West Australians Killed in the Korean War

  On Thursday 27 July 2023 I had the privilege of attending the unveiling of the Perth Korean War Memorial in Kings Park.  The date was chosen as it was the 70th anniversary of the cessation of hostilities on the Korean Peninsula.  Close to 1000 people attended, including Korea’s Ambassador to Australia, His Excellency Kim Wan Joong, members of the Perth Korean War Memorial Committee, the Premier of W.A., other parliamentarians, representatives from the Australian Army, Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force, Korean War veterans and their families, members of Perth’s Korean community and other community members. The Perth Korean War Memorial is in the Tobruk Memorial Precinct of Kings Park, and it is a very peaceful setting. The peace was disturbed deliberately by an RAAF flyover of three Pilatus PC-21 aircraft from the Training School at RAAF Base Pearce. This flyover arrived exactly at 11am and the planes flew right over the newly installed memorial. T...

  Private Gerald Russell grew up in Armadale, south of Perth.  He is still remembered today in Armadale with a park in Hilbert named after him.  But in the years between his death in Korea and the park being named after him it appeared he may have been forgotten when the marble panel from the old Armadale War Memorial, commemorating his service and untimely death while on active service in the Korean War, was found in a rubbish skip.  It was luckily rescued and is now in Armadale’s History House.  https://collectionswa.net.au/items/26954f33-5871-4380-95b0-0e1e86cb7d79 In fact, Russell has been very much remembered since his death in Korea on 12 May 1953, even though at the time of his death he had already lost most of his family with his mother and the brother who was his only sibling predeceasing him. [i] Russell had a good friend Ian Mangan who he enlisted with and served with in the 3 rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, (3RAR).   Mangan was...

  Lance Corporal Ellis has an inspiring story that deserves to be remembered. There is a moving tribute to him on the Virtual War Memorial website. [1] Ellis was born in Harvey in January 1929 and spent his childhood and schooling there. Ellis’s father was a World War I veteran and a well-known member of the Harvey RSL sub-branch. The family moved to Perth in the late 1940s. [2] On his arrival in Perth Ellis first ran a milk round in Osborne Park before joining his father and brother in running a wood and ice round in North Beach. [3] After his father died in August 1950 Ellis struggled to make a living from the business due to unexpected costs, including vehicle repairs. These financial difficulties prompted Ellis to join the army to both support his young family and pay off the debts from the family business.   He volunteered for overseas service in Korea after being told he wouldn’t get promoted if he hadn’t spent time overseas. Ellis landed in Busan, Korea with the ...

  Flying Sergeant Laurence (Aussie) Haines was born in London on 4 May 1904. At the time of his christening his father was a clerk in the war  office. [1 ] Haines  worked as an electrical mechanic for 18 years and for Siemens in London for most of that time.   He married in 1928 and came to Australia with his family in the 1930s and went to Wiluna to work on the gold mines. [2]    It was while living in the isolated northern goldfields that Haines learnt that necessity really was the mother of invention. His ingenious inventions when stationed in Japan as a Non-Commissioned Office (NCO) with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) were featured in the Western Mail newspaper in Perth.    Western Mail 31 August 1950. p.43.  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article39104549 Haines enlisted in the Interim RAAF as an electrical fitter after moving to Melbourne from Wiluna in 1939. He had been in partnership in an electrical store in Wiluna which...

  Private King was a World War II veteran who volunteered for the Australian ground force for Korea, (K-force), in August 1950.  King was quick to volunteer for service in Korea despite spending several years as a Prisoner of War (POW) after the fall of Singapore. As a POW he was sent to work on the Burma Railway and was then transported to mainland Japan to provide labour for the Japanese war effort. Photo of Private King (Left) from the Western Mail Newspaper 17 August 1950  Alfred Victor King came to Western Australia in May 1932 as a Child Migrant. On the ship’s passenger list there are three King boys listed, Alfred who was about 10 years old and Herbert and Albert who were both about 12 years old. [1 ]   Were Herbert and Albert King Alfred’s twin brothers or was Albert King from another family altogether? Herbert King has an entry on Fremantle’s Welcome Wall that says Herbert came to Australia with his brother Alfred and joined their older brother Geo...

  Private Castle’s photo is on display near the main entrance gate of the UN Memorial Cemetery, (UNMCK), in Korea. On my visit to UNMCK in late 2022, my first thought was that his family must have paid a visit to this Cemetery, and I found out from my research that his sister, Dawn, and her daughter visited there in 2007.  Photo of Brian Edward Castle (Right) on display at UNMCK- Personal Photo December 2022 Castle was born on 18 April 1929 in Narembeen but did his schooling in Kalgoorlie. After leaving school he worked on farms and became a skilled sheep judge. There is an engagement notice in the Perth newspapers for Castle in July 1950, but his father is listed as his Next of Kin on his AWM circular so he must not have married prior to going to Korea.     Castle joined the army in November 1951 when he heard the UN were fighting to keep South Korea as an independent country. Following his basic training he was posted to the First Battalion of the Royal Aust...

  Private Kenneth Sketchley from Collie was one of the first casualties of the Korean War. His death made front page news across Australia at the time, and he is still remembered in Collie today.   Kenneth Sketchley was born in Perth on 8 January 1930.   His family moved to Collie to run the Colliefields Hotel in the mid-1940s. Sketchley enlisted in the army in Collie in about 1948. Sketchley spent several years in the Eastern States after enlistment. He was posted to Japan with the 3 rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR) in the second half of 1950 to train for deployment in Korea. Sketchley arrived in Busan, Korea with 3RAR on 28 September 1950. Less than a week later, on 3 October 1950, Sketchley was driving an officer in a Bren Gun carrier vehicle when the vehicle ran over a land mine, and they became the first Australian casualties in Korea. The officer killed with him was Captain Hummerston, the 2 nd in command of 3RAR’s C Company. The land mine ...