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In Their Footsteps: July 10

This Sunday night's finale of In Their Foosteps features the story of Stanley “Stunna” Johns.

This Sunday night will be the finale of In Their Foosteps featuring the story of Stanley “Stunna” Johns, a legend to his army mates in three wars.
“Stunna” was a bloke you could always rely on in a stoush – and through service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam he saw plenty. In Korea he helped to keep waves of Chinese forces at bay in the crucial Battle of Kapyong in 1951.

But whatever victories “Stunna” had on the battlefield mattered little to his son Steve, who now lives on the NSW mid-north coast. As a boy growing up in Bendigo he knew only a father who was “a monster of a tank of man” who drank too much and brutalised his wife and kids. Stanley might have been a legend to his mates but at home he made life a war zone.
Today, Steve is 51 and he wants to know just what made his late father behave so badly towards the family. He believes the answer lies in the mountains and trenches of Korea – among the reminders of a war that Steve knows very little about. He’s not alone, because for most Australians Korea is the forgotten war.
This is a deeply personal story about life’s lingering scars; the way we are shaped by our earliest experiences; and how war leaves its mark long after the guns have been silenced.

It airs Sunday July 10 at 6.30pm on Nine.

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