Language selection


Search veterans.gc.ca

Realizing he's being fired upon.

Heroes Remember

Realizing he's being fired upon.

Interviewer: So at this point you're aware that the war is on? Yeah, and I've understood since then that we were the first Canadian soldiers in action, in the Second World War. First I really knew of it, I was walking from the cookhouse back to our bunkhouse and the bullets were flying around. I heard this plane, I looked up and I really didn't know but I could hear the bullets hitting the roof, hitting the dust and so forth, sounds like a movie deal but it's true. I looked up and then I seen this big red painting on the back of the, on the bottom of this plane, that's the Japanese flag, what we call the scrambled, the fried egg. Interviewer: Wow And that didn't bother me, you know, because it was, I didn't, I didn't know the war was on. I didn't know, what's that? I thought somebody was making a mistake up there. Interviewer: You must have been afraid No I wasn't, I didn't realize what was happening. The next time that I was fired on that closely, I was in a group, a copps of trees and I could hear the air plane. Now we were in the war now, now we're back over here on the island, this is, we would, I don't know what, how long, what we stayed on the mainland. But when we went back to the island, the first time I was fired on it was up in the air, another air plane and it's cutting the trees, I couldn't see the plane, and its cutting the leaves off the trees and I'm just like that, I'm shaking all over until I got out and I could see the plane and calm came back, came over me. That's the only time that I was really shaking from... You're scared all the time, there is no question about it, you know, nobody wants to die.

Related Videos

Date modified: