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  1. LSWCHP's avatar LSWCHP says:

    The father of one of my oldest and dearest friends was a Vickers Machine Gunner with the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment at the Battle of Kapyong in Korea in late April 1951.

    if you’ve never hear of Kapyong, well, it was one of the greatest (unheard of) last stands of all time. A battalion of Aussies, a battalion of Canucks, some Kiwi artillery (always there when you need them), some Brits and a few American Tankers totalling about 2000 men were faced with 2 divisions (about 20000 men) of Chinese infantry surging south. So the bad guys outnumbered the good guys about ten to one.

    it was a fight for the ages!

    My friend’s Dad Donald (always know as Donnie) said he fired his gun on cyclic for hours at a time during the action, and although nobody will ever know, he thought he and his crew fetching water and ammo might’ve killed anywhere from 500 to 1000 men as they assaulted the 3RAR positions over and over again, without success.

    The battle lives on on Australian military legend. Kapyong Day, 24-Apr, is officially commemorated by the Australian government every year. One of the 5 companies of the corp of staff cadets at our Royal Military College (similar to West Point) is named Kapyong company. To give some idea of the importance of this battle to the Australian army, one of the other companies is Gallipoli company.

    I could go on and on. The Korean war is a little known and little understood conflict these days…largely forgotten, and that’s a tragedy, because it was the first time after WW2 that the combined forces of the free world stood side by side and fought off the communists. And here we are, near 80 years later, still fighting off the Goddamned godless communists, at home and abroad.

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  2. Wild, wild west's avatar Wild, wild west says:

    Thanks for the video, Shawn, and also thanks LSWCHP for your good comentary.

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