Getting Wounded
Heroes Remember
Getting Wounded
First big battle they had was Motta-Potenza. That was
the first one. That’s where we suffered a lot of casualties
and that’s where I got wounded, was in Motta. That was the
first big battle. Well, at that time I was on a bike
going up. And I was right up at the front with the tanks
and I guess whoever was firing on the other side there, missed
a tank and hit my bike and just threw me right up in the air
and destroyed the bike and put a hole in my leg and in my arm.
I just kind of fell over I guess … I was laying in a ditch
there. I wasn’t knocked out or something, because shock
don’t set in right away. Then Doc Alexander, which at one
time was our family doctor in Calgary, but he joined up
the same time as we did, he come up and he said, “So, they
finally got ya, eh?” So, yeah, that’s the first battle I
remember. Then I was away for, I think I was in the hospital,
five or six months before I got back. They had four
posts going up, or iron posts, and then they had bars across,
and they had two stretchers on the top and two on the bottom
and that’s the way they took the wounded out. When you’re
going back, the roughness from shells and that, you didn’t
know whether you were going to go out or not, be tipped out.
Then they finally got us back and we went to, like, our clearing
station, which they called a casualty clearing station.
And then they dress you up and they send you back. They
sent me back to Catania. or Potenza … Catania, sorry.
There was a field hospital there and they operated on me there.
They kept me there for a little while and then they
me down, I don’t know where. I went out, what port it was,
and put me on the boat for North Africa. When I was over there
I had another operation there, and I was there, I guess, about si
months, five, six months. Well, Mom got about three
or four telegrams over a period of time. Like, I was wounded.
It didn’t say how bad or anything, it was just wounded. And then
a little while later, they sent her another one. And then they
sent her another one. And that’s the only way, because I don’t
think I guess I must’ve wrote after a while, when I was in North
Africa. But you’re limited to what you can say, because most of
letters are scanned by one guy in the outfit. They have a
security guy in the outfit and they scan letters, open them up
read them. If there’s anything in there that’s not supposed to be
in there, black pencil. So there was not too much you could say
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