Close calls - Part 2 of 2

Heroes Remember

Close calls - Part 2 of 2

Transcript

Another time I got a bit, a bit close to action is, once again, I was on patrol and responding to whatever, then we got a call from, another UN, UNMO, who was coming back from the Hisbala side, he was trying to get back into the Israeli side and he was coming in on the road with a bit of a low ground as a bridge. And he was being fired upon by the South Lebanese Army from a tank, was firing machine gun fire at him. He said, "Somebody's gotta come here to get me out of this mess." So I was not too far away, so I drove down there and got in and I noticed where he was and I noticed there was two tanks firing at him. So I went to one of the tank, got on the turret and bang until the door, the turret, the (inaudible) put his head out. I said, "Stop your shooting," in French actually because these guys were Lebanese, so I figured, "Might as well use their language." And I said, "It's my friend out there trying to get back across." He said, "No, it isn't we got a report that a jeep was stolen and," which happened quite often, actually, we did get jeeps and vehicles stolen. Didn't happen to me personally, but it happened to some other people. So anyway I said, "No, no, this, I know this guy. I know his voice. I know exactly who he is." So we discussed about five minutes or so. I said, "Tell you I'll do. I'm gonna walk over there myself right now, I'll open the gate, I'll go check him out first, I'll open the gate and I'll walk him through. As long as you don't shoot at me, I'll go there and do it." And he said, "If you're wrong, we're gonna shoot. We're gonna kill these guys." I said, "I'm not wrong." Anyway, I went out there. It was this guy, he was from Ireland, actually, an Irish guy that, one of my close comrades in there. So I knew his, his accent. I knew exactly who he was so, so, and I could recognize his face from a distance as well, very easy to recognize. So anyway I got him across and he owed me a few drinks that night, I tell you, which was good to know. Yeah, and, we'd been in a lot of hot spots. Another occasion where I thought I did pretty good in that I saved, I'm sure I saved a lot of people's life. I was out with a, a captain of the French Foreign Legion, attached to the French component of UNSO and our job was to get on top of this hill which overlooked two different villages in South Lebanon, and to take a position of observation, to basically observe whatever could be happening. Somehow the UN had been switching information that the Israelis were going to do a, what we called a cleaning operation. Basically to take over the villages and take all the males away for interrogation. So our job was to go in there and simply observe, nothing else but that. So we got in position about oh, six o'clock in the morning, what have you. And of course since, you know, the chap was French, we brought a few bottles of wine with us and couple of baguettes, a bit of pâté and we decided, "Now we'll make a bit of a party out of it and make it look like we're enjoying ourselves." Which we did to a certain point until this undercover unit came by with two white Mercedes and started shooting at us. Now they weren't shooting at us to kill us, they were shooting around us to scare us away. So anyway, I finished my glass of wine and I said to this other chap I said, "You want to go there talk to them or should I go talk to them?" He said, "Well, you're in charge." I said, "Okay, my job I guess." So out I went and I remember taking my pipe out of my pocket. Light up my pipe as I'm going through the field, bullets flying by about twenty feet away from me. Now they weren't trying to hit me because I know they would have hit me. They was trying to scare the hell out of me. So I got to there and I started giving them shit, you know, and I, I went on the aggressive position right off the bat. "What are you guys doing here? What are you shooting at me for?" And then they went on explaining they couldn't, they couldn't recognize the jeep. I said, "You guys gotta be either colour blind or you're stupid. Jeep is white, totally white, UN on it, there's a big blue flag. You can't miss that. You gotta be colour blind. You gotta be something." And I said, "Anyway, your bluff doesn't work with us. We're here, we're gonna stay here all day long." And then we got discussing so anyway, we agreed to move the jeep a hundred feet, closer to the road. So that took about an hour of discussion, what have you. So we finally moved the jeep and we stayed there. These guys disappeared and nobody else showed up. So the operation, the cleaning operation obviously was cancelled for that day and we never heard about any other operation against these two villages after that so. So that worked out. So I figured maybe probably saved a couple of people's life there that day.

Description

Mr. Grossinger describes some ‘close calls’ he experienced during his experiences in Lebanon.

Red Grossinger

Red Grossinger was born in 1940 and lived most his life in Quebec. As eldest of 13 children, he felt a responsibility to find a job and help support the family. In 1957 he joined the local militia to help the family income. He then joined the Regular Forces in 1959 and completed tours in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Cyprus where he had some very close calls.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 05:41
Person Interviewed:: Red Grossinger
War, Conflict or Mission:: Canadian Armed Forces
Location/Theatre:: Lebanon
Branch:: Army
Units/Ship:: 12th Armed Regiment
Rank:: Major

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Close calls - Part 2 of 2

Heroes Remember