My thoughts are interrupted when one of my troops asks permission to accumulate souvenirs from the enemy, a not unusual request in action. I readily concur. The soldier immediately makes for the officer positioned at the head of the column on whose chest rests a pair of high magnification binoculars. The soldier gives a tug, the glasses hold fast to the body. Determined to liberate his prize he pulls harder. The glasses finally break free, but adhered to them are first the officer's shirt, then his skin and then his ribs, leaving a gaping circular hole about 10 inches across. Our soldier falls back, engulfed by a black mass, which storms out of the body. Some of us laugh nervously as the vermin migrate to a newly found deliciously warm Canadian body. The mirth, which has broken the tension, is short lived as others retrieve photographs of loved ones, wives and children from the 56 statue-like corpses. Suddenly we are also reminded they were human beings who had a terrible injustice inflicted upon them.

I move to inspect the body exhibiting the gaping chest hole. Inside is an empty shell, the innards have been totally consumed. No amount of training or months of warfare have prepared me or anyone for this bizarre horror. Some of my soldiers continue inspecting the bodies while others are highly disturbed and move off from this grim scene. Lance Corporal J.C. Wanniandy, a Canadian Indian, finds the retching stench of this unnatural death so nauseating he will not stand anywhere near the formation. Here are 56 soldiers, having no innards, no point of penetration, unvaryingly positioned rigidly upright on their haunches, dead.

Although I had taken the ABC course (Atomic, Bacteriological and Chemical Warfare) at The School of Infantry, Camp Borden, I cannot reconcile this situation. I first consider Nerve Gas, which kills in seconds, but that would have sent the men into convulsions. Had these men been drugged? It is a bazaar scene, totally unreal and its implications terribly disturbing. It is as though the assembled enemy may have been on their knees praying for forgiveness to an unseen, all knowing and all-powerful deity. They may have been pleading for their lives, but the if so they pleaded in vain.           

It is time to return to Gumcochyi, to have the tanks transport us back to the Patricias. We are three to four hours away from our armoured allies.  Once again I am concerned that we might engage an unseen enemy force, but our return is uneventful. On reaching my slit trench, I write my report and deliver it to my Acting Company Commander, Captain J.W.G. Mills. Meanwhile the troops are abuzz informing everyone of the devastating sight they have just witnessed. The word quickly circulates D Company. Soldiers wonder if they will be next. How did these men die? What agent killed them? How would our men protect themselves from a similar attack? Is it even possible to defend oneself? The soldiers of D Company soon have variations of this incident flying in all directions as only a body of troops can. I expect to lead a formation back to the site the following day but I hear nothing more of the matter.  There are other patrols to be undertaken and on 21 May UN Forces advance forward from Line Golden.

Forty-five years after witnessing this dreadful sight, I examined the Second Patricia's War Diary, for May 1951 at the Museum of the Regiments in Calgary, where the PPCLI archives are held. Incredibly there was no mention of this incident. I could not believe it! I decided to ref­erence all available records. Finding nothing I widened my search. During three years of enquiry no consulted authority has admitted to having any knowledge of this incident. Each of the many United States authorities I contacted recommended an alternative source. Amongst others I wrote the following:                                                  

National Archive at College Park, MD                                                        
Department of the Army, The Center for Military History 
US Army Intelligence and Security Command                                            
US Army Chemical Corps Museum (Twice, no reply)                                
US Army Chemical School (Twice, no reply)                                             
US Air Force, Classification & Review team, SAF AAZD                         
Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama   
Republic of Korea, Military Attach6, Ottawa  
Director of the War Museum, Institute of Military Affairs,         
Seoul (Twice, no reply)  
Canadian Military Attaché, Seoul, Korea

All the above correspondence included photographs of my platoon on the armour, the bombed out rail station and one including the name of the station - but sadly I never took a picture of the ranks of dead men, because I had run out of film.

Once I did have a near favourable reaction, but that was short lived. I telephoned the US Army Intelligence and Security Command, IACSF­Fl, Fort George G. Meade, MD. I gave a description of the event and a chap assured me he would inform me, but that I should first submit my evidence in a written report and he would subsequently telephone me. I did so. After a wait of three months I telephoned again requesting to speak to the individual I had previously talked with. His receptionist informed me I must first explain myself. I did so. I was advised she was aware of my earlier enquiry but, regrettably, their filing system was such that unless I could provide the name of the individual filing the report within their archives they could not be of assistance!!!

I also forwarded a copy of my reconstructed report to Colonel Stone. His return letter of March 16, 1996 in part said: "To say that your cor­respondence surprised me is an understatement. I fought in Italy , NW Europe as well as Korea and never heard of an incident such as you describe. I was not in Korea in May 1951, being with my family on compassionate leave. However I should think such a story would have been impossible to keep from the press. "

Stone did me a great favour, because I realized that to be believed I had to obtain corroborating signed statements. So more than four decades later I commenced my search for the men of D Company who were associated with that patrol. It took me three years and a great deal of searching. Amazingly two of them were nearby in Edmonton . I now have three signed statements from those who witnessed this incident.  (See conclusion of article).

In July 1999, I traveled to London, England, and I met with an excepti­onal soldier, General Sir Anthony Ferrar-Hockley, who served with the Gloucester's in Korea. Captured at "Gloucester Hill" he escaped enemy POW camps five times only to be caught on each occasion. He also wrote the two-volume 2,000 page official history of the British Army in Korea. Sir Anthony informed me that he had thoroughly searched US and UK Korean historical records and found no documentation relative to such an incident. He suggested if I wrote to the Chinese Military Museum, in Beijing, I might chance upon something. (I did this and received no reply.)

Through Colonel Jeffrey Williams (Retired), who served in the First Patricias in Korea and a former Canadian Intelligence Officer, I was advised that neither the Chinese, nor the North nor South Koreans at that time possessed an agent capable of instantly killing 56 men. A bone-chilling alternative was developed as a strong possibility.

How did these men suffer the indignity of an instantaneous massacre? I was advised that only two nations had the capability of instant execu­tion resulting in a body being frozen in position: The United States of America and The Soviet Union. I was informed it was no doubt the Russians, who were known to have committed this type of annihilation previously in experiments upon their own people.

About this time I consulted a pathologist friend and described the con­ditions of the bodies and the temperatures at that time in Korea. I was informed they had probably been in place for three weeks to a month. This raises one vitally important question: which side in this war controlled the land at the assumed time of this murderous action?  The land in question was in both UN and Chinese hands during this time frame.

 The 56 died as a result of Biological Warfare.

Is this threat to be unleashed by some future world dictator, or mad man? We had been on Line Golden for 21 days, and I have often wondered what would have happened if we had come upon these contaminated bodies much earlier? Would I be here to relate this macabre story? What might have taken place in Korea had this weapon been unleashed upon us has haunted me, mostly in my nightmares, but they meld into my living days. It took me years to work through the horrors of this incident, and I thought I had. But I was hospitalized in 1999 with a herniated disk and morphine was administered to relieve the intense pain. The drug combined with my recent research brought forth the nightmares with a far greater harshness than in the past. Over and over I relived the cursed hell that forever permeates the soul. The nightmares are an experience that I never, ever share with anyone, not even a loving wife. The agonies of so many deaths in such varied and horrific circumstances, the stench of decaying bodies, the screams and agonies of the dying, both your comrades and the enemy that you were determined to destroy, are ingrained upon the psyche, never to be erased.

So many questions persist. Why would an experiment of this nature be conducted so close to the front lines? One would think it would have been undertaken in the greatest of secrecy, miles from the front. The required equipment was at the front. Had the enemy determined this devastating biological weapon would allow them to regenerate their failed Spring Offensive? If so, what stopped them? They could have made a disastrous and gapping hole in the UN line. Yet retaliation no doubt would have been swift and far more appalling, possibly engulfing the world.

continued page three...

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