The Korean War Veteran Internet Journal for the World’s

Veterans of the Korean War

August 10, 2013

Do you remember Private Stanley Mudd,

SL 991 who was killed in action in Korea

off the Hook position on December 6, 1952?

While in Korea recently I received a message from a Veteran who lives near

Moosonin, Saskatchewan, asking if I could tell him about Stanley Mudd, a soldier

who had served in Korea with both the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the Princess

Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. The veteran wrote that the local branch of the

Royal Canadian Legion knew nothing about his service, nor did Stanley’s

surviving sister.

So this I can say about Stanley Mudd,

whom I knew and served with, at times

under a hail of bullets, and was with at

the time of his death by enemy

machinegun fire on December 6, 1952.

I do not know much about Stanley’s

Canadian service. I believe that he was

part of the large draft from 3rd PPCLI

that deployed to Korea in March, 1952.

However, he wore parachutist wings,

which would indicate training with the

1st Battalion, which had been the regular

force unit of the PPCLI until it was

urgently assigned on Korean War

service in September, 1951.

Private Stanley Richard Mudd

September 30, 1930 – December 6, 1952

I met up with Stanley Mudd on a wretched position called the Hook. He was in my

company but I had never met him before when we had been behind the front lines.

Our Company of the 3rd PPCLI had been seconded to the British Black Watch

(Royal Highland Regiment) to aid in a counterattack on the much shot up Hook on

the early morning of November 19, 1952. Stanley was one of us and the morning

of the counterattack had been absolutely horrible and still was that night.

The Hook coordinates: Military Grid Reference System CT 103104

N38 1’30.87 x E126 50’18.48”

The Ronson coordinates: Military Grid Reference System CT 100103

N38 1’27.40” x E126 50’6.28”

I had charge of a small fire team of four soldiers and was holding a narrow finger

of the Hook that actually dipped down and then connected directly onto enemy

positions called the Ronson and the Vegas and a little to our right, Green Finger.

Our job was to hold back the enemy if they hit us again that night.

The night before they had used that route, but they had also swarmed over the

ramparts of the main firing trench that was behind us, and came storming from the

saddle called Green Finger, and a little further along behind us had hit the Hook by

rushing up the saddle of ground that connected with the outlying hill called the

Warsaw.

There were enemy soldiers on the slopes within a hundred yards of us and on the

saddle and flat areas even closer in than that. Shortly after night fall they had

penetrated the Hook – one should just say they trotted onto the undefended ground

beyond us, got behind and in between my few men, and the men all withdrew to

hover with me while the enemy continued to circle around us.

I shot up the closest soldiers who actually crept slowly, step by step to within 10

yards of us and we had then taken refuge in the Ronson tunnel – a deep tunnel dug

into the shale where we were supposed to go once we called shellfire onto our own

position.

Next morning I would eat a can of cold C rations within five yards of a soldier my

bullets had killed. He had been hit in the face and the bullet took off most of the

back of his head when it exited. He had a burp sub machinegun that was secured to

his neck by a string. It had a drum magazine mounted, but his vest held many box

magazines. In a fraction of a second more he might have fired first with that

wicked small gun and shot our hovering team to pieces.

This is a portion of the fighting trench that I defended with my team of four

men. During the night of November 18-19, thousands of enemy and allied

shells had blasted every foot of it to rubble. The shallow trough where the

shovels are positioned once was shoulder deep and in some places well above

the defending soldiers’ heads. The position was littered with many bodies of

the Black Watch and the enemy. The dead were removed under fire in the

early hours on the morning of November 19. This is where I met Stanley

Mudd in the darkest night of that same day and we went out to meet the

enemy.

After that shoot out, when we were back in the fighting trench, and my shaken men

were back at their posts, I heard a wireless hissing and popping. I looked down the

trench. It was terribly dark, but I could make out the silhouette of a soldier moving

my way. When he got closer I could make up the whitish disc of his face.

Very close up I could see the face smile.

“I’m Mudd,” he grinned. He seemed not afraid, but when one is nervous and going

out to meet the enemy grinning and laughing and such sometimes is a nervous

reaction. But he seemed cool.

The assignment was utterly horrible. I was to turn over command of my team to

one of the others and take a Bren light machinegun, the same weapon I had shot up

the Chinese soldiers with, to reinforce Mudd’s small listening patrol. He had been

eager for it but was not in charge. The man in charge was the very calm Carson

Hutchins, also a private soldier who for some reason was never promoted to higher

rank. Hutchins carried the Number 88 set wireless.

None of it was fun. We crept down the slope, got into a trench. We then crawled

and at one point had to crawl over an enemy body. There was a coil concertina

barbed wire drooping down into the trench at that point, so we had to slither over

his bloody remains, with the barbs teasing at our backs from above.

We eventually got out of the hellish shallow trench and made to the top of the

Ronson. Hutchins could hear very little as he had the wireless earphones over his

ears. However, when Mudd and I caught up to him we were able to let him know

that while we had moved up the slope, enemy troops had come to the foot of the

hill.

Hutchins did a strange thing. He called into the speaker of the wireless:

“Hey buddy! My men have detected enemy around us! We’re coming in. I think

there’s gonna be a fight!”

More than 60 years later I remember those words very clearly. I also remember the

radio call sign that we were supposed to use. It was “This is Hubbard Two for

Hubbard Three Baker. Do you read me, over?” Anyhow we used it only once and

then Hutchins used his own “Hey buddy!” call sign.

Hutchins also said to me, “Bren gun in front.”

So we went wading down the hill with me leading and Mudd following Hutchins.

We kicked up lots of shale grits that went rolling and stomped down boldly to

where the enemy movements last came from.

Near the bottom of the slope all three of us fired and there were muzzle flashes

from the enemy, two or three of them. We fired off our magazines, moving flat

footed and I remember looking toward Hutchins and Mudd in a strange scarlet

glow and there they were, blasting away with their Sten submachine guns.

I would learn later that the pink light was from the scarlet tracer bullets that had

been fired at us by Corporal Tonkins, who I think came from North Bay, Ontario.

He had first fired at the enemy, then saw our three weapons flashing and turned the

Browning machinegun on us. Some of the bullets had spanked the ground between

us, but luckily he had a stoppage on the gun. He was shaken later when he learned

that, but for the stoppage, he could have shot us all down.

The exploit seemed right up Mudd’s alley when we tumbled over the rampart into

our own fighting trench and Hutchins reported on the wireless that we were “Home

free.” Mudd seemed very happy with the events, wanted to get more ammunition

and get right back out there. There is a certain cockiness that gets into your blood

when your nerve is up, but he had an extra ration of it.

The Chinese used both their own and Soviet manufactured burp guns,

equipped with either a 72-bullet drum or a 45-bullet box magazine. Often the

soldier came in with the drum magazine affixed to the weapon, but wore a

vest with many backup box magazines as well. Most soldiers who faced this

weapon were especially fearful of it, a tad moreso than they would be of facing

someone with a rifle or pistol. The bullet was not very powerful, measuring

7.2 millimeters in diameter (.30 cal) and its power began to wane after the

first 50 yards. However, it fired in a rate of 900 rounds per minute, so that a

2-second burst loosed 30 bullets in a deadly close knit swarm. The bullets had

a fairly small cone pattern, much like a small caliber shotgun and so if one

missed, hopefully all did. The horror was if all of them hit. They were less

powerful than the American .30 caliber M2 carbine that many Canadians

carried, and had a slightly faster rate of fire. Stanley Mudd faced down a

soldier with a burp gun and unfortunately took most of a short burst.

I must make clear, there is that cockiness, that sense of daring do, that taking of

chance, like skydivers and such do today to get their “rushes” and such, but here

was a dare that involved facing somebody else who was intent on killing you any

way that he could, and on hurting you, giving you great pain, and blowing you to

bits with grenades and mortar bombs and shells. So cocky or not, there is much

fear there and one’s heart is banging, but this grim sense of “the chase” does come

into play at times.

At others, when machinegun bullets have put their wind on your cheek and every

time you try to raise your head, some come clashing and flashing blue on the

ground near your face, then you feel more like puking and the hope is that you can

get out of it and live for another day, or even another hour – and not necessarily

having in mind so that you can fight on another day!

All of us knew abject fear at times. On the Hook, as daylight left us and night

rushed on, for instance, all of our voices rose an octave and most of us felt flu-like

symptoms, for entering night was akin to going to one’s grave. That is the sense of

it and that is how it was, though all of us had to deal with it as best we could and

not let it show. Just before going out on a patrol it was not uncommon for a soldier

to shake and shudder uncontrollably, with his teeth rattling. The adrenaline comes

into the blood and one is near powerless to control its effect. That does not mean

that he is yellow, or will not do the job that has to be done.

I must add that while prospects of men you cannot see creeping up and putting

bullets in you is grim enough, in such an instance you have equal chance to put the

bullets into them. The thing no man can fight against is the incessant, sudden

waffling whisper of mortar bombs that drop straight from the sky, and which were

the agent for death and suffering for nearly all of our casualties.

One of our soldiers was hit by fragmentation and lost a hand and an eye. One,

Corporal Charles Pond, lost both of his legs. Some of our soldiers, like Lance

Corporal Roger Leach, were torn apart by the blast and the shrapnel. And every

night, the enemy pumped mortar bombs into the air, and no matter where you

stood on the Hook, one might come down on you.

Another view of from the Hook fighting trench. The section of culvert was

used to form an observation post port hole through the trench rampart, but

the trench has been blown in around it. On the night of November 18-19, 1952,

the Hook was blasted by thousands of Chinese contact shells and mortar

bombs. The British, Canadian and other allied artillery units fired air burst

shells onto it after the enemy overran the forward platoons.

On the last of the three nights when our few men were holding the Hook the enemy

sent a large force to ground out around the Warsaw. Sergeant Thomas Prince, our

battalion sniper sergeant was on a long range patrol with one of his snipers, and

came on them. We had only about 40 men holding our section of the Hook that

faced Vegas, Ronson and the Warsaw. Prince told me there were more than 200

enemy soldiers in the formation and they were chattering and would soon come to

visit us.

I was with him alone in the defensive tunnel opposite the Warsaw position, which

was out about 700 yards to the knobby Warsaw by walk, and perhaps 500 yards as

the bullet travels. Prince had been wounded in the knee by mortar bomb

fragmentation coming back in.

He showed me the wounds by candlelight in the tunnel and said he had pried the

flecks of shrapnel out with his clasp knife – which, despite its name, was a Boy

Scout pocket knife with two blades and a small can opener blade. A small legend

arose that Prince had cut the shrapnel from his knee with a bayonet, but that is an

elaboration by people who were not even there. There were only two of us present

in the tunnel.

It was hell for the next half hour as several allied artillery batteries blasted the

Warsaw and the saddle that connected to the Hook. Many of the shells were placed

within twenty metres of our trenches and the shrapnel swathed the hill and the blast

and concussion made our ears ring.

After each bombardment thousands of chunks of secondary shrapnel whirred in the

night air, humming and zinging as they gyrated at high speed, seemingly floating

for us harmlessly, but smacking the rampart with terrible force and skopping along

senseless, hitting over and over again. They might take off your head if one hit you

right.

Now Mudd and I met up once again. Major Oop McPhail, our company

commander, ordered our platoon lieutenant, Ian Anderson, to send out a patrol of

“fighting strength” and to make it clear to us that we were not coming back in. If

the enemy still came for the Hook, we were to stay and fight and stay even when

artillery fire was put on us.

I will say that I felt noble and actually, very powerful. Here was a mission we

likely would not return from. Here was one where we were ordered to hold to the

death. You leave regular thoughts and regular life behind you at such a time and

join with your comrades in this very strange business. Actually, you think you

probably will not be coming back, but the job to do is out there and that is your

destiny and where you and all thoughts must go.

Old Pop Malone, a World War Two veteran, was given command. He shouldn’t

have been. It was a bad mistake made by our platoon commander because Malone

somehow had found some liquor and was a good way into his cups.

Nonetheless, he took us far out on the saddleback ridge that led to the Warsaw, to

where we could plainly hear the enemy whispering, and he put us to ground

without much of a defensive plan. We formed a kind of horseshoe of our own

volition. He pulled a parka up over his head and smoked a cigarette beneath it –

with the enemy pistol shot close!

I was beside Norman McGugan, a corporal who now lives in

Ancaster, near Hamilton, Ontario. He was manning a Bren light

machinegun and his moustache was thick with ice. He looked most

miserable. He seemed to have the look of one who would not be returning to the

Hook. Except for Malone, who had booze in his blood, it was a common feeling.

Corporal Norman McGugan

Section Leader with 8 Platoon

3rd Battalion, Princess Patricias

Stanley Mudd may have felt that way, too, but he was going to milk things for the

adventure to the end. The ubiquitous Mudd was all over the place. He had crept

forward stealthily, hoping to shoot up the nearest Chinese soldiers, but as he

padded to them they went silent, which was good, because we wanted no shots

fired unless it was essential. We were there to hold and not to harass the larger

enemy.

He kept going off on his own, one time pursuing a couple of enemy soldiers who

had come closer to us. He always grinned when he came back to me and McGugan,

like a school boy making his whispered report. He did a fair job of moving in utter

darkness, without a sound until he was quite close to you. He was excited and

quickly whispered his exploits, as though he wanted someone to know what he had

done out there, in case he never returned next time.

The author (right) with Stanley Mudd, the day after returning from the

counterattack and three day and night defence of the Hook position. They are

unwittingly drinking a daily ration of beer (one bottle per soldier, cost 25

cents) while sitting on the altar in a Korean cemetery. Whoever sited their

platoon position was a fool, for they were dug in on the lower slopes of the

cemetery and live in two-man slit trenches. Each day they could see the

American fighter bombers swoop down and strafe and bomb enemy positions

that were close to the U.S. Marine front line, which was less than one mile

away. Each night they could hear the harassing machinegun fire from the

marines, and on many nights, their clashes as they hit the enemy or the enemy

hit them in patrol actions. Absurdly, it was at this time that the commanding

officer of the 3rd Princess Patricias decided the soldiers needed to improve

military courtesies and discipline. He ordered the rifle companies to practice

saluting and performing small arms drill, which C Company did, having just

come off the Hook, and absurdly marching and going through the manual of

arms with allied planes peeling down and strafing the enemy. They could hear

the chugging roar of the planes’ heavy machineguns, see the brown smoke furl

from their noseguns.

It was not an easy night, it was a horribly freezing night and we watched rockets

fired onto the Ronson feature to our left, and watched shells explode sometimes on

the Hook after they whistled above us. It was always a comfort to know they were

passing overhead, for we heard them first as faint whistles on the horizon and then

the boom from the cannon muzzles as the sound reached us, then we listened to the

whistles building. Until the last second or so we did not know if the shells were

destined for the Hook or for the ground where we lay.

We withdrew in daylight and it was a wonder we were not all shot up but we got

home safe to our trenches. Black Watch soldiers had come to relieve us and the

rest of the company was preparing to leave the Hook. We had lost 12 comrades,

either killed or wounded, out of the roughly 60 who had first gone onto the Hook

in the counter attack three mornings before.

As we left the position there was a horrid stench of death wafting over us.

American graves registration soldiers were removing the rotting bodies of two

American marines from one of the blown in bunkers. The marines had been killed

in action there roughly three weeks before when their companies had been attacked

by the enemy. On the night of that attack the marines had more than 100 casualties

and one of their officers, fighting on the Warsaw feature, was posthumously

awarded the Medal of Honor.

Behind the lines Mudd was not much on talking about the war. He was not a

would-be “hero” and he did not brag about what we had done at the front.

I remember we had finished lunch and were sitting on a hummock, we did not truly

know what it was, but disgracefully we were seated on the stone altar of a Korean

grave and the burial mound was to our rear and two of the large icons guarding the

gravesite were at our sides. We thought they were ancient ruins and did not

understand that we were desecrating a contemporary graveyard, if one desecrates

when he does not know the evil he is doing.

We watched American Shooting Star jet fighter bombers strafe the enemy ahead of

the U.S. Marine positions that were less than a mile from us, and we took our

meals in mess tins and did extra training, particularly shooting and shooting by

night.

For some reason night shooting had been left out of the Canadian Army training

syllabus and few among us knew how to gauge targets in darkness or semi-

darkness and make compensation for the distortions from the widely opened irises.

There is a tendency for some reason to shoot high at night and it is only with will

power that one learns to depress his fire, although he thinks he will be way off

target. It was very revealing that, while many of the soldiers had wilderness or

frontier backgrounds and had done much hunting in the wilds in Canada, few were

very accurate shooters over open sights at a range of 200 yards.

Our snipers could drop a man at 700 to 1,000 yards with their telescopic sight

equipped Enfield rifles, but there were very few of them.

In semi-reserve position behind the U.S. Marines after the counterattack and

three day defence of the Hook position. The platoon not only had very little

night fighting training but also was far short on how to use a wireless, too.

Here, practicing use of the 88 wireless set is (left), Corporal Tonkins, a twice

wounded World War Two veteran who came close to shooting Privates Mudd,

Hutchins and myself with his Browning machinegun on the first night on the

Hook and Corporal Norman McGugan, who was with me on the seven-man

fighting patrol on the third night on the Hook. Later, when he learned Stanley

Mudd had been killed, her fired his Bren light machinegun into the enemy

position and roared at them with great anger.

Mudd was teamed with the soldier named “Pop” Malone who had led us on the

fighting patrol near the Warsaw. He was a soldier probably in his mid to late

forties and a veteran of World War Two. He was a very heavy drinker and in fact a

disgusting one when he was in his cups. If he’d been drunk it was not uncommon

for him to awaken with urine sopped pants.

It was ugly to see him wake after he had been drinking the abominable Korean

whisky called Lucky Seven. It really wasn’t whisky, but partially fermented

Korean rice wine, thick and with an odor like vomit. He would wake, start belching,

then plop a hand hard over his mouth to keep his own vomit from spewing out. His

red cheeks would puff out and he would swallow the vile vomit back down, but

often it sprayed between his fingers.

No matter, Stanley Mudd liked him and this seldom happened when Malone shared

the same trench with him in our semi-reserve position behind the marines.

We did not know that we would lose several soldiers a few days later when we

returned to the Hook for a two-week deployment. We sensed that we would, of

course, and it made the few days of respite frosty ones. Mudd would be one of

them.

Mudd had been selected - probably volunteered - to go on a firm base patrol with

Staff Sergeant Vernon Cole. Cole was an American Canadian, who was born in

Flint, Michigan. In May, 1953, he would be awarded the Military Medal for

bravery in the field and he would retire from the Patricias as a captain.

He still was in training, though. He had joined the Patricias less than two months

before, coming straight out of the Royal Canadian School of Infantry at Camp

Borden, Ontario, where he had been an instructor. Instructing and leading under

fire are two different things.

He was always eager to take the heat and I had taken him on his first patrol, the

first night on the Hook, two weeks before. After that he had gone out repeatedly,

looking for trouble.

Cole had a dozen men and moved to a position not far from the Hook, just below a

shoulder on the Vegas feature. Lieutenant Peter Worthington from D Company had

a platoon-size fighting patrol much further out, with the mission of attacking new

diggings where the enemy was believed to be establishing a new outpost.

Peter Worthington passed away just a few weeks ago and many celebrities

attended his funeral in Toronto. One of them was Madame Adrienne Clarkson,

who is now the Colonel in Chief of the Princess Patricias and before that was

Canada's Governor General.

Cole's patrol was to provide a fire base through which Lieutenant Worthington's

men could move if they got into trouble and were pursued in by the enemy. Others

on the patrol included Fred Schooley, Sully Sullivan, Smitty Smith, others.

On Lieutenant Worthington's fighting patrol his signaller was a soldier named

McNamara, from Chatham, Ontario. One of his Bren gunners was an enormous

soldier nicknamed “Tiny.” One of his section leaders was Corporal Francis

Kincaid, from Penticton, British Columbia.

They hit the position which was far out and their 30 weapons created an enormous

din. The enemy bugged out on them and they suffered only once casualty

themselves. Corporal Kincaid was hit by a ricocheting bullet in the stomach and

tugged down the slope by his heels by one of the men closest him.

McNamara fell and damaged nerves in his arm.

After the firing subsided all hell broke loose on Stanley Mudd and the men of the

firm base patrol.

One would estimate that six to eight machineguns opened up on them. They were

at the foot of slopes leading onto the Vegas feature, not a very defensible position

at all, and the enemy were on the high slopes above them. They had light

machineguns and burp sub machineguns, all opening up at once with long bursts.

The bullets were coming in swaths. Those who have never been under very close

fire can never know how one is sickened almost to icy stiffness when they feel the

wind of the bullets and hear their wicked subtle dirge. It is a feeling and a sound

that never goes away.

Staff Sergeant Cole told his men to fend for themselves and let his patrol come

apart. He apparently thought it suicidal to rush against unseen machineguns,

especially with hundreds of bullets coming in bursts. Most crawled and some ran

for the cover of a long trench that was 20 or so yards behind them – and where

they should have been positioned. Putting them forward of the trench on snowy

slopes had been a terrible mistake and made the men well silhouetted sitting ducks

for the gunners above them.

For all of that, none of them had been hit in the first salvos. Private Golden had a

bullet burn through his wool balaclava hat and it put horror into him that would

never leave. The signaler’s wireless was hit with bullets and destroyed and he

unfastened it and slithered away.

But not everyone made for the trench. Young Shorty Hannon, said to be 15, went

up the hill toward the enemy. So did Stanley Mudd.

Shorty crawled near one of the machineguns, stopped it from firing with a well

thrown grenade.

Stanley Mudd waded into them, firing his British Sten sub machinegun as he went.

He could not see the enemy gun flashes and was charging the sound of their guns

and flash from his weapon blinded him. Somehow, the Chinese ambush squad

were able to conceal the muzzle flashes from their weapons.

He was lined up with one of the enemy shooters and took a full burst of bullets

from the soldier’s burp sub machinegun. It was a horrible little weapon with a very

fast rate of fire. The bullets came out in a close swarm and anyone hit by one more

likely would be hit by several from the same burst, as was brave Stanley Mudd.

Some will say it does not hurt to be shot, but that is an absurdity. Sometimes, when

a bullet kills nerve as well as tissue, that may happen. Sometimes the shock of the

bullet’s impact deadens the nerves.

But Stanley hurt. He yelled loudly. One bullet had broken his shoulder, four more

hit him in the torso, passed through his alleged bullet proof flak jacket and

penetrated vital organs.

Private Sullivan, I think he came from Calgary, came running to him along with

Fred Schooley, who lived for many years after the war in Kittimat, British

Columbia. They grabbed onto him and Mudd said simply, but with agony, like in

one of the war movies, “They got me.”

He groaned and sobbed some with pain as they lugged him to the trench. They

were still under fire and the bullets hummed around them. In the trench it seemed

that Stanley Mudd was dead, but they were not sure.

Shortly after that Corporal Len Steadman came down from the Hook with a few

men and shot up some of the enemy. A Bren gunner with him who came from

Prince Edward Island shot it out with two of them. Two of them fired at him, then

withdrew in panic and ran into a coil of barbed wire and they screeched as he kept

shooting them.

Some of the soldiers lugged Stanley Mudd back to the Hook, up the slopes, along

the fighting trench and down the rear slopes to the medical aid post of Corporal

Bill “Newt” Newton.

Newt cut off Stanley Mudd’s flak jacket and tunic and sweater and the pyjama top

he wore beneath it for warmth. He confirmed that the good soldier was dead.

Viewing his young friend’s remains, with another friend, Art Bent, at his side,

Malone vowed that he would never wear a flak jacket in action again. Bent agreed

with him.

The composite plates in the jacket distorted the bullets and changed their trajectory

and caused them to do much damage as they passed through into the soldier’s body.

The cartridge of a burp gun is not very powerful, for the bullets are meant to spray

at very close range. Yet all of the bullets had passed through the front panels of

Stanley Mudd’s flak jacket.

It is noteworthy that on Stanley Mudd's left forearm there was the tattoo of a rose,

with the inscription, "Mom and Dad."

Later on the Hook, some of the soldiers located Stanley Mudd’s Zippo cigarette

lighter and presented it to Pop Malone. He was close to tears and accepted it most

graciously.

He scrunched up his face and he said something most memorable to cover his

sorrow and help younger soldiers who mourned for young Stanley Mudd to carry

on with their duty.

“Them what live by the sword shall perish by it,” Malone said simply, but not

really so simply. He thought that he, too, would perish that way, and all of his

comrades were so destined, too; that it was a matter of time. It was something a

soldier must accept, and Mudd indeed had been a soldier.

Then Stanley Mudd’s remains were taken by truck to the Casualty Clearing Point

at Yongdongpo, documented, and then taken by truck once again to the United

States Military Cemetery at Tangok, near Pusan. Today it is called the United

Nations Memorial Cemetery and Pusan is spelled with a “B,” as Busan.

Private Stanley Mudd, Canadian Army serial number SL 977, was wrapped in a

square of tent canvas that was tied around him with thin communications wire that

is used in the field telephone systems. His body was lowered into a grave at 10 a.m.

on December 13, 1952. A chaplain said a prayer over his grave.

He was buried next to Lance Corporal Roger Leach, who had been killed in action

on the Hook by two direct hits from mortar bombs, on December 9, three days

after Stanley Mudd had been killed by enemy sub machinegun fire. I had seen

them carry Roger Leach’s remains down a communications trench that night.

He had come on my friend, Claude Petit, who was shivering in the fighting trench

on watch. Roger Leach sent him into a bunker to have a cigarette and warm up.

As he stood in the exact spot where Claude had been standing a mortar bomb

hissed down and exploded on his shoulder, killing him instantly. There was a

second bomb in the air and it came down right away when he fell and burst inside

his chest. The poor soldier was eviscerated and most bones broken and blown from

his body. What remained was on a stretcher, beneath a blanket.

I knew it was Roger Leach because he was a short man. Strange how you come to

know men by their shapes and sizes but seldom learn their first names, sometimes

even their last.

“The killing still goes on,” I said to one of the stretcher bearers in the darkness. I

did not know then that Roger Leach had been killed by mortar bombs that, but for

his care for the wellbeing of my friend Claude Petit, would have taken down poor

Claude, who had just turned 16.

Claude would be wounded by shrapnel not long after that.

Stanley Mudd has been buried in Grave 1371 these past 61 years.

At the time of his death, he was survived by his parents, Arthur Edward and Esther

Mudd of Moosomin, Saskatchewan, by is brothers William Edward, Arthur James,

Albert, Ronald and by his sisters Esther, Kathleen, Elaine and June.

The author has visited Stanley Mudd’s grave every year for going on 20 years now,

as well as the graves of many other comrades who fell in Korea.

Survivors of Stanley Mudd are eligible to return to Korea to participate in the

Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs bereaved family program, with their air

fare and all of their expenses in Korea paid for.

Anyone who can expand on the service history of Stanley Mudd is welcome to do

so. Comments can be sent to the Korean War Veteran or directly to veteran

Kenneth Colborn, kencol@sasktel.net who is putting together a history for the

Royal Canadian Legion so that the young soldier from Moosomin, Saskatchewan,

can be better remembered .