Mr. Parker talks about physical and mental pain.

Heroes Remember

Mr. Parker talks about physical and mental pain.

Transcript

So, if you have suffered pain, and when we talk about pain, that covers a wide field. There's a physical pain, there's a mental pain and in this respect, it'd be mental pain. If you haven't..., haven't suffered mental pain, you have lost something that's very important in the whole make-up of your existence. Actually you know, oh, years, earlier times, I would have said, well everybody should experience some time in war, where you find your own crux, your own deep down middle. Most people haven't got that, they haven't found it, they don't understand it because of the fact that they have never experienced a moment where they have to call upon it. When you're sitting down some place, within a war zone - or within a danger zone - I'll put it that way - if you're within a danger zone, and you're in dire straights when you consider, well, I don't know whether I'll be here a minute or two later or an hour or so, that I'm going to be terminated, how I'm going to be terminated is something I don't know, but I suffer fear. There's nothing like fear when it's an unknown emotion. When you can't think or you can't say, "Well, yeah I'm gonna be shot and if I am I hope it's a good one, right in the vital place so I won't suff, I won't suffer, I won't feel pain." There's that term pain. If you haven't had pain, then there's a lot of life you haven't experienced yet. Sometimes when I mention pain, I'm putting it at in two categories mental and physical. Then after one has suffered those, his thought, his thought process is changed and they sound differently about everything, about his own existence, about people he has to deal with. After awhile, you think, you say, you know, there is something in this world called compassion, but compassion's gotta be derived. It's not there all the time. You get what I mean.

Description

Mr. Parker talks about what he feels are important lessons to be learned from surviving an extreme situation such as battle.

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.

Meta Data