Description
Mr. Cote recalls two instances of his unit being called for support - one for requested friendly fire - against North Korean and Chinese forces.
Antoine (Tony) Cote
Mr. Antoine Cote was born on the Cote First Nation Reservation, just outside of Kamsack, Saskatchewan. During his youth, Mr. Cote endured 7 long years of detention at St. Phillips Residential School. In 1952, Mr. Cote, age 17, enlisted in the Armed Forces, and was assigned to the 81st Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery. After training, Mr. Cote and the 81st Regiment were shipped to Korea in March 1953. Mr. Cote returned to Canada after serving in Korea for 14 months, and re-enlisted for another 3 years before retiring from the service in 1958.
Transcript
It all, at times it was pretty quiet, at times it was pretty, pretty hectic, or what I would call pretty hectic because we weren't with the infantry units, we were their support. Whenever they got runned over that's when they, whenever they got attacked , not runned over, whenever they got attacked, we would have, we would have to provide artillery shelling for them in order to keep the enemy at bay. But when the, but when the Chinese decided, now the north Koreans decided to overrun some of the infantry battalions, they overran them, and then this way they would have to call on friendly fire upon themselves which we did on... I remember May 3rd, May 3rd and 4th 1953, we had to provide friendly fire for the, for the Royal Canadian Regiment, an infantry battalion in front of us, they were getting, they were being runned over. The lieutenant at that time, who was a, a lieutenant was the guy that called friendly fire so they can keep, so we could keep the enemy a bay, you know, prevent them from running over them. There was another couple of nights there just prior to the, prior to the cease fire, cease fire occurred July 27, 1953. July, I always remember those nights because those were the most terrible nights there, that we had to, we had to fire our guns. July 15th,16th or 16th ,17th , around in there. We had to take up for the ROK Army, that's the South Korean Army again, they were being runned over by the North Koreans and the, and the Chinese. And they called, they called us to support them, provide them with artillery fire and we did that for two nights and got, in fact, one of our, the, the, the artillery guns got so hot there, we had to cool them off with gunney sacks. We used to have a barrel of water on the side there, if that ever happened, that to cool them off. We just dipped those gunney sacks into the water and put them right over the barrel to cool the, cool that big muzzle off you know. There was one gun there it's and it's, I've always been amazed why number three gun, I was on number four gun, that number three gun just split right, right down the, right down the barrel, just like that, just split like that. And yet, the shell went right out, instead of exploding right there. It went right out and it was useless, the gun was useless and it had to be replaced. But we went, we went and looked at that gun the next morning and couldn't believe how it, like I said we were firing hundreds of rounds that night, round after round there. And the Korean army at that time there, they really appreciated the support that we gave them.