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Dying for a Drink

Heroes Remember

Dying for a Drink

Transcript
It's terrible to think that we lost four men just, not long before we're, not long before we were set free. And it didn't have to happen, it was madness. There was eight of us and we were loading forty gallon drum, dirty, old forty gallon drums. And for once the guards left us. Why on earth, they never left us before, even when we were loading pig iron, they never left us. And here they left us when we were loading these dirty, old forty gallon drums. And, and Mack Hawes from Selkirk, worked in the rolling mills at Selkirk, he was leuitentant, he was a corporal, and he said, "I wonder what's in these?" And one drum had a loose bung, why did it have to have a loose bung? Why? He opened it up and he said, "I think this is, this is industrial alcohol." Whatever made him think that I don't know. I, I smelled it and I said, "For Heaven's sake, don't touch it." He, and three other men drank from that one drum that had a loose bung. This was Mack Hawes, and there was Jimmy Gard from Fisher Branch, and there was Roy Kirk from, Riding Mountain, and there was Bobby McLeod, used to work on picardies (sp) on Portage. Four men drank and we had a terrible time getting them into camp ‘cause they were staggering, falling, staggering, falling. And they, this, there was a platform that high we, we, we slept on, Tatami, thin layer, woven straw, and Mack Hawes sat down and he said to me, "My hands are paralysed." He said, "I've got no feeling in them." He said, "Take off my putties, and roll them up." And he said, "Undo my laces, pull my shoes off." And he threw himself back on the platform and you could hear these four men right through the whole end, one end of the hut to the other. They were having trouble breathing, and, and someone ran to the first aid hut and said what happened and, and all they would say there is, "Keep them moving, keep them moving, we have nothing here, we have nothing here, we've got no stomach pump, we have nothing here to..." And we were tired from working all day but we took turns trying to keep those fellows moving but they were a dead weight, they were unconscious, they were absolutely unconscious. And we tried, well, we were dragging them up and down the centre of the hut back, up and down, and, and they were unconscious, and all four died about four o'clock in the morning. And Mack Hawes had got married on that two weeks leave, and he had his wife's picture and he used to talk to it at night after, after, he used to say, "Dora, I'm coming home, I'm coming home Dora." He never made it. And I spoke to, to Dr. Harrison Verdun when we got back and he said, "What was in those drums? What was in those old barrels?" I said, "Well, the interpreter found out it was antifreeze." And Harris said, "If you had had a stomach pump," he said, "it wouldn't have done any good." He said, "That," he said, "I know what's in antifreeze." He said, "It goes right in the bloodstream." And he said, "The bloodstream goes to the brain, goes through your body." He said, "There's no antidote for what was in that, in that antifreeze." We stopped at Calgary on the way home for about fifteen minutes, and we were out stretching our legs, and Mack Hawes' mother came along and she said, "Where's Mack?" Oh my heavens, I couldn't speak to her, I couldn't, I couldn't do it. Carl Unison from Glenborough walked up to her and he tried to tell her, he tried to tell her. He, he tried. How can you tell a mother that her son threw his life away after, after living through all the fighting? He deliberately threw his life away. How can you tell a mother?
Description

Mr. Forsyth remembers four men being accidentally poisoned when trying to steal what they thought was alcohol.

Thomas Smith Forsyth

Mr. Forsyth was born on a farm just outside of Pipestone, Manitoba, on April 26, 1910. He worked on the farm and attended school until grade 11, joining the army the following year when war was declared. After being accepted into the Winnipeg Grenadiers, Mr. Forsyth was briefly stationed in Jamaica guarding German POWs before being posted to Hong Kong. Captured in the Battle of Hong Kong, Mr. Forsyth was interned as a POW in North Point and Sham Shui Po prison camps, before being sent to Niigata Camp 5B in Japan as a slave labourer. After years of heavy labour, physical abuse, and terrible living conditions, Mr. Forsyth was liberated from 5B when Japan surrendered. He returned to his family in Manitoba soon thereafter.

Meta Data
Medium:
Video
Owner:
Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:
07:08
Person Interviewed:
Thomas Smith Forsyth
War, Conflict or Mission:
Second World War
Location/Theatre:
Japan
Branch:
Army
Units/Ship:
Winnipeg Grenadiers
Occupation:
Garrison Military Police

Copyright / Permission to Reproduce

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