Close call on tank patrol

Heroes Remember

Close call on tank patrol

And another one was a fellow by the name of Cutville, he was a lieutenant, he later became, oh, I can't remember, captain I guess, company commander. No he, no I beg your pardon, he was company commander then he was captain. And he and I went on a... little recce, a little recon in a tank, the first time I'd ever been in one. And I was always a little leery of them, claustrophobia and stuff like that. So we got in this tank in the middle of the night and we started down this road and I'm thinking to myself, now what the heck are we gonna do down there? When zow. A round went, came through the turret from this angle. We're, I'm standing on that side of the gun and I'm on this and he's on this side and he has his arm up on the, on the... rifle. The round went right between the rifle and the elbow and went on through and they had racks, ammunition racks. There's one in the middle and one on each side. Well it went in between them and out through this and it was gone. An AP, had it hit the ammo, I wouldn't be telling you this. I bailed out of there, I don't know how I did it. I bailed out of that tank and the next thing I know, I'm fighting with some guys in a, in the ditch beside the road. Till finally one of the fellows I recognized, he was, I thought I'd fell in among the enemy, but it was our own people. Well Cutville, he went away, he was gone and I met him oh months later back in (inaudible) again. But he did, the last I saw of his, anything about him that he had gone a little higher up in rank and he deserved it because there was a man. He had guts pouring out of his ears you might say.

Mr. Parker talks with admiration of a Lieutenant Cutville, and a recce they went on in a tank, where they were hit by an armour-piercing shell (but escaped unscathed).

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.