Korean War veteran still remembers coming home to Union Station

Dennis Hanagan –

Pete Gregerson used to work in the ventilation, sheet metal and air-conditioning business on the site of what is today Sunnybrook Hospital in the 1940s. It was an extension of the Christie St. Veterans’ Hospital at the time, he remembers.

Today, the 87-year-old former Downtown east resident is back at Sunnybrook—only now as a Korean War vet and resident in the hospital’s Veterans’ Wing.

Gregerson spoke to The Bulletin about his war experiences as he sat in his tidy, little room. He joined the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) 2nd Battalion after the Korean War erupted in the summer of 1950. The PPCLI set sail for Korea from Seattle in November 1950. Gregerson says it was a 139-day crossing and for some men the wave action was hard to take. “Some were sick as dogs, they never left the hold .”

In Korea, the PPCLI was stationed on Hill 677 during the Kapyong fight. Here, the Canadians maintained their position—vital to defence efforts—while inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. For their stand the PPCLI received the United States Presidential Citation.

A bugle that the Chinese would blow before a night attack was unnerving, Gregerson recalls. “They would blow that bugle which was very demoralizing. Once they started blowing that thing they would make a raid.”

The Canadians, on top of Hill 677, were greeted by a frightening sight on their third day. “All of a sudden we looked down and I swear there was 20,000 of them (Chinese soldiers). They could have ate us for breakfast,” says Gregerson.

But a strange thing happened. “All of a sudden they turned around and left,” he recalls. By then, all the North Korean soldiers were gone, most of them dead, says Gregerson.

After Korea, Gregerson took up residence on Boulton Ave. near Broadview and Gerrard. He has three daughters and one son. He’s lived at Sunnybrook for the past six months.

He remembers arriving back in Toronto following the war and his dad and his youngest son were at Union Station to meet him. Gregerson still has a tattered clipping of a photo of that reunion published in the Star.

On Nov. 11 Gregerson expects to attend Sunnybrook’s in-house Remembrance Day service.