75 Years On. The Forgotten War – The Korean War.

As dawn broke on 75 years ago on 25 June 1950, the Korean People’s Army surged south across the 38th Parallel in unison with artillery fire. The Korean War had begun.

Most Australians would’ve have had to thumbed through their atlas to locate the peninsula that extended south from Manchuria. However, they would not have been alone. That morning, the pilots of the Royal Australian Air Force’s 77 Fighter Squadron were recovering from a farewell party at their base at Iwakuni, Japan. The squadron and its personnel and aeroplanes were ready to be shipped home after years overseas. When Sergeant Ray Trebilco took the call from the Headquarters of the United States Fifth Air Force at 11 am on Sunday, requesting the squadron go on immediate standby as North Korea had invaded the South. Initially, Trebilco is reputed to have told the USAF duty officer to ‘pull the other one’ and hung up.

The chain of events had caught the Australians by surprise, including, Milt Cottee, who recalled many years later how he raced down to the tarmac where the aeroplanes were being armed.

‘Hey, what is going on, fellows?’

‘North Korea has overrun South Korea.’

Where is Korea? It was almost that, I knew it was over there somewhere, but I didn’t know much about it.

‘What are they doing?’

‘They have run across the Parallel’.

‘The Parallel, what’s the Parallel?’

For me, as a schoolboy, it seemed that the mystery still remained 30 years later. I stood on parade on Anzac Day and by some miracle my mother had managed to push my father into wearing his medals, which she had recently paid to have mounted. He had served in World War Two and flown 201 missions in the Korean War. Consequently, there was a sizeable array hanging from his chest. One of my teachers asked me what the medals represented. I answered him, to which he replied. “Korean War? I think you mean Vietnam.”

Somehow, the Korean War had slid between the cracks. Lost between the enormity of the Second World War and the controversy of Vietnam. For me, the Korean War became significant after I left school and studied the conflict. In recent years I have written two books that are centred on the war in Korea. Even so, the conflict remains relatively unknown. One in four pilots in my father’s squadron were killed. Forty men that never came home.

Over 17,000 Australians served during the Korean War, of which 340 were killed and over 1,200 wounded. A further 30 had become prisoners of war.

Lest We Forget.