Blown Up With Gunfire

Heroes Remember

Blown Up With Gunfire

Transcript

It's all a bit vague now, you know, it's quite awhile ago, but nothing startling about it. It was, the three . . . I can still in my mind see the three mine sweepers, tied up, side by each and ours was the middle one, I remember that, and there were three frigates over at the next area and this was all very exciting you know, for a country boy. Well they were not a big ship, I'm, I'm not sure just how many men were on it but we actually, you know what we did? We would go in pairs and with almost a net between us, to literally sweep these mines up, because the Germans had thrown a lot of them in the Gulf and in the mouth of the St. Lawrence. And they were playing hell with the freighters. The mine was, was brought up to where you could see it and it was blown up with gun fire. See these mines had magnetic, you've seen pictures of them they're huge and they had these spikes sticking out of them and that's what attracted them to the hull of the ship and once they hit it, they blew. So we used to destroy them with gun fire. I mean they went off with a fair bang, you got to remember that, that's what they were made for, was to blow up that ship that they hit and the guys would use a .303 or something like that and zero in on one of those spikes and that would blow her up.

Description

Mr. Fisk describes sweeping up and disabling German mines.

Kenneth Fisk

Mr. Fisk was born in Walkerton, Ontario, in 1926. His parents, despite the depression, both worked; his mother as an RN, and his father as a fruit farmer on their small rural farm. Unable to convince his dad to authorize his early enlistment, Mr. Fisk was forced to wait until late 1945 before he saw active service. His relatively short career was spent in the Gulf of St. Lawrence aboard the mine sweeper HMCS New Liskeard. He returned home to Ontario in late 1946 when sweeping for stray mines ended. He now resides in Harriston, Ontario, and remains a proud member of his local Royal Canadian Legion.

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