Peter MacDonald
This month, marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, which began on June 25, 1950. Between 1950 and 1957, nearly 4,700 New Zealanders served in Korea. Of those, 45 soldiers lost their lives, 33 of them killed in action. Their service, like that of so many from small towns and quiet communities across New Zealand, is still remembered by those who knew them, and often by the people they helped on the other side of the world. The Korean War never formally ended and, while it’s long been called “The Forgotten War”, it was anything but forgotten by the New Zealanders who served.
Two of them were from Otago, my father, Peter MacDonald, and his brother, Douglas MacDonald.
Douglas was part of the first New Zealand contingent to enter the war in 1950. He served as a gunner with the 16th Field Regiment, supporting Commonwealth troops on the front lines.
My father Peter arrived later, in August 1951, as a driver with the 10th Transport Company. His job was to move supplies ammunition, fuel and food, to and from the front lines, and over mountains, through blizzards and often into danger. The convoys he drove in were lifelines for the soldiers moving continually in the to and froing of warfare operations, ahead.
But war wasn’t the only story he brought home. What he remembered most was the moments of quiet compassion.
One particular day during that bitter winter of 1951, my father was driving at the tail end of a long supply convoy. In whiteout snow, he took a wrong turn and lost sight of the rest of the column. Driving alone on an unfamiliar road, in near-zero visibility, he spotted a small, dark form ahead in the whiteness. It was a child recently abandoned, still warm. Most likely, the boy’s parents had left him there hoping a soldier would stop.
My father stopped. He lifted the boy into the truck and sat him on the engine cover inside the cab, where warmth from the motor could stave off the cold. Then, navigating back by instinct, he rejoined the convoy that was moving to a British battalion base. There, he handed the child over to medics. The boy was eventually placed in a UN-supported orphanage.
This wasn’t an isolated event.
There’s a photo from the same winter showing Kiwi soldiers from the 16th Field Regiment, with my uncle’s unit kneeling beside another young Korean boy, trying to comfort him with gestures and magazine pictures to translate communication and comfort the child.
This wasn’t unusual. It was common. Kiwi troops regularly encountered orphaned or abandoned strays as they called them: children in the snow, left behind by desperate families in the hope that Allied soldiers would rescue them. And more often than not, New Zealanders did.
These acts weren’t written up in dispatches. They weren’t done for recognition. They were just done quietly, instinctively. That’s the kind of men they were.
The journey to Korea was as dramatic.
In August 1951, my father and 599 other soldiers boarded the Wahine, a converted inter-island ferry operated by the Dunedin founded, Union Steam Ship Company. She was loaded with troops, artillery, gear and 20 tons of Speight’s beer. They were farewelled at Wellington Harbour by Prime Minister Sidney Holland, then sailed to Sydney for several days.
After departing Sydney, two days out, disaster struck: the Wahine hit an uncharted reef in the Arafura Sea.
The captain acted quickly and decisively. He ordered full throttle, running the ship aground on the reef to prevent her from sinking. The plan worked.
Before long, the stricken vessel was surrounded by canoes and local islanders armed with clubs and spears. They tried to board the ship from the low-lying stern. The officers, the only armed men on board, with their side arms, ordered the crew to repel them with fire hoses. hosing them off the sides. It worked. The canoes retreated.
Several hours later, the oil tanker Stanvac Karachi arrived and took the stranded soldiers aboard. They rowed out in lifeboats and all men were saved thanks to the captain’s quick action.
Once the Wahine was abandoned, the islanders returned and stripped the vessel bare. In a surreal moment, they tossed the beer overboard in disgust and drank the soft drinks instead, all watched by the bemused Kiwis aboard the rescue ship, who found great humour in the event.
But something else left a lasting mark. The night before the reefing, a storm-battered albatross had landed on the Wahine’s deck: an omen of death in old sailor lore.
After they were rescued, while safely aboard the Stanvac Karachi, the Māori soldiers, around 200 of the 600 men, gathered together and placed a tapu on the name Wahine, declaring that no ship should ever again bear that name. It was a deeply felt cultural warning, rooted in spiritual insight and tradition.
But the warning went unheeded. In 1968, a new Union Steam Ship Company vessel named Wahine sank in Wellington Harbour, with 51 lives lost. Many who remembered the tapu believed the omen had come true.
After returning to Sydney, the men were flown in shifts by US transport planes into Korea. There, they joined their comrades in the mud and snow of the front.
My uncle Douglas, already in-country, took part in one of the war’s most significant battles: Kapyong, on Anzac Day 1951. When South Korean lines collapsed under a mass Chinese frontal attack, the enemy broke through charging directly toward the Commonwealth forces. In a moment of last resort, the Kiwi gunners did something no army had done before or since: they leveled their 25-pounders flat and fired at point-blank range.
It was dangerous, desperate and it worked. The Chinese advance was halted: the Commonwealth Division held the line, and a massacre was averted.
Meanwhile, my father kept driving. Day after day. Hauling supplies over cratered roads and frozen rivers. Navigation was by compass, instinct and luck.
They weren’t hardened killers. They were ordinary young New Zealanders: practical, resourceful and quietly brave. What made them remarkable wasn’t just what they did in war, but what they did when they saw a child abandoned in the snow and stopped to help.
I grew up with these stories. Told without bravado. Sometimes with a chuckle. Often with a long, thoughtful, silence.
My father often wondered: Did that boy survive? Grow up? Ever wonder who pulled him from the snow?
Like many who returned, my father didn’t come home unchanged. He carried what was once called shell shock. What we now call PTSD. The deaths and injuries he witnessed and sometimes had to take part in for survival left deep marks. He self-medicated with alcohol, as many did, and it sometimes placed a strain on our family.
But with my mother’s unwavering support, he rebuilt his life. We had a home filled with love, strength, and faith. I grew up in a Christian family, where kindness, service and resilience were daily values lived out, not just spoken.
So as we remember the Korean War and those who served, let’s also remember what they brought home. Not just stories of war, but examples of compassion, courage and humanity.
That’s who they were.
And I hope, in some way, still are...
