A Humorous Christmas Story

Well, I know it was around Christmas and Cardinal Spellman was over there to visit the troops from New York and, of course, visiting all the troops and they had laid down, shall we say, you had to go to church, had to go to mass. Anyhow as it happened, the gun I was on there happened to be five Protestant fellas on it but one RC fellow. So we had orders, all the RC’s had to go get a blessing from Cardinal Spellman and then all the rest of us, the Protestants, well they had to go see I just forget now there was some big high church man there, Presbyterian man, I think. And we had to go over in the same place and have a blessing to Christmas. But the orders were you had to be as clean as you possibly could. So when I dug down in my bag I never had a clean pair of pants. So I said to this fellow, Bob Welsh was on the gun crew, I said, “Bob, you got a clean pair of pants? “Yes” he said, “Well when you come back, I wants the pants!” “Alright, no problem!” So when the truck come back, he jumped down and shoved down the pants and I shoved down and we changed over the pants and I went on over to, shall we say, the church service, Christmas special service there on the side of the hill, you sit on a rock. I happened to put my hand in the pocket of this fellow, Welsh’s pocket, you know, and of course, I says, “What’s that?” Of course when I hauled it out this was his prayers beads. Of course I wasn’t used to prayer beads but this big dark American fellow, big black Yankee on the back of me he tapped me on the shoulder. He said, “Man, I believe you’s in the wrong place!” (Laughter) So that's a little humorous story.

When all soldiers had an opportunity for a special blessing at Christmas time, needing to borrow his buddies pants creates an awkward yet humorous circumstance for Mr. Mercer.

Leslie Mercer

Mr. Leslie Mercer was born June 24, 1927 in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Being a child of the Great Depression, he went to work at the dockyard at a very young age. He was too young to volunteer for the Second World War but when the Korean War broke out he was quick to join with the Special Force. He became part of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery as a bombardier. After spending a year in Korea, Mr. Mercer returned to St. John’s, Newfoundland, married and raised a family.