Two Men, One Hill

This morning I stood at the cenotaph in Nanaimo and listened to people sing O Canada, The Star Spangled Banner and God Save the King together, out loud. In a year of conflict and strain around the world, it was a small moment that said a great deal.

It also took me back to two men.

On June 6, 1944, my old friend Alex Sim came ashore at Courseulles-sur-Mer, on Juno Beach, in the first assault wave of the Regina Rifles. He was 18. He had lied about his age to get into uniform, and he would turn 19 two weeks after the landing.

Four months earlier, near Littoria in Italy, Sergeant Tommy Prince of the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation had run a communication line out to an abandoned farmhouse to watch German positions. When shelling cut the line, he went out to repair it while posing as a farmer.

Seven years later, both men would stand on the same hill in Korea.

This year marks 75 years since that hill, Hill 677 at Kapyong, and 100 years of the Royal Canadian Legion. And in October, four young soldiers, aged 19 to 26, were killed in a fire during a training exercise at CFB Wainwright, a base where a drill hall bears Tommy Prince’s name. I can’t think of a better time to tell their story.

The beach and the farmhouse

Alex was born in Calgary in 1925 and joined the cadets at 12. He enlisted in December 1942, at 17, was sent to England the following year, and transferred to the Regina Rifles, part of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, in December 1943. After D-Day he fought on through North West Europe as a Bren gunner until the war ended.

Tommy was a residential school survivor. The army turned him down several times before accepting him in June 1940 as a sapper with the Royal Canadian Engineers. He went on to the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion and the First Special Service Force, the Canadian-American “Devil’s Brigade.” The work at the farmhouse helped destroy four German positions and earned him the Military Medal. That September in southern France, he walked 70 kilometres across mountain terrain, without food or water for 72 hours, to report an enemy position. His work led to the capture of more than 1,000 German soldiers and earned him the U.S. Silver Star. Of the 59 Canadians awarded the Silver Star in the Second World War, only three also held the Military Medal. King George VI presented him with the Military Medal at Buckingham Palace in February 1945.

Both men came home. Tommy came home to a country where he couldn’t vote in federal elections, and where Indigenous veterans couldn’t fully access the benefits other veterans received. He cut pulpwood and started a business, then left it in friends’ hands to speak for his people. As vice-president and spokesman of the Manitoba Indian Association, he testified in 1947 before a Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons. He called for the abolition of the Indian Act, respect for the treaties, and better schools and living conditions.

Volunteers

In August 1950, Canada raised a volunteer Special Force for Korea. Many of its recruits were veterans of the Second World War, and both men signed up that month. Tommy was 34. Alex said years later that everybody was a volunteer; no one had to go.

They joined the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI), which sailed for Korea in November 1950. Before he left, Alex wrote to his mother and to the wives of the two men from his family serving with him, promising to look after them. His anti-tank platoon couldn’t get its guns up Korea’s hills, so the battalion’s commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Stone, turned it into his scout platoon, with Alex as platoon sergeant. His platoon commander, George Skelly, later called him “an excellent platoon sergeant—lots of experience.” Tommy, second in command of a rifle platoon, led night patrols and raids into enemy territory.

Hill 677

In April 1951, Chinese and North Korean forces launched a major offensive north of Seoul, forcing South Korean troops into retreat. The 2nd Battalion PPCLI dug in on Hill 677 above the Kapyong Valley, on a key route to the capital. Across the valley, the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment held Hill 504 under heavy attack until it was forced to withdraw. That left the Canadians exposed and badly outnumbered. The battle on Hill 677 was lit only by flares and fought hand to hand. With one company about to be overrun, the Canadians called in mortar and artillery fire. They held.

At dawn on April 24, Alex’s position came under Chinese machine-gun fire. He credited mortar fire called in by Lieutenant Hub Gray with saving his life. After the battle, he led his platoon out in the withdrawal from Kapyong, a moment captured in a photograph now held by The Military Museums in Calgary.

In 2004, while I was spending time with Alex and his family in Kamloops making the film at the end of this piece, he spoke about Tommy Prince with absolute admiration for his bravery. Alex told me they never would have survived had it not been for him. Among the men who served with him, Tommy was revered and respected.

Ten Canadians were killed and 23 wounded. The Canadian and Australian battalions received the U.S. Presidential Unit Citation, the first ever awarded to a Canadian unit. Veterans Affairs Canada calls Kapyong Canada’s most significant action of the Korean War. Seventy-five years on, it is still one of the country’s least-known achievements.

What came after

Tommy’s knees gave out in Korea’s mountains, and he returned to Canada in August 1951. He could have stopped there. When his knees recovered, he volunteered again. He sailed for Korea in October 1952 with the 3rd Battalion PPCLI and was wounded that November in fighting at a position known as the Hook. He spent weeks in hospital, then came home for good in November 1953, after the armistice. Across two wars he earned 11 medals, more than any other Indigenous veteran in Canadian history.

Recognition was slow to come. Canada didn’t create the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal for Korea until 1991, and Tommy became entitled to it only after his death. He died in Winnipeg in November 1977, at 62. More than 500 people attended his funeral, including Manitoba’s lieutenant governor and the consuls of France, Italy and the United States. His family later rallied to buy back his medals, which are now at the Manitoba Museum. Today a statue honours him at Brokenhead Ojibway Nation. The Canadian Armed Forces have named buildings and units after him, including Prince Barracks at CFB Petawawa and the Tommy Prince Drill Hall at Wainwright, Alberta. In 2019, Parks Canada designated him a National Historic Person, and in 2022 Canada Post issued a stamp of him in his Korean War uniform.

Alex came home too and spent the rest of his life making sure the men beside him were remembered. He organized veterans’ events in Kamloops and served as Honorary Commanding Officer of 419 Squadron. In April 2011, for Kapyong’s 60th anniversary, he went back to Korea as one of 42 Canadian veterans invited as honoured guests of the South Korean government. He recorded his story for The Military Museums in 2013, and his testimony is preserved in the Memory Project archive. In 2004, Alex, Kent Simmonds and I made a film so his story would outlast all of us. Alex died in July 2017, at 92.

What we owe

Standing at the cenotaph, I also thought of my grandfather John Edgar Webster, who served in British Army intelligence in the Second World War; my grandfather Gordon McKee, a bomber pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force; and my father, who served in signals intelligence with the Canadian Navy. Of the more than 12,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit people who served in the great conflicts of the last century. Of our American, British, Australian, New Zealand and Allied partners. And of the soldiers lost and injured at CFB Wainwright this October, and their families.

Alex and Tommy’s story isn’t only history to me. It shapes how I try to work. Three things I carry from it:

Alliances rest on trust, and trust is earned. On Hill 677, Canadians held because Australians had held across the valley first, and New Zealand gunners and American tanks stood behind them both. In Italy, Tommy fought in a brigade where Canadians and Americans served side by side. None of them could have done it alone, and none of them agreed on everything. They stood together anyway, the way people stood together at the cenotaph this morning, because the ties between our countries were earned over generations. The same holds for any partnership: between nations, between companies and communities, between governments and First Nations. Trust and credibility take a lifetime to build and can be lost in an instant. A partnership can adapt, learn and improvise along the way, but it must begin with trust, and trust is earned, never owed.

Respect is measured after the ceremony. Tommy Prince served at least as well as anyone on that hill. His country gave him medals and then left him on his own. His story isn’t unique. Indigenous veterans served in remarkable numbers, and too often came home to less than they had earned. We have a responsibility to acknowledge that honestly. Gratitude in words wasn’t enough then, and it isn’t enough now. Recognition means following through. In any agreement, with a community, a First Nation or a partner overseas, the real test isn’t what is said at the signing. It’s what is delivered in the years after.

Doing the right thing is a daily choice. Remembrance isn’t only two minutes of silence. Before he shipped out, Alex made a promise to his family in a letter home, and he spent the rest of his life keeping faith with the men he served beside. Tommy kept choosing to serve his country and his people, even when they weren’t served in return. Neither of them did it once. They did it every day. That’s what remembrance asks of us now. It starts at ground level, with honest relationships with the communities next door and fair dealing with partners on the other side of the world, and done well, it adds up to results far beyond any one place. Each of us decides, personally and professionally, whether to stand up for what’s right and against what’s wrong, especially when it’s inconvenient.

This morning in Nanaimo, three anthems rose from one crowd. Seventy-five years ago, on a hill in Korea, men from different countries and different nations held the line for each other. They gave everything so we could stand together today. None of us should take that lightly.

Lest we forget.

Alex Sim’s story, filmed in Kamloops in 2004. Watch on YouTube.

Sources

First-hand

Author's interviews with Alex Sim, Kamloops, B.C., 2004
Alex Sim's story, film by Robert Webster McKee, Kent Simmonds and Alex Sim, Kamloops, 2004 (source for Alex enlisting under age)

Official

Reference and press

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