When the Belgian People Left

Heroes Remember

When the Belgian People Left

Transcript

When the Belgian people were taken, fled out of the country, it was just like walking into a villa. Which is a villa, but it's a house like in Bay Ridge but they call them villas right? You walk into a house and the clothes are still hanging in the closet, a jacket might be still on the back of a chair because all they took was their money or valuables and left. If not, they would have been hacked to death.

Description

Mr Gratto explains what the situation was like in the Congo after the Belgian people left their houses.

James Gratto

James Gratto was born in 1934 in Halifax,Nova Scotia. His father worked on the Canadian National Railway and his mother passed away when he was young. One day during school he and some of his friends went down to the recruitment truck during lunch time to sign up. After getting the call he quit school and went to basic training for eight to ten weeks before serving in the Congo for seven months where he worked in 1962 with the Royal Canadian Signals Corp with UN Peacekeeping. Later on Mr. Gratto became a member of the Air Borne Signals Squadron. He had a military career of 32 years.

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