Survival at San Fortunato Ridge

Heroes Remember

Survival at San Fortunato Ridge

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I had, I don't know what people will think about this feeling, but I had this feeling that my guardian angel sat right there. Yeah. And if anything was going on, my guardian angel whispered to me what to do. Because some intuitions came to me that I considered were a little bit abnormal and yet they were the right ones, they were the right thing. That's why I say I survived and I taught survival to people that I had within my range and I'm supposed to teach survival. I guess survival is in the individual and the individual himself, if he believes in something firmly, willy nilly is different. I'll give you an incident. Prince, the most decorated soldier in the Canadian army,

Picture of Mr.Parker as a young soldier.

had a brother and his brother was in my platoon. We were in a nasty little mess and we had a new officer come in. That officer lives in town here, a friend of mine. He came in and the first thing he did was he went up one side of me and down the other because I wasn't doing things by the book. I said, "we don't do things by the book right here," I said, "we do things under intuition." I said we figured that it's too dangerous, we don't do it. And I said, we're here to pro to straddle this road and keep the enemy out or we can report any action, enemy action.

Mr. Parker talks about Tommy Prince's brother, who was in his platoon, and how an officer created havoc for them at the San Fortunato Ridge.

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.