Relying on instinct

We always had a saying, we had an awful lot of casualties throughout, but if you managed the first two days you got a chance of living two weeks and if you managed two weeks you got a chance of going right through. It always seemed to be the newcomers that would come up and got wounded. Interviewer: Why would that be? Not enough caution taken. (Pause) You'd get instincts of what's going on. You'd feel something like that. When I got hit that time, I knew that gun was there in my mind, that's a likely spot for a gun. I was trying to find him. I was standing on the seat with my binoculars trying to find him. He found me before I found him. It was two days before the end of the war so that way we got some pictures of it. Your own ammunition was off, your

Picture of blown up tank, Mr. Smith was in.

tires, your fuel and your tires, that's once you got hit. I was standing on the seat and it blew me out. The rest incinerated right there. They never did get out. That was on the 3rd of May. The war was over on the 5th of May.

Mr Smith tells the story of a close call two days before the war ended.

Raymond Smith

Raymond Smith was born on July 31st 1920 near Niagara-on-the-Lake. Mr Smith lost his mother as a young boy and during the Depression he worked raising hogs and cattle. When war broke out he decided to join the army, which gave him a much needed raise from five dollars a month breaking horses, to a dollar thirty a day. He got the call for training camp in Regina where he became a driving instructor. He recalls arriving from training camp to England on July 31st 1941. Mr. Smith was an army tank sergeant during the war when he met his wife and they married in 1943 while he was on leave in Manchester, England. After the war, Mr Smith returned home on April 2nd 1946 and worked as a truck driver and later at O'Keefe Brewery.