'Friendly Fire' incident.

Heroes Remember

'Friendly Fire' incident.

Transcript

After the invasion, then you had these other little places ahead of the Canadian troops that we used to bomb. And the first one was Caen, we were into Caen a couple times. And then, then, at the Falaise Gap, where, where they were trying to surround the Germans and cut, cut off the escape to the Germans getting out. So we went in, and that was another one that we weren't very high off the ground. And one of my, let me see, friends I guess you'd call it, who lives at home out here with... and I see him all the time. And he was in the artillery and he was at Falaise Gap. And you've often heard of the story of the quarry that was there. And the Polish troops were in there, and so was he, he was there. He said I'd like to have shot you guys down, he says, because the Germans had caught on to what we were using as target indicators, TI's. And then we were supposed to bomb the OTI's. Well, the Germans on the other side had them throwing them over, over the top of the quarry. And so when the bombing... We're all going in on, on this, so the air planes, they were all keying up on those. Well, there was the Polish troops were in there, and you could see the quarry just as straight... I see it today. Oh, yeah. That'll never, never leave. I see the quarry today and, and I can tell you the, where the dips were, but it..The troops were in around in that area. So, we went over and they, they were bombed. I'm not, I don't think that we bombed the quarry, but we were in that flight that went in there, and there was six thou.., six hundred, yah, six hundred polish troops were killed that day, and that from the bombings. And as a friend said, he said, sitting there, he said, "I was just holding back from shooting you guys." And there was a little grasshopper, well, it was just a little Spotter plane up there amongst us trying to tell us "don't bomb, don't bomb" But it was too late by that time. But I often think of that, just remember seeing that. I, we didn't know about it until we got back that, that's what happened, but a lot of the crews that was in on that deal were called to the headquarters and trying to find out just what happened. That, that could happen, because you're bombing just in front of the troops all the time. This isn't, this isn't good. But Caen was just a mess, when we got done with that one.

Description

Mr. Garrison describes the consequences of inaccurate targeting, the death of 600 allied soldiers.

Glenn Garrison

Mr. Garrison was born in 1925 in Sarnia, Ontario. His family moved to Blackville, Ontario, in 1930. Although his father was a boiler maker with the Canadian National Railroad, Mr. Garrison's family was poor. When old enough, he went to work in a factory, then enlisted in 1943. He received his Air Gunner training in Lachine, Quebec, then shipped overseas on the Mauritania. He was a member of 428 Squadron. The Mid-Upper and Tail gunner positions were extremely vulnerable and he was fortunate to survive many bombing missions over France and Germany. These missions included the bombing of submarine pens in Southern France and the industrial area of the Ruhr Valley. At the age of 18, Mr. Garrison returned to Canada with 43 missions to his credit. At 19, he became a flying instructor at Fingor, then CO of the Turrets and Gunnery school at Mountain view. Mr. Garrison and his wife live on a farm in Sarnia. He has his own air plane and is still flying.

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