from safe.
“At noon we would be eating under the beautiful sun and they would shell us,” says Barkemeyer.
Barkemeyer’s NCO was Sid Carignan, a Second World War veteran from Saskatchewan.
“We were lucky to have these Second World War Veterans,” he says. “Most of them were excellent and I don’t know what we would have done without them. It was like having a big brother looking after you.”
Being on the front line, Barkemeyer earned an extra 50 cents a day in danger money, bringing his pay up to $85 a month – not a bad sum in those days.
“I sent $60 a month home to my parents and they saved it for me. It took about two months to blow it on booze when I got home because I was so shook up by everything.”
Returning to Canada in 1953, with the war ending in stalemate, Barkemeyer confronted myriad psychological hurdles, compounded by a reluctance of people to acknowledge the Korean War. Even Legion members were initially dismissive, saying “it wasn’t really a war.”
“Just imagine,” says Barkemeyer. “You live with the same guys for 18 months. Then you come home and they are not there.
“Every little thing bothers you, every little noise upsets you, you find you are sharp-tempered as little things get to you.
“Since Korea I haven’t slept well, suffering occasional nightmares. I get four hours of good sleep, and that’s that. Many veterans tell me they have trouble sleeping. Fortunately I have a very understanding wife and we have been happily married for 58 years.”
The war’s legacy was more than psychological. It later emerged that many Korean vets were dying in their 40s and 50s from various forms of cancer. Prostate cancer was particularly prevalent.
Such was the official refusal to recognize the Korean War – for decades it was referred to as a conflict – that it took a huge struggle for Korean War veterans to receive disability benefits.
By comparison to other vets, Barkemeyer got off lightly: he only suffered from pneumonia and malaria while on front line duty.
“I had malaria for seven years,” he says.
In 1990 Barkemeyer was encouraged by a friend to exorcise the ghosts of his past by revisiting Korea. Taking advantage of the South Korean government’s custom of welcoming vets and accommodating them and their spouses in a first-class hotel for 10 days, Barkemeyer returned to hell ... and found a country transformed beyond recognition. Now there were trees everywhere and glorious buildings suggesting a thriving economy.
There were images to replace those of trench warfare, night patrols, and dead and starving Korean women and children. Now he only saw laughing children, wanting to embrace Canadians and other vets.
“I’m so glad I went,” he says. “It is a beautiful place and they have done so well. They are always so thankful for what we did.”
Barkemeyer is believed to be the only surviving Korean War vet in the Barrhead area.
To those who still wish to trivialize the war, Barkemeyer has little to say.
“They weren’t there. Only those who have been in a war know what it is about.”
“The Korean War has always been the forgotten war,” he adds. “You never hear anything about it. I think people were so tired of the Second World War, that when another war followed so quickly people said ‘we are tired of war, why are we having another one?’ They try to push it back, to forget about it. But I have never forgotten it. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of it. For every war veteran it is the same. Something of the war stays with you forever.”
He even remembers his regimental number: SL104219. He also remembers Sid Carignan’s regimental number: SM18086.
Haunted by his memories, Barkemeyer has a solution for ending war.
“If there is danger of a war, we should send all the county councils, all the mayors, all the MPs, all the MLAs, all the kings and queens, all the generals, to the front … and there wouldn’t be a war.”
