All he had was two holes for a nose.

Heroes Remember

All he had was two holes for a nose.

Transcript

See so many people over there, you know, badly hurt. There was one young lad over there had his lungs where had been ruined by gas, too, and he was coughing and spit up something on the floor. I mean pink, you know. Maybe a bit of a carrot, that was part of his lung. Same as pink meat, and on the floor there. He didn’t live very long. He died. His lungs were pretty bad, rotted away, I guess, with the gas. One man there, I saw there, he had to … had to have one arm off and one leg off and the top of his head blown off too. He had a tin can on his head, tap it like that, you know, a tin can. You know, like a tin can, his hair was back over again. But it didn’t last long though. It was all off, he was in bad shape. One guy I saw too came through and his face was all off, all part of his jaw. All he had was two holes for his nose. The rest was all blown off. Seen an awful lot of sights over there, when we went over there. Terrible sights there, people wounded.

Description

Mr. Perdue describes some of the devastating injuries he witnessed while overseas.

Percy George Perdue

Percy Perdue was born in London, England on March 28, 1900. He moved to Canada at the age of five, when his father took a job as a miner in Coleman, Alberta. Prior to the war, Percy was apprenticing to become both a tinsmith and a shoemaker. He was 16 when he joined the army. After training in Calgary, Alberta, Mr. Purdue eventually crossed the Atlantic (he recalls experiencing dreadful seasickness) and in the fall of 1916, he landed in Liverpool, England, where he was stationed at a camp in Shorncliffe. Despite his accurate aim as a marksman, Mr. Purdue saw limited action during his service in the army. Three times he was kept behind when his cohorts were sent to France. His ability as a shoemaker was of greater value to the Allies. He was very good at repairing boots and designing special footwear for the troops. He remembers with pride the boots that he made for himself: "I wore them for seven years and couldn't wear them out!" In 1917, Percy was discovered to be underage and was sent home. Mr. Perdue has some grim memories of the war. "I remember people coming back all shot to heck." His own father, who had enlisted just before he did, was a victim of a mustard gas attack and was sent home very ill. He states that, while his father lived to the age of 89, he never fully recovered and "always had trouble keeping food down". When the Second World War broke out, Percy again wanted to enlist, but was turned down because by that time he had five children. Mr. Perdue died on September 29, 2000.

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