Guns were Constantly Moving

Heroes Remember

Guns were Constantly Moving

Transcript

With the artillery now, there’s not much, shall we say, hand to hand combat. It wasn’t a war, particularly like that but it was a very hilly country and the high spots, the tips of the mountains, shall we say, everybody wanted to be there because they could see everything, see. So you could look out there in the daytime if you looked through your glasses and that and you could see nobody but the China men were there. And you’d see the American aircraft coming down and dropping these napalm bombs, jellied gasoline on them, you know. And then during dusk then you’d probably have targets figured out during the day and then they'd fire about dusk. Probably two days you wouldn’t fire a round at all but the gun, shall we say, a quarter mile away from you you’d be going, it’s all according to, I don’t know, it‘s probably hard to explain but if they wanted all the guns to fire, they’d just command all of them. But if they only used the shell from one gun, shall we say, to get on the target. This gun here would be moving, all of them would be moving like that but this one would only fire. Now when they wanted a shell to get ranged in on his target, he’d say, “Fire by order,” or “Brigade fire.” Well then every gun then would be following these rules and regulations, shall we say, and then they would call, “Brigade fire,” well then the whole seventy two guns in the brigade then would, boom! Then they’d say if you wanted five rounds of gunfire, well every gun then would fire five rounds. Well that would be, there’s seventy two guns in the brigade five rounds each, well that’s four hundred rounds. By the time you got them well you were stone deaf then, anyhow. Now if you heard a shell he was gone overhead, don’t’ worry about him, he was gone. It was the one that you didn’t hear, you’d listen for that or a shell was coming in or… The Chinaman, they never had very much, shall we say, in heavy artillery. They operated in a sort of a single man, a two-man group like and they had these bazookas, you know. They'd drop down a shell and then they could move then anytime.

Description

Mr. Mercer explains the strategies involved in setting targets.

Leslie Mercer

Mr. Leslie Mercer was born June 24, 1927 in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Being a child of the Great Depression, he went to work at the dockyard at a very young age. He was too young to volunteer for the Second World War but when the Korean War broke out he was quick to join with the Special Force. He became part of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery as a bombardier. After spending a year in Korea, Mr. Mercer returned to St. John’s, Newfoundland, married and raised a family.

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