The Drip System

Heroes Remember

The Drip System

Transcript

We didn’t know too much about Korea. I did find out, to be honest with you, the people, farmers or people who lived away from the other cities and that. They were so far behind us, so ancient. They were still using the oxen and the old plows. You know, did you ever see them? This is how they plowed up their rice paddy. Now, the countryside all hills and valleys you know. That’s the way the whole country was made up. Hills, valleys and rice paddies. Yeah we know all about the rice paddies. When we landed there, we landed there right at the starting of the monsoons and it was very uncomfortable. It wasn’t cold, but warm, but it rained for about seven or eight weeks. But it wasn’t always a down poor, but it was always rain. And when I remember when we did so much training to get used to the climate and the country itself then we were going up to relieve some of the fellas in the 2nd Battalion RCR and it’d be nothing almost up to your knees in muck The trucks went up with us, took us up so far and then we had to walk the rest of the way and it was gooey. Interviewer: Everything was wet? Wet. Yes. But then again, you know, the funny thing about it, they had a very hot summer. Very hot over there in the summer time and it was darn cold in the winter too. You know, it’s amazing from one extreme to the other how cold it could get. The drip system, everybody would love to have one of them. It’s a form of having heat in your bunker when it was cold, especially when you wanted to dry something or you wanted to make your coffee. We always had coffee going at night time because most of the time we were spending two hours on, two hours off or sometimes we would be at a 100% stand, you know type thing. But anyway it’s a jerry can and it has a special fitting on it and a tube, not much bigger than my little, rubber tube. And it had a, it went down into the jerry can and it was sealed is the way it was done. And I guess it was about, the hose was at least about twenty-five feet long because, so you wouldn’t have it in the bunker with you. You put it somewhere else because you know if it blew up or anything, that’s it, you’re gone. Around the end of it then it had a piece of tubing, metal, like copper tubing and only a small hole in them and then on the inside it had a little thing for tightening up the holes that allowed the amount of gas that would be coming through. It would just drip down and it would drip down on the clay. We used to have a stove and we used to have a chimney. The twenty-five pounder shell box from the artillery and empty shells, we’d get them and we’d knock out the end and they’d fit down just like this and that’s what we had. It would go down into the stove and the sand in it and it was just drip, drip, drip. And amazing the heat that came from it.

Description

Mr. Rees describes the general conditions in Korea including dealing with the cold.

Charlie Rees

Charles Rees was born in Lance Cove, Newfoundland on July 14, 1930. He first experienced the consequences of war at the age of 12, when he and the rest of his community were involved in rescuing the crew from two ships torpedoed nearby. While working in Toronto, Mr. Rees made the decision to enlist for service in the Korean War. He was sent overseas with the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, where he served a one year tour of duty on the 38th Parallel. When he returned to Canada, he trained as a paratrooper. After leaving the service, he was a pressman in the printing trade. Mr. Rees joined both the Atlantic and Canadian Korean Veterans Associations.

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