Leadership

Heroes Remember

Leadership

I think they were just on par with everybody else. It all depended on the leader. We had good leaders, we had mediocre leaders, we had bad leaders and we had people that should never have been a leader at all. One of the people that I can, I, I, I would got to hell with was Chris Vokes, Major-General Chris Vokes. I met him, the first time I met him face to face he was Brigadier-General Chris Vokes, at the time. It was after the Hitler round. We were at a place called Piemonte and we got leave one weekend and I went downtown to Piemonte and I met a young lady who owned a restaurant and we got along famously. As a matter of fact, I stayed with her for the weekend. And it was an experience that I didn't want to leave right away so I got back to camp late, a day late, and I looked when I walked through the hedge and my tent was just right here; there were 2 RPs standing there waiting for me. I turned around, I went back to town. A couple of more days and I thought, gee you know. I gotta get out of here, I gotta get back there and take what's coming to me. So I went back. They arrested me and our guardhouse was a chicken coop and I had to sit on the floor, bare earth floor. I could feel the... but they weren't really because they'd already doctored it up so that there were no bugs in them. And then they marched me out to the B.H.Q. and here I met Chris Vokes.

Mr. Parker talks about what he thought of the Canadian troops, and meeting General Chris Vokes. He also makes off with a girl in a town for the weekend.

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.