Six Young Recruits

Heroes Remember

Six Young Recruits

Transcript

The thing is that I was given these six boys. Some of them didn’t have any training at all and I was told to look after them, so I sent them... the way I got that, I was… they made me a sergeant, which they couldn’t do, and I was sending recruits to different places. They’d come up, send them to C Company or whatever, A Company or that. And Mr. Burns come along and says, “You keep the last six men.” And he’d already told me where my tent was, and I wondered why I’d have a tent. So these boys, I sent them back to the tent. Told them to go down to headquarters and get equipment. Of course they couldn’t. So I went down. Of course the quarter master didn’t have any record of me. I figured that’d be a big fight, but anyway, one of his clerks come along. They had a talk and he said, “Alright what do you want?” And I got mostly illegal weapons. Well the one guy... see there’s another thing. A private cannot go through other soldier’s documents. Of course I did, and found out that the one guy was a top Bren gunner in the regiment and he got sent down because he knew too much about Bren guns. So then I wanted a Bren gun. And the other guy, I had run onto him while playing ball. We played ball on the same team in Italy there, after we’d got there. So I got him a sniper’s rifle which, for anyone in, just an ordinary… a sniper would have to be with the head, with the officers and that, headquarters platoon. So then another guy, he was just a young fellow, 18. He’d been in the war, been in the army for four years and he’d gone to his, his father was a colonel in the Winnipeg Reserves, Fusiliers I guess. Anyway he knew too much. All he did was help his father. So they sent him down because he’d argue with the officers. The other guy, good Murphy that, was sent down because he was up for assault and battery. And Craig was sent down because he was in the post office department and the colonel was away at the time with his mistress and he left these letters there. And of course this boy’s job was to go through, see if there was anything illegal or subversive or something. And he mixed the letters up, sent one to his wife that should have gone to the mistress. So she was a might put out, I don’t know why. Anyway, that’s why he was sent down, to keep him from getting killed, beat up anyway. And the other guy was sent down, he was a motorcycle dispatch rider. He was doing tricks illegally and that and broke his leg. So he was sent down and he’d never fired a rifle, he claims. All they had was Tommy guns. And then the clerk, when I thought we were all set, and he said, “Anyone ever fire a grenade from a rifle?” he said, “You got a grenade thrower?” “Oh yeah,” this Hall said, “Oh yeah.” He said, “I’ve fired any kind of weapon.” So they give us one of those and that was a weapon. Well, ordinary you’d only throw so far, but he could shoot a long ways. He knew how to do it. He got a rifle that was in the last war and that’s what he had to carry. It was a way heavier than anything. Of course, his bayonet was about that long, just like a sword. The rest of them just had little spikes like. They called me sergeant, outside of the boy from the postal department. He called me Kocher. The other ones, they called me sergeant.

Description

Mr. Kocher shares the story of how he was commanded to watch over six young recruits who had been sent down from active service for various reasons.

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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