To his army mates, Stanley “Stunna” Johns was a legend. A bloke you could rely on in a stoush. Through his service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, Stan certainly saw a lot of stoushes. In Korea, he helped keep the waves of Chinese forces at bay in the famed and crucial 1951 Battle of Kapyong.
However, whatever victories were had on the battlefield mattered little for a young Steve Johns, who now lives on the NSW mid north coast. As a boy, growing up in Bendigo, VIC, he knew only a father who was ‘a monster of a tank of man’ who drank too much and brutalised his wife and kids.
Stanley may have been a legend to his mates, but at home it was a battle zone. Today, Steve is 51 and wants to know just what it was that made his late dad behave so badly. He believes the answer lies among the mountains and trenches of Korea – among the reminders of a war about which Steve knows very little. He’s not alone; for most Australians, Korea is the forgotten war.
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