A Dangerous Food Drop

Heroes Remember

A Dangerous Food Drop

Transcript

B-29's went over and we had got some black cloth which was quite a lot and some white cloth and on the roof of the prison camp we put, covered it all with black and we made letters “P W”. One of the planes was flying over. He broke ranks and came down and took a look around and then they started bringing food in. And they dropped it by the tonnes. Two fellows got killed from that; they were all out gawking up in the air waiting for the planes to come over and of course, some of them were, the pallets were overloaded and they came down pretty fast. One fellow got hit in the head and it shoved it right down between his shoulders, about that much of his head you could see and another fellow, a barrel busted and a piece of steel cut him, sliced him across here. But when we left that camp and this was all going to go to the Japanese, they had dropped enough stuff there, we left about six tonne of food in that camp.

Description

Mr. Billson describes a terrible irony of being liberated. Two POWs are killed when pallets parachuted in by the Americans strike them.

Walter Billson

Walter Billson was born in Lennoxville, Quebec on October 2, 1914. After completing grade six, he went to work at a local garage. He also joined the Sherbrooke Regiment so he could take rifle practice. In 1940, he enlisted with the Royal Rifles of Canada and became a dispatch rider. After training stints at Valcartier, Sussex and Gander, he returned to Valcartier and was married. The next day, he was heading for Hong Kong. When the battle for Hong Kong begins, Mr. Billson, by then a Corporal, is put in charge of a Bren gun, guarding a pillbox at TaiTam gap. After being captured and imprisoned at North Point Camp, he is sent to a Japanese labor camp near the Omini coal mine. After being liberated, Mr. Billson sees the devastation of Nagasaki as a result of the atomic bomb.

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