David W. Cameron, ‘We punched well above our weight’ Australians in the Battle of Kapyong, Korea

25 April is eternally associated with the Gallipoli landings, but there is another ferocious battle fought by Australian troops on that date which deserves to be better remembered. That battle is the Battle of Kapyong, waged in the so-called ‘forgotten war’, the Korean War. Between 23-25 April 1951, with exceptional valour, fewer than 1,200 Australian and Canadian infantrymen, supported by New Zealand artillery and 15 American Sherman tanks, held the line against a Chinese Division of over 6,000, significantly thwarting the formidable Chinese August offensive and helping to save Seoul. Hear the incredible story from David W. Cameron, author of Let the Bastards Come: The Battle for Kapyong Korea.

David W. Cameron is a Canberra-based author who has written numerous books on Australian military and convict history, as well as human and primate evolution, including over sixty internationally peer-reviewed papers for various journals and book chapters. He received First Class Honours in Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Sydney and later went on to complete his PhD in palaeoanthropology at the Australian National University. He is a former Australian Research Council (ARC) Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Australian National University (School of Archaeology) and an ARC QEII Fellow at the University of Sydney (Department of Anatomy and Histology). He has participated and led several international fieldwork teams in Australia, the Middle East (Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates), Europe (Hungary) and Asia (Japan, Vietnam and India) and has participated in many conferences and museum studies throughout the world.