Flaming Torches

Heroes Remember

Flaming Torches

Transcript

Water used to be, I used to get water pumped from a reservoir, up in the mountain. I don’t know where the water come from. I just know there was a water hose and we used to fill up our, what we called a water buffalo. Rations, we never had fresh rations We ate hard military rations. So did these refugees, ate hard rations. American, what they call American “LRPs”, long range patrol rations, they were dropped in on the leeps. What was so funny, when the Americans used to drop the rations at night, you could hear the aircraft but you couldn’t see them. And don’t get me wrong when I say this, “It was beautiful! To see the, again there was no power, no running lights, everything in this village was dark at night. It was black, pitch black and all of a sudden you would see this whole side of this mountain light up with flaming torches. The refugees would go up the mountain the side of the road to go up to the drop zone and it was pretty. It looked like a down hill ski, a torch at night. It looked beautiful, thousands of torches going out and widdling their way up to the mountain to go to the drop zone. And then you would hear the odd time off in the distance a shot being fired and say, “Oh well, somebody else is being shot by them, you know.”

Description

Mr. Wiseman describes the sight of torches by the locals when going up the mountains to gather food from the drop zone.

Robert Wiseman

Mr. Robert Wiseman was born October 9, 1953 in Bathurst, New Brunswick. With his father being a Veteran, and his five other brothers joining up, Mr. Wiseman made this the reason for joining the service. In 1974, fresh out of high school, Mr. Wiseman travelled to CFB Cornwallis Recruitment Camp receiving 11 weeks of training then to CFB Gagetown for advanced training as a combat soldier. Mr. Wiseman joined the army experiencing one tour to Cyprus and later in his career travelled to Bosnia holding the rank of Warrant Officer. His service in Bosnia provided humanitarian support to the Bosnian people after the Srebrenica massacre where many people were killed. After discharging from the army, Mr. Wiseman returned to Fredericton.

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