Sight of the Dead

I remember we had two or three jeep ambulances in our section and I was on one with a Royal Canadian Army Service Corps driver and I was the medic with him, and I think we, our section first started to cover the Royal Canadian Regiment.One of the things that I remember so vividly were there were nine soldiers dead lying outside the Regimental Aid Post. That was just south of Chorwon, which was quite a bit above the 38th Parallel. Interviewer: Do you remember your own reaction when you saw those dead soldiers? No, I don’t, I wasn’t, I was upset to some extent to see so many of, nine Canadians dead there. Quite a shock to see, but I was used to seeing people who were dead, it wasn’t unusual, but to see so many was quite a shock to me. It doesn’t take long to learn that you know, you’re in a war and that there are people going, there are people coming back who are severely wounded and some of them die before they get back to the Advanced Dressing Station, or some of them are flown back or taken back by truck back to wherever they were taking the dead. It doesn’t take long to learn that this is going on and that you’re in a war, so I was used to it but to see this number of people was a bit of a..bit of a shock to me. However, I just carried on and I didn’t have to deal with the dead themselves. I was dealing with the living while they were wounded, it was the living that I was dealing with.