Between 1950 and 1953, nearly 30,000 Canadian volunteers joined the effort to contain communist incursions into South Korea and support the fledgling United Nations. All the services were there and all served with distinction. The Royal Canadian Navy led a daring rescue of troops from the port of Chinnampo in 1950; members of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry won the highest US battle honour at Kap’yong in April 1951; the Vandoos turned the tide at Hill 355; and twice – at Hill 355 in October 1952 and Hill 187 in May 1953 – members of the Royal Canadian Regiment held firm against forces that greatly outnumbered them.

The navy and the infantry were bolstered by the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and Lord Strathcona’s Horse tanks, as well as members of the service, medical, engineers, provost, chaplain and intelligence corps. Still more, from the RCAF Thunderbird Squadron, took part in the Korean Airlift – three years of non-stop supply flights across the Pacific.

Not a soldier, but the soldier’s storyteller, not a veteran, but recognized by vets as keeper of the flame, TED BARRIS has published eighteen non-fiction books, half of them wartime histories. He has worked as a broadcaster in electronic media in Canada and the US for forty years. He is a full-time journalism professor at Toronto’s Centennial College and the author of the online column the Barris Beat. His book The Great Escape: A Canadian Story won the 2014 CLA Libris Award for non-fiction book of the year. His latest book, Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen in the Secret Raid Against Nazi Germany, is a national bestseller. 

Ted Barris' profile page

... transports the reader to the front lines... Barris's book stands as a fitting memorial to an almost forgotten war.

Maclean's

... readers will enjoy (and admire) the personal recollections of battles where young Canadian soldiers were the difference between defeat and glory the latter being the norm.

National Post

... well-researched, exciting and compassionate... the author leaves the reader with much to ponder. He does this through word pictures that are much more evocative than the yellowed snapshots of the debacle that we have all seen. His description of front-line fighting is at times chilling, similar in many respects to scenes in Saving Private Ryan.

The Globe and Mail

Ted Barris brings us a vivid account of one of the century's most important, but often overlooked, conflicts. Canada played a key role, and the contributions of this country's brave warriors are recognized at last.

Lloyd Robertson, CTV News