"Now the point about the significance of the battle is this - that if A Company and Don Company had failed, and the Chinese had poured through Kapyong undisputed, then they would have been behind the capital of Seoul, they'd have been behind all of the major headquarters of the United Nations army. And the result probably would have been, almost certainly would have been, a withdrawal of the United Nations army from Korea. That is plain to anybody who studies it from a military point of view.

"What would have happened from then on, in broad terms, is fairly easy to work out. If the Americans had been chased out of North Korea, the question is, would they have ever gone to the rescue of South Vietnam? Without American intervention in South Vietnam, what would have happened in the remainder of South East Asia. And so on and so forth, until we could well have been looking at a situation where Australia was the only outpost against communism in the whole of the South East Asian area."

SERGEANT JACK GALLAWAY