Feature Article July 10, 2003
LAND O' LAKES NewsWeb HomeThe High Price of WarThe Korean War ended in July 1953. More than 500 Canadians were killed, and hundreds wounded in that war.
Kent Killingbeck of Snow Road was one of the wounded. He joined the army in 1951, when he was 18 years old, and in September of 1952 he was shipped to Korea. On May 2, 1953, he was wounded in action. He was only 20 years old and his legs were ripped by shrapnel.
Terrible years followed. He was sent to a Mash Hospital in South Korea. From there he went to a British Commonwealth Hospital, also in South Korea; then to Kure, Japan. Next he was taken by train to Tokyo for a considerable stay. From Japan he went to Midway Island, then on to Hawaii, then to Travis, California and Tacoma, Washington. At every stay he was worked on by doctors. Then he was sent to Calgary, from Calgary to Deer Lodge in Winnipeg and finally to Rockcliff Hospital in Ottawa, where he spent six months. The nerve damage in his leg was so bad that they sent him to Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, where he spent a year with the best specialists, in a plaster cast to his waist. In all, he spent two years in hospital.
This is the 50th Anniversary of the Korean War. It was the war that was never talked about, but there are people who have to live with the results of that war every day.
