The Bendigo retiree will attend a ceremony and plaque unveiling at the Kangaroo Flat Soldiers Memorial next Wednesday.

A new plaque dedicated to those who served during the Korean War has been erected on a granite plinth as part of the upgrade to the Soldiers Memorial.

Mr Gerdsen said the men fought in trenches and battled tough conditions.

“I first went out there in October 1952,” he said.

“It started snowing in November and one time it got to 32 degrees below zero.

“You’d be in trenches eight foot deep and there would be rats and all.”

Mr Gerdsen trained at Puckapunyal and was then posted to Kure, Japan.

“They said, ‘Forget everything you’ve learned in Australia, we’ll train you’,” Mr Gerdsen said. “By god it was hard – they made us climb mountains and everything to get us fit.

“And they trained us to kill.”

Mr Gerdsen said the harsh realities of war affected people in different ways.

“I killed three men in one night,” he said.

“I can still see it to this day.

“You’re trained to kill so you’re happy when you do it.

“But then you realise they had mothers and fathers, too.”

Mr Gerdsen still gets emotional when he talks about the mates he left behind.

“There’s nothing like the mateship you find in the infantry battalion,” he said.

“You rely on them and they rely on you.

“You’re like a family.

“The funny part was when the war finished we had to go and pick up our dead and wounded and the enemy did the same thing.

“We met, shook hands and had a smoke together and we thought, ‘What was the war for?’.”

Mr Gerdsen is one of just a handful of Korean War veterans still living in Bendigo.

Members of the State Korean War Veterans Association from Melbourne will conduct the ceremony at Kangaroo Flat next Wednesday, January 18, at 11.45am.

All Korean War veterans and their families are invited to attend.