Letters And Parcels

Heroes Remember

Letters And Parcels

Transcript

See, we couldn’t keep letters because they might tell people, if anyone is captured or anything, they’d know where we come from. This one time we had prisoners and I was sent to the headquarters. I don’t know how many prisoners, I took three boys with me anyway. So I went down to see about getting letters. I hadn’t gotten letters for months or anything. I went up to the clerk’s office and give him my name and number and he let out a yell and I thought, “Oh my God, in trouble again.” And he hollers and he had the other clerk come running over to see what the trouble was. And he says, “Here’s our man we’ve been looking for six months.” I got 35 letters and 28 parcels. Interviewer: At that one time? Yeah, and he asked if I had any help and I’ve got three boys. So you could imagine, I was trying to read letters and they were going through all the parcels. I got a pen and pencil set from my mother. We took that town on my birthday. This was soon after that and they were for my birthday the year before. So you could imagine what the gum and the cake or whatever and the chocolates bars looked like, some of them, all that hot weather and that hot weather.

Description

Mr. Kocher speaks about receiving parcels and letters from home that had been piled up at the post office because the postmaster did not know his whereabouts.

Lyle Kocher

Mr. Kocher was born in Clive, Alberta on June 2, 1918. He was the youngest in his family with three brothers and two sisters. After six years of school he decided to quit and help his father with farming. As a young boy, Mr. Kocher joined the Royal Fusiliers of Edmonton Reserves. He enlisted in Edmonton and then went to Calgary for basic training. Mr. Kocher spent much of his army life in Italy and Africa. After returning home he wrote a book about being a Canadian soldier during the Second World War. In it, he shares his story of lost innocence and self- discovery.

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