Responsibility and luck

Heroes Remember

Responsibility and luck

Guardian angel, it is something you hold onto and you hold onto it dearly. It has to be an issue bigger than yourself. I'll tell you something, now oft times, I would say maybe over half the time that I was with 7th Platoon I was in charge of it, in the front lines. Every time we moved they'd send me a new officer within days, within hours maybe, he's gone. Cause we were in a war you know. And then I had the platoon as my responsibility and that responsibility affected me more than anything else. So if I was sittin, now I'm sitting here, now this is how it affected the, the, the platoon, if I was sitting here and I got up and I moved over to the corner there, they all got up and followed me because they figure I had a, a rabbit's foot in my pocket. They figured I was lucky. It wasn't a sense of luck to me, it was just the fact that I survived where others didn't.

Mr. Parker talks about having a guardian angel, and how he felt that sense of belief helped him through. The platoon came to have a similar sense of faith in him because of his ability to survive. They followed him as their guardian angel.

Richard Allen Parker

Richard Allen Parker was born in Vernon, BC on May 27, 1917 to a First Nations family. He talks about his early years, the prejudice that he faced, and the meaning of being First Nations. He left home at an early age to work in the mines. He talks about joining the PPCLI in 1942, fighting the SS and Hitler Youth and his time in Algiers and Italy.