As of 2021, Statistics Canada estimated 5,500 War Service (Second World War and Korean War) veterans were left in B.C.
Oak Bay and Carlton House resident Jim Ritchie, now 92, is one of them and realized in 2014 the importance of putting out his story. It's why he wrote his novel, National Service: Two Years of My Life.
"I did it for my grandchildren and children. I wanted to write it for them, so they would know what their dad had been doing," he said to Oak Bay News.
Serving on the front lines with the British in the Korean War was a time of Ritchie's life he would later grapple with, calling it the "worst period of his life" but also the "most exciting." It was also the start of a sense of disenchantment with the realities of war and the power divides between those who sent the fighters out and the young men who did the fighting and were given "no choice (other than prison)".
It all started Dec. 26, 1950, a day forever etched into Ritchie's memory. Twenty years old at the time and living in the Scottish countryside, it was a day that Ritchie was thrust from the heartbreak of personal loss into a two-year conscription into the National Service.
That morning, he was on a bus to his medical appointment with the National Services Board when something terrible happened.
"A young lady was standing in the darkness in the middle of the road flagging the bus down," he recalled. Ritchie saw a crowd of people around a little stone building, surrounding his dad propped up against the wall.
"I got to my dad and I tried to speak, but he was gone," Ritchie recalled. Barely without a moment to process, his grief-stricken mother told him he still had to go to his appointment, or the military police would be sent out. At his appointment, he was conscripted into the Korean War as part of the United Nations force.
The weight of duty
Ritchie went up to the "cold moors" of Inverness, where the Highland Regiments trained for 16 weeks. "I always refer to that as the most miserable 16 weeks of my life," Ritchie said.
A glimmer of pride came when he was placed in the Argyles' band as a bagpiper, an instrument he had played since he was 12. "The whole regiment would be marching behind us. We were a perfectly well-drilled squad of 16 of us, so that was a very proud moment for me."
He had hoped it meant he wouldn't have to go to Korea, but after 10 weeks, he was told his "soft touch" was over. He had to leave for Korea in two days.
The "squaddies" continued to receive "toughening up" treatment. They boarded an American ship that was like a "palace" with a "beautiful buffet" and "lovely bunk beds," but the 16 of his crew were given different treatment: "We slept on the steel deck down in the bottom of the ship," he said laughing. "And the American sailors were kind of laughing at us. That's kind of the way they treated young men, they would toughen them up supposedly."
When Ritchie got his first glimpse of the hill in Korea where he would spend the next eight-and-a-half months, he was shown deserters being forced to run laps in a barbed wire enclosure.
A sergeant in a "lovely heated tent" told Ritchie he would have to go dig himself a trench to sleep in. "The ground was rock hard," Ritchie recalled. "I said to him, 'What do you use to dig the hole with? And he said to me, 'Use your initiative.'"
But Ritchie made a friend when the drummer of the band, Chalky White, invited Ritchie to share his dugout. It was four feet deep, with a metal picket over the top covered by a ground sheet, then dirt piled on top. "You could just barely sit up in this thing," Ritchie said.
The conditions created close bonds for the men in the army. "When you're living with men like that, a close relationship comes into being. You're with them night and day and if it came to the worse, you could die with them. So soldiers, they're dedicated to their companions," Ritchie said.
Life on the hill
On top of the hill, Ritchie and his squad members' job was to guard the regiment headquarters at the bottom.
Peace talks had started between North and South Korea with the UN's involvement and the area was relatively safe.
Ritchie only recalled one time when they were attacked in the middle of the night, though he could only hear the guns down below and there were minefields and trip wire around the headquarters protecting them.
It was still a difficult life. For months, they barely slept, having to do night shifts that were two hours on, two hours off. "We slept fully dressed. My boots never came off," Ritchie said.
Apart from the discomfort, Ritchie also grappled with internal conflict. Their squad couldn't see the enemy positions but spotter planes would send pictures back to headquarters. "We could see the bombs landing, and they were using a bomb called napalm." Napalm is a mixture of a gelling agent and volatile petrochemical that would stick to human flesh as it burned.
"That was something I couldn't get my head around; I'm in Korea and these are Korean people we're fighting, North Koreans certainly, but ... we were all there facing these North Koreans who were only defending their own country, and I couldn't get my head around the fact that when I first heard of Korea, I didn't really know where it was."
Despite the hardships of war, Ritchie said the food was good, and he sometimes got to play bagpipes. In between bridge and trench building, there were moments of recreation: swimming in the river or going to Tokyo for seven days of "rest and recuperation."
He even got used to the lack of sleep. "It's amazing how fit you become," Ritchie said. "You adapt to what's happening. You have to endure it."
After two years, Ritchie returned home after a six-week voyage aboard ship, around Christmas time. He had to hand in all the clothes the army had given to him, but unfortunately, he had four things missing. "I had been in the army, I was risking my life by being there and yet they charged me from my meagre pay. They took quite a chunk of money off my pay to just pay for the stuff."
"I couldn't get out of the army quick enough," he said.
Reflecting on his experiences, Ritchie admitted that while the war was the "worst period" of his life, there were moments – however small – that brought a sense of pride and camaraderie. Those memories remain with him, long after his return to civilian life in Oak Bay.
