Description
Mr. Leduc shares a story about using real weapons during a training exercise where one of his fellow soldiers is stabbed.
Harold Leduc
Mr. Harold Leduc was born on November 18, 1953 in Montreal, Quebec. He was the second oldest in a family of five children. Mr. Leduc’s desire to join the military was influenced by his strong military family background and at age 12 he began his journey by joining the cadets, followed by the reserves and then the regular forces and was posted with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. In 1976, Mr. Leduc joined the Canadian Airborne Regiment as a paratrooper. During his service he became a member of the Pioneer’s Platoon with in-Canada service and later joined the Reconnaissance Platoon with service in North Carolina. Mr. Leduc retired from military life in 1992. He continued to be a strong advocate for the military and held the position of National President, Peacekeeping Veterans Organization.
Transcript
I was in another incident where I just think I need to mention this because let people know the severity and how difficult training is. We trained for an unarmed combat demonstration and we usually train very safe but we use real things, real knives, real whatever, but we let people judge if they’re going to feel safe working with an open blade or whatever. In this case somebody had authorized a change to an act and a soldier was stabbed in the heart. I ended up giving the guy CPR because we thought, we didn’t see any blood coming out of his chest. I ended up giving CPR and actually pump the blood out of his heart, but you do what, you know, you react instinctively and the poor guy died. You know that is some of the stuff you still got to live with, but the point is, is that, that’s real. Although that was a unarmed combat demonstration, the troops are training for unarmed combat all the time because you might have to use those skills when it comes down to it.