They Had Thousands of Casualties

Heroes Remember

They Had Thousands of Casualties

Transcript

We got off the boat in a place called Oostende in Belgium and we started up through to the Ardennes. I saw some spots of blood in the snow and saw two or three tanks that had, there’d been some troops up there ahead of us. Some tanks were knocked out and some helmets and oh, debris and stuff. I began to think and I began to be scared. But I had some good fellas. I was what they called a bomber in this section, I was loaded down with grenades. And we had a real good sergeant, Sergeant Johnny Hills, and he had recommended me for corporal but I never got it, I don’t know why. I think some of the brass turned it down, they said I didn’t have leadership qualitites or something. But anyway, I certainly began to think. We went in to an old pub and stayed overnight, I think it was twenty, Christmas Eve of ‘44, and then the first action we got into was up in the Ardennes in (inaudible) and the Americans paratroops were wheeling some of the dead paratroops up. The Americans were overrun. They had a lot of green American troops and they were overrun and they had thousands of casualties Our, our outfit were rushed over there around Christmas time of ‘44, and the Jerries were retreating and falling back. So, it was mainly just a buffer we were then, and patrols in the Ardennes. Myself and a few more, one sergeant was blown up with his grenade and, there was a few casualties, but, in Germany it was quite different. The boys that landed on the DZ they had quite a few casualties. And then we went, we rode tanks quite a bit. the Guards Armoured Bridage, a Scotch outfit and we liked that. It saved walking. And one day we were going and our captain was killed. His grenade went off in his pouch and he was cut in two. Sam McGowan, he was a captain in our company, but that was quite different. He would have been a major and he was going to take over the company. And, I don’t know, you might have heard of a (inaudible) grenade, it had a pin in it, and somehow or other this pin got out and the striker went; it was right full of shrapnel and it killed him. I liked Sam. Captain Sam we called him. But, yeah, we rode those tanks. The second of May ‘45 we went across the Elbe River and we took off and spent the whole day, the second I think it was, and met the Russian troops in a place called Weismar. V-E Day was about four or five days later.

Description

Mr. Barron describes the action he saw in the Ardennes Forest, and discusses casualties.

Reginald Roy Barron

Reginald Ray Barron was born in Greenfield, Hants Co., Nova Scotia, in 1922. His father was a farmer and a sawyer in the local lumber mill. As the only boy, Mr. Barron was expected to do much of the farm work; being tied down from dawn to dusk all year long didn’t appeal to him. He therefore lied about his age to enlist in June 1940, thus escaping his “primitive life on the farm.” After a short stint in the Princess Louise Fusiliers, he joined the Royal Canadian Artillery, with whom he spent two years in Newfoundland involved in coastal defense against the German Navy. Wanting to get overseas, in June 1944, he responded to a call for volunteers to join the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, with whom he served until war’s end. Mr. Barron saw limited action, only having been in Europe for the final two months of the war. He was wounded in the leg while in action. After returning home and before hostilities ended, he volunteered to go to Japan with his Battalion. Mr. Barron returned to school and studied law.

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