Opportunity to Play Hockey in Korea
Heroes Remember
We didn’t know when we were sent to Korea,
not me but people who were there before me,
didn’t know or at least didn’t have the
connotation that there would be a possibility
to play hockey on the river that froze
behind the lines and this happened.
And it was not far from,
when I got there it had become static
so that river was about
fifteen kilometres behind the lines.
It was within artillery range of the enemy
but we never got any shelling on the
hockey rink okay let’s put it this way.
The opportunity came to play hockey really
first of all the troops finding out they could
play hockey because that river froze and
froze hard enough that it could stand the
crossing of vehicles on the ice for a time so
we said if it can hold vehicles for surely we
can play hockey on it which happened.
And it happened that the Minister of Defence
who was Claxton at the time, Minister Claxton.
Honourable Claxton had visited the troops
before Christmas in ’51, yes, and he had
promised to send equipment and he did.
At the beginning people thought oh well
here’s a politician talking but he did.
So there was a round robin organized to
provide everyone to play hockey,
to provide teams from every little unit
and whatnot. And if the units were too
small they could get a couple of units together
and form a team for the competition.
In fact, that particular hockey rink was called
the Nijmegen Gardens and there are pictures
that exist to show that with a big sign on it.
That was quite a rally point because there’s
always competitions between units
especially in a theatre away from home.
This is our national sport and we had a
chance to play our national sport in Korea.
That really was the opportunity to get back
home in our minds. It got us closer to home.
And although some people didn’t play they
assisted to the game as spectators and they
cheered for their own units and so on.
Some of them had side bets.
It was something going because
the next day you could hear
the troops talking about it and so on.
This went on and, of course, the season
was rather quick. By mid-February the
ice had started to be too soft and
started to melt. But also we had to go
back on the line. And I recall the finals
and the semi-finals for this particular
round robin had to be played while we
had gone back on the line so the players
were back for two hours and back maybe
three hours and we were back to our
units after that. The question of
playing hockey, the main point
is that this got us closer back to home.
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