3/400473 Cpl Goudie Kenneth c. 1RHU Hiro 3/52-6/52 1RAR 6/52-3/53 2RAR 3/53-6/53.

I was in K-Force which was a volunteer force for Korea. There were about 800 from Victoria. The casualty rate was about 25%, killed and wounded. I was there from June '52 to June '53 and I was with the 1^st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. they went home in march '53 and I had to stay on a bit longer so I was with the 2^nd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment. One of my jobs was mapping mine fields. We were in no-man’s land. We had a lot of casualties from the mines so we mapped them all onto air photographs. Apart from dodging constant shelling and being on a few ambush patrols that’s about all I did.

What war were you in?

That’s the Korean war. North Korea and the Republic of China on the North Korean side. The United Nations were on the South Korean side. That war went from 1950 –53 and then after the truce there was a strategic reserve in operation. North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950. United Nations with 21 nations then came in defending South Korea at South Korea’s request. Fighting went on for a while then China came into the war in late 1950 I think it was, then the battle went on for about another year and ended up roughly along the 38^th parallel which is at present the area of the de-militarised zone between North and South Korea. At that time the war became a trench warfare type of war with constant shelling on both sides. We shelled them and they shelled us, mortar bombs and stuff. That went on until July of 1953. Then after that there was a Strategic Reserve that Australia was involved in until 1957. But there are still American troops there and some United Nations staff there. They are still at logger-heads, North and South Korea – they will never learn.

How did you come to be fighting for your country?

The Government advertised for people to assist the United Nations. There were advertisements in the local papers and my father was in WW1 and my two brother’s were in WW2 and it was sort of part of the family. The United Nations required people so I volunteered in the Special K-Force. You interrupted your career for a couple of years to do the right thing. It sounds a bit idealistic but I suppose it was in a way.

How old were you when you went?

I had just turned 21.

How many men were sent overseas to fight?

In the Australian Army there were about 8000 or 9000 altogether. It started off with – altogether there were about 17000 including Navy and Airforce. The Australian fighter squadron – 77 squadron – they started off with inferior aircraft. They had a very high casualty rate. About 40 pilots were lost. There was one battalion of infantry that was sent across from Japan. It was the 3^rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment and they were part of the UN army team. You know there’s a division, then 3 brigades, then 3 battalions in a brigade and then 3 companies in a battalion, then 3 platoons in a company, then 3 sections in a platoon. We started off with one battalion in a British Infantry Brigade which was part of a British Commonwealth Division. That was Canadian, New Zealand, Indian Field Hospital, Australian and some South Africans and I didn’t see them. So the short answer is a total of 17000 including Navy, about 8000 Army. We were only allowed to stay there for one year because of the climate – we lived in holes in the ground and slept on frozen ground. And from a health point of view, the powers that be said one year – you were rotated. After one year you were sent home. So 8000 means that maybe a maximum of 2000 were actually in the line at any time. Considering that the Chinese had over a million troops – there were 2 million deaths in Korea during the Korean war. Civilians and army. Terrible war. A lot of those were civilians. When you say 339 killed in action from our small force, and there was a million there. I don’t know how many Americans were lost, I think there were about 6000 – 7000 killed. So it wasn’t a small little conflict.

Could you describe a day during the height of the conflict? How you ate, slept and what you did?

When I was there it was a static trench warfare and I spent a lot of time out on patrols so my time – it was good for me because I was anywhere in the battalion, I used to go to the various companies. Our allies over here, then there’s no-man's land, then there’s Chinese lines over there. In between, there’s all these various mine fields. You see a lot of publicity about mine fields and Princess Diana wanted to stop these mine fields. Well we have always wanted to stop these mine fields. But mine fields are put in – say you’re the enemy and we’re the friends – we put some there, some there and some there so that if you attack me you’ve got to come through there so we’ve got all our rifle fire onto the gaps. So that’s why the mine fields are there. There was so much shelling in the minefields that this fence was put around them. Just a single barbed-wire strand so that the enemy knows that they are mine fields and that they will come through the gap. Then we can get our defensive fire there. My job was to find out where these mine fields were because we lost track of them. We lost a lot of people because our patrols would blunder into these minefields. So, I’m a civil engineer by trade and I had done a lot of surveying, even though I was in K-Force I was just an ordinary Private. But the Army strangely enough said Goudie has special skills. He is a professional surveyor. We will get him to map them onto air photographs. Some of the time I had to do them at night time and because there was a chance of being captured or hit I had to leave the air photographs up in our bunkers. I would memorize bushes and things and go down and find bits of the fence, memorize it, come back and mark it on the air photograph then go out again throughout our forward patrols. The big danger there was if they were getting a bit sleepy, coming back in they might think I was the enemy and shoot me. So there was no routine as such. In the winter time it was very, very cold. The clothing we had was British Army issues. It started with a string vest and various shirts but there was no real routine. Once a week we got American rations if it was possible and that was turkey. Turkey once a wee. Most of the time we just got hard rations. The food was quite good. If the weather was very cold I remember them boiling up, the cooks trying to boil up water to make a cup of tea. The water was boiling but the ice was still across the top of the copper. So it was pretty cold.

What are your strongest images that will remain with you from your experience during this time?

I suppose dodging shells – that what’s I particularly remember. I used to go out on ambush patrols to get an idea of the lay of the land. But there was constant mortar bombing and constant shelling and because I was doing all this survey stuff I was out in the open a lot and I used to watch for indentations in the ground and when I heard one coming I would just dive into that. So that still I remember that clearly. The first shell fire I had, we were preparing to go out on an ambush patrol in a company and we were all standing around waiting to go out when suddenly these 5 shells came in. They were 25 pounder shells from New Zealand artillery that had dropped short. We all dived for trenches which you do, and I dived for this trench which I thought wasn’t very deep, and it was about 9 feet deep. I had grenades around my belt and they fell off the belt, luckily they didn’t pull the pin and I smashed my rifle. The wood work on the rifle was smashed. So I got a new one and we still went out. But nobody was hurt except my feelings that I had picked a deep trench. The casualties is always the worst part. It’s like Easter on the Victorian roads – you have a patrol that goes wrong and all these people that get killed. Shrapnel wounds, that’s the unpleasant side of it. The pleasant part is to meet somebody after many years and to recall having had a beer with them. That’s nice.

How real is the idea of Aussie mateship?

Very real, I would have to say with those people who served together for a long time. I didn’t strike true mateship in that sense because I was K-Force not regular Army. I went into a section which was all regular Army and I was the only K-Force person. They had been together for years and there was a bit of a seclusion thing. A lot of the people who were rotated in found the same thing. In retrospect at the time, I was doing all this survey stuff, so I didn’t really have much to do with them. One occasion I was out for 2 days and when I got back, I hadn’t had a sleep or anything, they let me sleep and I slept for 22 hours. They let me sleep so that was good mateship. In later life you run into these people. There was one fellow who I didn’t know in Korea but I remembered him from Puckapunyal. I went into an ANZAC day march here some years ago and I always thought of him as an intelligent person but he was a real larrikin. A true larrikin. He used to get drunk. He hasn’t had a drink now for 30 years as I see him frequently now. I didn’t know anybody at this march because I had been overseas all the time and then I went up to Queensland for several years. Three of our children were born up in Queensland. This guy came up to me and said " Oh, rowdy Goudie – gooday". I looked at him and he said "Unconscious". We used to call him unconscious because he was always drunk. Then I remembered him straight away. We speak on the phone now once or twice a month and that is the real essence of mateship. It takes time to cement relationships. But that’s a good example. There’s a number of others like that.

Did you stay in the trenches?

Well when we were in the line we were in the trenches or no-man's land on patrol all the time.

What were the conditions?

Terrible, terrible. The trenches were just an open trench. The hutchies where you slept was a hole with a cover on it. There were places where you’d fire and places where the trenches were deeper and they sought of zig zagged. In the winter you could not bath or wash your clothes. If you tried to wash your clothes they just froze. You couldn’t dry them, they just went solid. I think I went about 6 weeks without a bath or a wash of any sort. You just couldn’t. We were sent on leave to Tokyo and when we got into the reception centre in Tokyo and we marched into a big, long shed sort of thing. All our clothes were stripped off us and we all had showers and new clothes. It was unpleasant. I’m talking Army. The Navy used to call the Army "Pongers". You didn’t smell yourself. We shaved which was painful but you weren’t allowed to grow a beard. In the summer it could be very hot and very wet.

Very humid do you mean and did you have a lot of trouble with your feet?

Yes, yes and I still have a bit of trouble with my feet. Being a reinforcement as such I spent 3 months in Hiro. It's a reinforcement holding unit in Japan. We were terribly fit. We used to do a 28 mile march twice a week with full pack – forty pounds on our back. Plus we used to get Sunday’s off. We were very well trained. Harumura battle school which was the old Japanese marine barracks at Harumura. Everybody had to do a course there. In fact we were practising a patrol in Japan and it was my turn to lead – there was about 100 men – and I was map reading and got up to the top of the hill and there were 2 Sergeants looking after us and I think they must have gone down to a village for a beer or something but they left us alone. After about ½ an hour the Sergeants hadn’t come so we went back to camp. The claimed that it was the wrong hill. That this famous Goudie "Map Reader" had led these 100 blokes up the wrong hill. Don’t put that in the report!!

Did you want the war to end?

Yes I certainly did. Absolutely.

How did your fellow comrades feel about the war?

Everybody wanted it to end. There were peace talks going on in a place called Pan Mun Jong. They were attempting to get a truce organised but these Generals were in nice comfortable quarters. I don’t think they were particularly worried about it ending. Finally in July 27^th 1953 a truce was declared and I had left in June so I was back home here. I had done a quick course in Agriculture because I wanted to buy a farm sometime in my future because I had been brought up on a farm and the truce was signed while I was at Dookie College. I remember clearly the day.

Did you celebrate that?

No, I didn’t. I would have like to but at that time I was a 23 year old in a college of 17 year olds and the nearest town was Benalla which was 20 miles away. There was no booze on the college and if you celebrate by drinking a couple of jugs no I didn’t. Pity.

What were the keys to survival for the troops?

The main thing is to be able to be attuned to hearing shells coming in and diving. When I was doing this mine field stuff I had a special mine field walk. I thought if I’m going to get something done I’d get a foot blown off rather than anything else blown off. So I used to put one foot forward and press down. Being attuned to hearing a mortar bomb coming because they had a whooshy sound or a shell coming which had more a streaky sound. You got extremely accurate in predicting where they’d be. You might get a little bits of shrapnel going around but I was never wounded. The main thing was to just watch out. Those who were wounded were in those patrols where they ended up with fire fights – patrol battles. The other thing was to stay out of mine fields because we had so many of these people killed. Have you heard of "Digger James" who’s the National President of the RSL?

No.

Well he was the platoon leader, a Lieutenant. He walked into a mine field with his patrol and he had his foot blown off. A very good friend of mine was a stretcher bearer and he went in and looked after him while they cleared a path to get him back out. So he survived and went on to become a Doctor because he couldn’t be an infantry man any more and he ended up as a Major General. Head of the RSL.

Being involved in the war how did it change you?

I want to tell you about that. I mean that was funny, in retrospect but it wasn’t nice. The reason I showed you that was that guy Roy Longmore who is veteran of Gallipoli. He’s just had his 104^th birthday. Two years ago at Waverley – I was secretary of Waverley Sub Branch – and I organised a Korean War Publicity Campaign. Got all the Korean Veterans to march. We had Major General Hughes who was in Korea. At the end of the march we had a dedication – and at the end of the service we had this tree. You have heard of Lone Pine at Gallipoli? There’s a tree there, a lone pine and this tree descended from a seed of that tree. Somebody had saved these seeds and there were a few around. So I got hold of that and we planted it there with Roy Longmore there representing the 1914 – 1918 war, and we had various people came right through representing each of the wars. WW2 Europe, WW2 Pacific and then Korea, Vietnam, Malaya/Borneo and the second last one Somalia and the Gulf. We handed this tree starting off with Roy Longmore from WW1 and formally handed to the next one then the next one. It was passing this representation on then at the end planting it as a memorial to everyone for anti-war.

This certificate shows all the flags of the 21 Nations who served in Korea. Some of them were medical units and this is for the war memorial in Canberra. We are hoping to start in the year 2000. That text gives a little bit of history of the war and that bit there – you read that. That bit there gives you the answers to all your questions.

(Interviewer reads out of a book.)

Harsh winter living conditions endured by entrenched front line troops meant that clothes and bodies would freeze if washed. Ungloved hands froze to metal rifle parts. Sub zero Siberian winds swirled across frigid mountains and frozen rivers. And the troops endured these hardships under the continual nerve racking, gut wrenching shock of shot and shell.

(Mr Goudie speaks again.)

I designed this certificate– that block shows the medals we earned and there are 3 during the and that end one is for after the war.

What message would you like to deliver to the youth of today in regard to the issues of the war and peace?

Peace beats war. I saw recently where there were 23 conflicts currently going on now. So we haven’t got much hope of stamping them out. I think the main thing is have an understanding of what war means. To those who are involved in it – civilians and services. If people in power had more understanding of the terrible thing that war does to civilians and others then maybe they’d lose their ideas of conquests through war. Maybe, I don’t know. Just having an understanding of it. The politicians are the ones that do it. We don’t. Somebody gets a bit insulted. You know at school if somebody gets a bit insulted so you start a group against that group. In ex-service organisations its very pronounced. That group against this group. Then finally they come good. I think the bible says there shall be wars and rumours of wars someone once told me. That’s a truism I’d say. Somehow or other we have to be strong enough not to be threatened. If you’re strong enough you won’t be threatened. If you’re a black belt karate champion you’re strong and I’m an ocker farmer there’s no hope of me punching you in the nose because you’d break my arm. So by strength you have peace. Maybe if your everyday life if you’re fair – strength I mean can be morally strong too. Not only physical strength. If you have high moral concept then you’re a lot safer from attack. I was thinking then of the drug war. It's not very different from a shooting war. Because they shoot up. I have 4 children and 4 grandchildren.