A man who earned the nickname Squirt while growing up was big enough to serve his country at a tender age.
Frederick "Ron" Mundle, who spent part of his youth in Turner Valley, enlisted in the Canadian military in 1952.
“I quit school and I worked for CPR, I was up in Saskatoon and worked for several people and then when I came back I caught a bus from Red Deer to Calgary,” said Mundle, who now lives in Okotoks. “I stopped at the PPCLI (Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry) and I just enlisted.
“I didn’t think I could do it. I told them that I was 19 and I was only 16.”
Mundle did his basic training in Kingston, Ont. before being assigned to his post – a place a long way from Seoul, Korea.
“They sent me to Whitehorse, they had a regimental base up there, the air force,” Mundle said. “I enlisted to go to Korea, I didn’t want to stay in Whitehorse.”
He said it was strange that suddenly Canadians were once again fighting overseas, a mere five years since the end of the Second World War.
“Don’t ask me what the political part of that was…” Mundle said.
He was a member of the Royal Canadian Electrical Mechanical Engineers in Seoul.
Mundle was one of the Canadian United Nations peacekeepers along with members from the United States, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, France and others.
“I went over as a welder and then I ended up in the driving part of it – driving people all over Korea and hauling things and stuff,” Mundle said.
He said while he drove close to the front lines, he was not directly involved in the combat.
“I drove up there the odd time, but actually that wasn’t my job,” he said. “I heard it, but to literally get down on the ground and to do like the PPCLI, that wasn’t my job.”
He ended up spending a year-and-half in Korea, re-enlisting after the war ended in 1953. He would serve in the military for 3 ½ years.
There were some unique perks in serving in Seoul. He and a friend were able to attend a performance with some of the biggest celebrities of the 1950s.
“Marilyn Monroe came over with (female actor) Terry Moore and Bob Hope at the American site and we got to see that,” Mundle said with a chuckle. “Later, my wife and I went to Hawaii, I had a Marilyn Monroe impersonator sit on my knee, which was great.”
He would return to South Korea in 2010 for the 60th anniversary of the start of the conflict along with his wife, Phyllis Taylor of Turner Valley, who has since passed away.
“The Koreans really respect the Canadians,” Mundle said. “We went to the ceremonies for the funerals – a lot of Canadians are over there buried.
“The Koreans paid for us to go. I think there was 28 of us.”
While Koreans celebrated the Canadians’ effort, he said unlike the Second World War, the men and women returning to Canada from the conflict did not receive the same recognition.
“When we came back there was no big parade or anything like that,” Mundle said of the war that gained significant recognition in Canada and the United States with the TV series MASH.
He found one other issue that came back to bite him when he returned home to Turner Valley – his age, once again.
“You had to be 21 to get married and my mother said: Here you can put up all these medals and I have to sign for you to get married,” Mundle said with a laugh. “I said ‘Like heck, you will, I been in the army and I have done this.
“But by God, she had to.”
Mundle returned to Turner Valley, but shortly thereafter went to B.C. and worked in the coal mines.
“I was there for about three years, moved back to Turner Valley and got into the oilpatch,” Mundle said.
He established a successful business, which sent him across Alberta.
Mundle is a member of the High River Canadian Legion, joining the service club before the establishment of the one in Okotoks.
He has laid the wreath in tribute to Canadians who went to the Korean War for the last several years.
Mundle has written a memoir about his life entitled His Nickname was Squirt.
