Cleaning Houses

Heroes Remember

Cleaning Houses

Transcript

We came across this woman, and, a couple of women there, and she was pregnant and she had pneumonia or something she had, real sick, eh. So we, we got her a medic to go up because they had no, nothing there to give her eh, to clear up her, her pleurisy or pneumonia or whatever it was. So we got our medic to go up, he went up and of course that's the last we kept on going cleaning, going through the houses and that. And I went back to Italy in 1988, you know a bunch from the regiment and that eh and we were going up this same street, tell you that now cause we knew cause we were visiting the places that we had been and in fact I was, the reason I was going up that street it was just up over the hill is where I got wounded again eh, I got wounded in the back and that eh. So I asked the tour guide if he could take us to where we, where we had been fighting in that battle and he said okay. So he started to go and the next thing this fellow come down, he said ah, he asked the guide he said, "The Hasty Ps?" and the guide said, "Yeah", he said "Can you come up?" He said, "There's a woman, up here wants to see you." So okay we went up and she came out and she told us and you know she said, "the hasty peas" and she said, "I survived it" and she said "there's my daughter," she said, that was born that day. And it was just a fluke because her daughter had just come up from Morocco she was down in Morocco eh but it was just a fluke that she happened to be there eh. But it was, you know it was so out of the ordinary eh and you know she could tell us, told us all about we came in and then the medic, the med came in and they looked after her so forth and so on eh. So you can never tell...

Description

Mr. Colbourne talks about going through homes in Italy and coming upon a woman who is having a baby and needs medical attention. He also talks about going back 50 years later and meeting the woman and daughter who was born that day.

Gerald Colbourne

Mr. Colbourne was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, in 1924 but at the age of one his family moved to Corner Brook, Newfoundland, so his father could work in the mills. Mr. Colbourne enjoyed growing up in Corner Brook where he went to school and played hockey and basketball. When not in school he enjoyed fishing and hunting. In March 1944, he joined the Infantry branch of the Army and was sent overseas a short time later. He arrived in London for his first look at war and then moved on to join his regiment in Italy and worked from Italy through to Holland and Germany until the war ended.

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