Robert W. Mackay

Review: The Imjin and Kapyong Battles

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The Imjin and Kapyong Battles: Korea, 1951, by S. P. MacKenzie

I reviewed this excellent book in late 2022 on Amazon. Here is what I had to say:

“Three battles, and only one a victory

I found this a great read, describing as it does three battles that took place in Korea in April 1951.

A British brigade suffered a brutal defeat when caught off-guard by a Chinese force, while a Commonwealth brigade brought the enemy to a halt and turned it back. Canadian and Australian battalions on opposite sides of a river valley faced overwhelming odds and overcame them.

Highly recommended.”

Covering the Bases

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This photo has haunted me for years. The three young men here are first cousins. They are all Mackays. Their fathers were brothers, each of whom served in World War I’s Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians). From left to right they are Thomas Colson Mackay, William Bruce Mackay, and James Birch Mackay.

As near as I can make out, the photo was probably taken in or close to 1937, perhaps at Lac du Bonnet, Manitoba, where at least one of the older generation had recreational property.

The boys were all 16 or 17 years old. My guess is that the photo may have been snapped on a Friday, late in the day, after driving from Winnipeg. Quite the sharp dressers: Tom appears to sport two-toned shoes in the full-length photo, Bruce with his tie. Or, who knows, perhaps they were off to attend a local dance.

Tom, who was my half-brother, joined the RCN; Bruce (as he was known) the RCAF; and Jim the Canadian Army, so between them they covered all the bases.

It’s my intention to go deeper into the careers of each of them in future blogs and editions of Forces With History; I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

April 24th, anniversary of 2PPCLI’s Battle of Kapyong

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Seventy years ago this week the men of the 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry came down from the Korean hills and relaxed for a few days’ break from the fighting.

They had initially landed in Pusan in December 1950, then spent six weeks familiarizing themselves with new U.S weapons and training on the steep Korean hills. Since mid-February they had been in almost continuous action, pursuing a withdrawing People’s Republic of China army northward.

Baseball, tugs-of-war, and beer were the order of the day in welcome warm spring weather. Instead of sleeping in holes in the ground they luxuriated in tents in their rest area just north of the town of Kapyong.

Everything changed on April 22nd. Republic of Korea (South Korean) forces sent to block Chinese troops advancing southward were overrun a few miles north of the rest area. An Australian battalion was assigned to defend a hill on the right of the Kapyong River Valley, while 2PPCLI was ordered to occupy Hill 677, a massive hill on the left. The Australians were forced to withdraw after a fierce fight.

Now the Chinese turned their attention to the Canadians atop 677.

The night of April 24th was the Patricia’s sternest test. Their force of 700 was up against an estimated 5,000 Chinese. The Chinese came on in waves, hurling themselves at the dug-in Canadians. At times they got right in amongst the defenders, occupying the Patricia’s positions for a heartbeat, only to be thrust back again. Light, medium, and heavy machine guns and mortars hammered at the attackers. Long-range artillery courtesy of a New Zealand field regiment roared. Through it all 2PPCLI held fast.

Dawn of April 25th saw the Chinese efforts lessen, and when an airdrop provided desperately needed food, water, and ammunition to the defenders, the fight was virtually over.

There are many stories of heroic action on Hill 677. For the battalion, recognition came quickly in the form of a U.S. Presidential Unit Citation—the only one ever issued to a Canadian formation.

The survivors of the Battle of Kapyong, like their other Korean War comrades, struggled for years to be properly recognized by the Canadian government. Those few who remain remind us of a bitter war bravely fought.

The Battle of Moreuil Wood, 101 Years Later

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March 30th, 2019, fast approaches. Time for a glance back at the centennial celebrations of a year ago. Here is a shot of the Lord Strathcona’s Mounted Troop forming up, preparing to re-enact Flowerdew’s Charge of a hundred years before. The scene is where Brigadier Seely led the Canadian Cavalry Brigade and from whence he detached Flowerdew’s Squadron of Lord Strathcona’s Horse to sweep around the end of the Wood. The regiment celebrates March 30th every year to mark the occasion with sports days, lunches, and dinners wherever Strathcona’s gather.

Among other notables at the 100th were Brough Scott (Seely’s grandson) at left with me and John Willoughby. John’s great uncle of the same name died at the scene, with his remains only discovered in 1986. Brough lives in the UK and, like his grandfather before him, continues to ride virtually daily, having made his living as a jockey and racing commentator.

In the two photos below are another Seely grandson, Patrick Seely, who is holding up a copy of a painting depicting the battle that raged in the Wood itself. 

The last photo shows George and Andrew Flowerdew, flanking me at a reception staged by the village of Moreuil in honour of the occasion. I consider it a real privilege to have been able to meet the families of men who shared the terrible events of March 30th, 1918, with my father.

HMCS OKANAGAN, HMCS RAINBOW–50 and counting!

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It’s been 50 years since HMCS OKANAGAN, the third of Canada’s O-boats, sailed from Gosport for workups. And in November this year, the Submarine Association of Canada (West) will celebrate the anniversary of her commissioning in the Chatham Dockyard.

The occasion, November 2-4, will also mark HMCS RAINBOW’S 50th. More about her in a later post.

OKANAGAN went on to an illustrious career in the RCN, most of her operations taking place in the Atlantic out of Halifax. Along with her sister boats, OJIBWA and ONONDAGA, her life was extended by a major update of periscopes, sonar, torpedo tubes, etc in the late 1980s that kept her operating until the late ’90s.

One of OKANAGAN’S last tasks was the search for and locating of the flight recorders of Swissair 111 which sadly crashed off Peggy’s Cove in 1998.

Many of her crew, now known as “The Crunch Bunch,” will no doubt reminisce about an unhappy day in 1973 when the OKANAGAN had a run-in with the propellers of Royal Fleet Auxiliary Grey Rover.

HMCS OKANAGAN was paid off in 1998, and sold for scrap. Both her sister O-boats, though, are museum pieces in Ontario and Quebec. They can be toured by the public, and will give an idea of life in what some have called “the last and best” of the O-boats.

Aaron Chapman–raconteur, musician, writer

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Aaron ChapmanThis interview of Aaron Chapman was conducted in a secret location after months of negotiations with the wily subject. He’s a hard man to pin down, but an easy interview. He is currently scouting the battlefields of Europe.

RWM: What’s your date of birth, Aaron?
 CENSORED. I hesitate to give that away in our information-sensitive, privacy concerned world—but I think it’s already out there. Let me say right now to Vladmir Putin and his computer hacker cronies at work in their dark arts—I’ll guarantee you my computer passwords are stronger than my damn birthdate.
RWM: Where?
Born and raised in Vancouver. People keep telling me that’s rare, I suppose it is.
RWM: Where did you go to school?
I attended Pt Grey Secondary High school, though Seth Rogen and Gil Bellows are probably more famous graduates that myself, I like to think they’d at least put me on the brochure… I was accepted to SFU and UVIC out of high school, but ours was a somewhat elitist family where they considered the local post secondary schools with almost an Oxford/Cambridge rivalry. Ours was a UBC family. My father, brother, cousins, had all gone there. And there was no way the family could see a Chapman going off to one of those other places. It’s not as snobby or elitist as it sounds (You can imagine the worst—the gossip around the dinner table amongst the relatives. ‘Did you hear young Chapman is off at UVIC?’, ‘Oh, yes… Dreadful. Do they even have running water out there?’) I ended up going to Langara for a year where I studied Medieval History and Religious studies, which boosted my somewhat respectable but not sufficient class-clown High School grade point average up over the bar to acceptance at UBC, and did my BA there, graduating in 1995.
RWM: Tell me about your musical career.
I took off on tour almost immediately after finishing University. I was in band called the Real McKenzies then—sort of a Scottish version of the Sex Pistols. With kilts and bagpipes, but leather jackets and electric guitars too. A wonderfully exciting and funny band. It was a bit like running away at the circus at a rather early age, but I began to see a fair bit of the world from it, and the adventure of it was mostly what i was looking for I suppose. I left by the late 90s, but the band is still going today. Later played with a Irish folk-rock group called The Town Pants that toured through Europe and North America, especially back east quite a bit, and also another band for awhile called Bocephus King. Plus I used to sit in a fair bit with some other well known local pals from The Hard Rock Miners to the Be Good Tanya’s. I was surprised to learn when I researched the Commodore Ballroom book, I’d played there 25 times with one band over another over the years. I took a bit of a step back from all the madcap touring when some of the writing began to take off I suppose.
RWM: How/why did you get into writing?
 I remember thinking around 16 or 17 that I at least considered becoming a writer because I was interested in telling stories. I was very interested in Film as well and I studied that in University. There were a lot of books in the house I grew up in and there was a fairly understood notion that books were important.
My mother was the writer of a novel, an abstract art book and a legal textbook in her time. As a kid, I certainly watched her as she worked. My father was a lover of language and vocabulary, including a few four letter ones when I forgot to take out the garbage. So it was a good home to grow up in. But I also grew up next door to Canadian poet and novelist George Bowering. My bedroom window looked straight over to his writing office. At night, I could see him seated at his desk, typing away. I wish I could tell you I watched him say “Eureka!” or had music blaring while he wrong that somehow helped feed the muse, but there was no such moment. Mostly I remember looking out the window and seeking typing away there. Stopping for a bit, starting again. So watching other writers around me work I think even helped me to understand the mechanics of what it took. What Mark Twain referred to as “the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair”. There were people around me writing all the time. I thought it was perfectly natural there was a writer in every house…
I began writing some cover story pieces for the Vancouver Courier in the early 2000s, and though I didn’t study journalism in school, the articles were well received. I did a story about Howard Hughes’ six month stay at the Bayshore in 1972, the legendary concerts that were staged at the Kerrisdale Arena in the early 1980s, about the closing of an infamous Vancouver watering hole called the Sidebar Lounge, and began to develop a little column called Backstage Past that delved into some previous unpublished stories about the entertainment history of Vancouver. They were all local history pieces in away, and that interest in local history was partly fuelled by seeing the city I’d grown up in change so much so quickly. But writing also seems enjoyable because it didn’t involve soundchecks and travelling around the country with a band—it was something you could do on your own.
Film requires special technology to make it, and show it. Music requires an audience for people to see and hear you play it—but something you’ve written can travel quicker than you can, and if you don’t like it, you can rip it up and start it again. Some of these other arts required the aid of others or money for you to practice it. But with writing, you’re ultimately in charge of every department to tell your story. You’re the Producer, Director, and sometimes even the lead actor in your story. Not to mention the costumer, music scorer, lighting director, and soundman because all those elements in a film you control in the writing, and the descriptions within your story—even to a degree writing non-fiction which must ring true to what originally happened, and your writing evoke the right notes.
But jumping back, some of the articles I had done became jumping off points to books. If an article I had written really seemed to garner some interest or got a lot of feedback, I’d think to myself—there might be an opportunity to tell a longer story, so in a couple of cases the books I’ve written are a direct cause of that, and I suppose I got a little lucky that way. Arsenal Pulp Press took a chance on me when I met them in 2012, and they’ve published all my books so far.
RWM: Current projects?
Currently working on a new & revised edition of my 2012 book “Liquor, Lust, and The Law” (see below). At this moment I’m in Belgium and France on a tour of World War I battlefields with Sir Max Hastings, who is a British military historian of some renown, and he published a great book called “Catastrophe” about the beginning of the war. I’d followed some of his writing when he was a war correspondent, and his book on the Falkland Islands war was very good, so I’m looking forward to meeting and travelling with him on this trip where he does some lectures at the former trenches and cemeteries. I’m also travelling to Austria and back up to the UK where I’m doing some research on a book idea too, as well as hopefully take in a few concerts and a few good single-malts—whichever comes first. There’s an album of music I really want to finish soon too, maybe by the end of the year. I’d love to tell you that my writing keeps all the bills and staff (my two cats) paid at Stately Chapman Manor, but I do some voice over work in film and TV, particularly on some cartoons recently which has been really great fun too. I do a little bit of work on the side as a production manager in the local concert business, all of which helps to keep the lights on. In this town, you better learn how to swim.
RWM: You write for the Courier–how’s that going? Fun, lucrative? (we always hope, eh?)
The Vancouver Courier is great, great local coverage of things. I just met with the editor and we talked about some new articles I’d do for them, that frankly I’m now late in delivering. But the Penthouse book revision has taken up a bit of time. Once I get this done I keep thinking how it might be a good idea if I pitch them on doing at least a monthly column or more, as they seem to like my stuff, and the things I write about seems to be a good fit for the paper. And the newspaper has been a great seedling ground, as some of the stories I’ve written for the paper later grew into a book idea.
RWM: How are Liquor, Lust, and the Law; Live at the Commodore; and Last Gang doing?
Great. Live at the Commodore won the BC Book Prize for 2015. My latest book The Last Gang in Town was shortlisted this year for the same prize, and it’s on it’s second printing, and really seems to have found an audience not just from those who remember what the city, and what East Vancouver was like back then, but also to younger readers, or new residents who’ve just moved there who wants to find out what the neighbourhood was like back then, and what the truth was with those East Van street gangs. So I’m very happy to hear from readers and those who have come out to some of the subsequent talks I’ve given about the book, and they confirm what I had in the book, or tell their own anecdote about some of the police or gangs they knew back then. Right now, I’ve turned some attention to my first book about the Penthouse Nightclub. The book is going its third printing, and because it’s the 70th anniversary of the Penthouse, we’re going to do a new, revised edition, adding more photos and stories, and some additional content. It feels a little strange at time to go back and have the chance to update earlier work you’ve done, as the opportunity isn’t always around to do it—it feels a little like getting a chance to take your class photo when you were a student. But when you write on local history, inevitably people come out of the woodwork no matter how well you’ve researched things, or how great your access was, to tell you a story or a rich little anecdote that would have been wonderful to include had you known it. So the nice thing is I’m getting a chance to add some of that stuff in, or because of the popularity of the original book we have the chance to take some of that stuff that ended up “on the cutting room floor”, to now include in this new & revised edition that’s coming out in the fall of 2017.
RWM: What do you like to read?
I read a very mixed bag of stuff. Anybody that would see my bookshelves would probably think three or four different people owned it, but I suppose everybody is a bit like that, aren’t they? I certainly read a lot of local history, and BC history, I’ve been reading some military history, some Australian history I’ve been meaning to get to. Plus a fair bit of music books of everything from Ian Dury to Tom Waits. There’s some true crime in there—probably as a result of working on The Last Gang in Town, but when I think about it I remember reading that stuff in my teens as well! Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde Murder mysteries books are great fun, and Brandreth has become a pen pal. Jerzy Kosinski is still interesting to me—though I suppose he’s fallen out of fashion for most. I’ve certainly got all that William S. Burroughs, Hunter Thompson, Philip K. Dick and others that a lot of lads my age would have grown up with. Robert Young Pelton’s travel writing is most enjoyable.
RWM: Hobbies?  Sports?
 I played soccer quite a bit as a kid. I’ve had a hankering to play Cricket ever since I had an Australian friend explain the game to me that it made sense, and I could watch it knowing what’s going on. It seems like a wonderfully old world game, and I suppose the historian in me likes it.
RWM: What part of Vancouver do you live in? 
 I grew up in Kerrisdale, but after school I bummed and bounced around nearly in every quadrant of the city renting a room here and there. I currently down between the East End of False Creek and Chinatown. It’s a good central spot and easy to get around. I used to live up on Commercial Drive where I couldn’t walk two blocks without feeling like the King of Kensington—because I knew so many people who lived around there and bumped into them, but this area which used to be all industrial is just being developed. The street I live on didn’t exist until 2006, so it’s been interesting to watch things grow. It feels very much on the border of the upwardly mobile Yaletown area, and the still-troubled downtown east side. There’s nice cars parked out front, but there was a murder across the alleyway the month I moved in. On one end of the street you see pony-tailed young women jogging off to their yoga classes, and at the other end of the street you see a binner pushing a shopping cart full of empties and scrap metal—so it’s just how I like it, right in the middle of it.
RWM: Anything you’d like to add?
Do buy one of my books. If you don’t like it, please return the unused portion and bill of sale to me for a full refund, or at least another one of my books you might like instead.
RWM comment: “unused portion?” That slipped past me. All kidding aside, Aaron’s books are a great read. Just as much fun as interviewing him.

 

About

From saddles and spurs to periscopes and north-seekers, Robert W. Mackay is an avid military, naval and wartime writer.

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T: 604-541-9098
E: robert@robertwmackay.ca