Description
Mr. Buote describes being a sniper in a reconnaissance unit, and being assigned to collect and deliver data on German positions, movements, or anything unique that would enhance Allied maps.
Peter Buote
Peter Buote was born in Rustico, Prince Edward Island in 1924, the youngest of 7 children. His early years were spent in an orphanage. After moving to Moncton, New Brunswick he left school at age 14 and went to work in the Minto coal mines. At 16, he went to work at a dry-cleaners. Despite being of age, Mr. Buote was turned down for Naval service because he looked too young. He later joined the Regina Rifles and was involved in the D-Day landing. He served as a sniper in Europe. Mr. Buote also served in Korea, and after returning to Canada, operated a dry-cleaning business.
Transcript
So when we got to headquarters, we met the lieutenant there, this is the first time I’ve met the lieutenant of my platoon and he told us that they were organizing a special platoon called the intelligence section. I was picked as a sniper. I told the lieutenant, “Hey I’m an anti tank man. I’m not even a good shot, I’m only second class.” He says, “We’re not going by that,” he says, “we’re going by your IQ.” And I said, “Well!” My idea of a sniper was seeing movies with guys shooting people and I thought that’s not for me. But what he explained was that as snipers go forward into no-man’s land with the scouts and look for enemy positions, artillery positions, troop movements, ammunition dumps, petro dumps, anything that you can see because at the time our maps were pretty old because the Germans had been there for four years now, they built roads and so on and so forth which wasn’t on our maps. So, therefore, the ground, foreground had changed quite a bit. So this was one of our jobs to go forward even into enemy territory and spot positions like this, take map co-ordinances, get them back to our unit; they would give the information to the air force or the artillery and then they would either shell them or the air force would go in and take care of them. So that was the basic, our main job was gathering information so that when the next attack went in, when we attacked again, they’d know the
ground that they’re going over to, where the dead ground was, minefields, etc. which would
help in our next attack.