Friendly Fire

Heroes Remember

Friendly Fire

Transcript

Interviewer: During the, either the Italian or the Holland campaigns, did you ever run into any incidents of friendly fire where your group was fired upon by allies? Yeah....... Interviewer: You did? Where was that? Oh, I don’t know just where it was at, but if we were advancing and the artillery was firing, unless they had perfect control, they fired the barrages. And then they fired for so long, and then they raised them and the infantry went in. Well, sometimes they’d go too far. Or sometimes they wouldn’t raise them. Because everything had to be synchronised so, it was just pretty nearly perfect. Because the artillery barrages … it was just a steady go. And then they lifted their range ahead and fired for so far ahead. And it was … it probably … there never was that much, but there was some. But some of them, when they got going, they got going like that. There was no opposition, they just kept going. There was no way to have control over the men, any more than just word of mouth, was all that they had. But there was no … I know there was an awful lot of places there was a lot done, but I never seen anymore than just … I know it was done. And it wasn’t done intentionally or anything, it was just, you know … there was nothing they could do about it. They were just advancing faster than they were supposed to.

Description

Mr. Enman describes how friendly fire occurred between artillery and infantry, blaming it on poor communication abilities and the fog of war, not the artillery men themselves.

Murdock William Enman

Mr. Murdock Enman was born in 1922 in Victoria West, Prince Edward Island. Aware that a draft was imminent, Mr. Enman enlisted in the army in January 1943 and was sent to Nova Scotia for training. He became sick, however, and was forced to re-start his training, remained in Nova Scotia for almost a year. After training, Mr. Enman shipped overseas in support of the West Novas in England. In September 1944, Mr. Enman shipped out of England and was among the first troops to land at Naples, Italy. From there, his command fought their way up the entire country. Following the end of the Italian campaign, Mr. Enman and the rest of the Canadians fought their way through Holland and into Germany. Following the end of the war, Mr. Enman remained in Germany as part of the occupation forces. He eventually left Germany in December of 1945, and returned to Canada the following March.

Meta Data