Remembering the Korean War

He wasn't old enough to vote. He wasn't old enough to walk into a pub. 'And I thought girls were for throwing stones at.”

But he was old enough to go to war. Just – because he had to ask for his Mum's permission to go.


Medals and memories: Proud Korean war vet Paul Shephard of Papamoa. Photo by Tracy Hardy.

Paul Boynton Shephard, now of Papamoa, was just 15 when schoolboy became boy seaman. He swapped a school uniform for a sailor suit.

And within a few months they were lobbing 100 millimetre shells at him from shore batteries on the war-torn Korean Peninsula.

Paul wanted adventure and the Russians, the Chinese and the North Koreans wanted him dead.

It wasn't as personal as that – but that was the effect of it.

'Was I frightened? – Hell no!! – I was regular Navy for Christ's sake.”

He probably was frightened – you'd expect him to be. But military training steels a man, outwardly at least.

'I never thought s***t, I am not going to make it. You just do what you are trained to do.”

Paul's story has currency. Last week was the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, the ‘Forgotten War' – forgotten because it was sandwiched between the global scale and horror of World War II and the angst of the Vietnam War.

And later this month, on July 27, it'll be 60 years since hostilities ended.

'You commemorate the end of a war, not the beginning,” says Paul. Makes sense.

'I was one of the lucky ones, I came back.” But 45 didn't – so 45 of the 6000 New Zealand soldiers and sailors stemming the tide of communism lie buried there. They are now sons of South Korea too.

President Harry S Truman referred to Korea as a ‘police action' because it was a limited military operation and different from total war.

Paul harrumphs. 'We were in town just 10 minutes before I realised it wasn't a ‘police action'. I soon knew it was an all-out bloody war. And we were responsible for our share of the killing.”

In all, six million people died in the conflict – one-and-a-half times the population of New Zealand. 'Police action?” scoffs Paul. 'What a bloody nonsense.”

Did this raw 16-year-old ever engage with the enemy? 'What the hell do you think we were there for?” A naïve question maybe.

He remembers graphically the day the North Korean shore batteries opened fire – 80mm to 100mm shells, 140 of them landing within a quarter mile radius of his ship.

'The skipper did a bloody good job and added a bar to his Distinguished Service Order. He zigged when he should have zigged, and zagged when he should have zagged.”

The boy seaman hasn't forgotten the detail of the ‘forgotten war'. And ever so small cracks appear in the bravado when he admits 'there was a bit of consternation”.

'You were aware the shells were bloody close. The plates were moving and the bulkheads were twisting. This was a ship under stress.” He can laugh about it now.

And yes, he did see death and injury up close. 'But we expected to see it. We were at war.”

Paul dodged the communists, the bombs and bullets. Ironically, it was the R & R – the rest and recreation – that got him. Not the bars and brothels, but radiation and ignorance.

'Obviously, they didn't know any better in those days and if they did know, they didn't tell us.”

Because when the frigate returned to base, it was either Kure Naval base in the port of Hiroshima or Sasebo in Nagasaki. Our sailors went out to play in atomic bombsites – just a few kilometres from the centres of the blasts six years earlier.

'They irradiated our ship and they irradiated our food supplies. They irradiated those ships until they scrapped them.”

And so the boy that went to Korea for adventure, who was too young for a rum ration, came home a broken and sick man.

'I've had 50 cancers cut out of my body. Some of them big bastards. I've two benign tumours in my head.” All attributed to radiation exposure, says Paul.

He's also legally blind and diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. There's also the tinnitus, the hearing loss and 30 per cent lung capacity.

That might constitute a self-inflicted injury. He received 35 shillings a fortnight-and-a-half that went home to his mother. 'I bought fags with the rest.” Little else to do at sea between bombardments I suspect.

This seaman boy paid dearly for serving our country. And he's still paying. But perhaps his war pension is this country's acknowledgement of his commitment and courage.

Paul was discharged in 1954. There's sadness bordering on shame here because he was a proud fit man when he went to sea, when he went to war.

But in just four years this karate and judo black belt had fallen below the Navy's physical standards. He did dodge the bombs but war is cruel.

The humour remains in intact. 'Mmmm – the boy seaman never quite made Admiral.”

But here he is, proudly telling his story and ensuring a forgotten chapter of our military history is not forgotten.

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1 comment

Overit

Posted on 03-07-2015 18:22 | By overit

Thank you Paul.


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