Part Of The Royal Canadian Regiment

Heroes Remember

Part Of The Royal Canadian Regiment

Transcript

When we got there to Taranto, the RCRs that I was with were going up a hill, and the Germans going down. The Americans caught the Canadians going up, machined gunned them, and there was hardly any of them left. So we were, any of us that come from Africa, were transferred to them. So that’s how I come to be in the Royal Canadian Regiment. We were sent up there and we got to the headquarters. And the boy with me was from Stettler. That wasn’t very far from where I lived, and he’d been with me quite a while. And we were standing together and they split us. Never seen him again. And the next morning, well, it took us three days to get to Ortona. And we had kind of a warm up while taking the town of, can’t think of the name of it now. Anyway, we got to Ortona and the first... we were in D Company. This Locke and I got into the headquarters with the officer, and the batman, runner, sergeant like that. And D Company went one side of a building, C went the other. And we were following along behind, and in the documents the officer said the C and D companies, the men were dropping like flies. We come out of that with the four of us, the sergeant, the runner and Locke and I. And the only reason we came out was because the sergeant was shellshocked. And he disappeared right away after that. And the runner went to help the ambulance and I think he got shot too. So Locke and I were on our own. We couldn’t go back, because we got ahead of the tanks. And those tanks had tracks like that in the mud and they were shooting over our heads. So we crawled down that, and down the bank and into the gully. And that gully was never taken until February, and this was the 18th of December. We crawled over Germans and Canadians laying in the ditch. We didn’t know where we were going to go or how we were going to get out of that. And I was pushing my rifle ahead. It got hit at the piling swivel and cut in two and blew the shell and everything back there, just below it up, and it went past my ear. I don’t know how it missed Locke, but anyway, knocked me out. I come to… I hear him pulling on my leg and trying to see if I was still alive or what. So then we decided that was enough and started crawling back out of that. We got back to... finally got in with the Royal Canadian Regiment and there was hardly… they couldn’t find any D Company, and C Company was just about as bad, so we went with them.

Description

Mr. Kocher explains how he became part of the Royal Canadian Regiment and witnessing the high casualty rate among Canadian troops during the battle of Ortona.

Lyle Kocher

Mr. Kocher was born in Clive, Alberta on June 2, 1918. He was the youngest in his family with three brothers and two sisters. After six years of school he decided to quit and help his father with farming. As a young boy, Mr. Kocher joined the Royal Fusiliers of Edmonton Reserves. He enlisted in Edmonton and then went to Calgary for basic training. Mr. Kocher spent much of his army life in Italy and Africa. After returning home he wrote a book about being a Canadian soldier during the Second World War. In it, he shares his story of lost innocence and self- discovery.

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