Canadian Losses at Hill187

Heroes Remember

Canadian Losses at Hill187

One other particular area, 187 and that was a, that was a major activity there for our Charlie Company, the 3rd Battalion RCR. They were overrun and we lost quite a few people that night. I wasn't in that particular company. I was Able Company but I was about, I was about 400, 300 yards or so from where these people were being mauled. And I saw, you know, a lot of shelling, a lot of mortar rounds, a lot of loss, a lot of high velocity stuff coming in but nothing to equal that. There was a little hill there that Charlie Company positioned and at the peak of that attack that hill was literally bouncing. That's how it looked, it was at night and it was just amazing. How anyone survived on that I'll never know. And coupled with our own or with the enemy fire on that hill, we also had our own artillery and mortars coming in on the hill. That we called fire, our lieutenant called fire in on top of the enemy. They had overrun the position. And so, that meant that in order to prevent a major breakthrough, they had to shell that position, or call fire in on their own people on that hill. The next morning it was clean up time and it was an awful mess. A lot of our guys were dead and, I guess the feeling that we had was numbness, anger, and absolute wonder. You know, this was war, this is real, this is, there was no doubt in anybody's mind that these things were going to happen but when they finally did happen, it was hard, difficult. We went on and we did our patrols. We had our listening posts to look after. We did recce patrols, we mounted fighter patrols out into that valley. And after that 187 situation, I think that we did have control of that valley even though we took a terrible mauling on that one hill. And I guess it said that the Chinese or the North Koreans, whichever, both of them I guess at that time were involved with the... I think what it said was that the Canadians, the new, they were the new, new boys on the block, the 3rd Battalion, are willing to go to whatever length it takes to hold their positions and there's no difference in the ones that went before.

Mr. Ferguson describes the Canadians being overrun on Hill 187.

Luther Ferguson

Luther Ferguson was born in Mayview, Saskatchewan on October 23, 1933. He describes himself as being “unworldly, poorly educated and having low self-esteem.” Mr. Ferguson felt that the Army offered him the best opportunity to both further his education and improve his life. He enlisted in 1951, and soon found himself a combatant in the Korean War, where he served in the infantry. Mr. Ferguson’s accounts lean heavily on the psychological impacts of training and warfare, and the devastation experienced by the civilian population during the Korean conflict.