Joining the Army

Heroes Remember

Joining the Army

Transcript

I can tell you how I ended up joining the army myself, that’s another story. A toss of a coin with a friend of mine who went along with me. He wanted to go armoured corps. I wanted to go navy. He said, “We’ll flip a coin and whoever wins the other guy goes with him.” So he went to the armoured corps. He went in to see the PSO first then when I went in he said, “I’m sorry my son,” he said, “we’re all filled up in the armoured corps.” But that was only a ploy. I guess they knew we were buddies and they wanted to separate us anyway. But he said, “Here’s a list of everything else.” And the funny thing about it, the navy didn’t come back to my mind because I was looking down this list and the only thing that excited me, you know, made me say, “Oh, I’d love to do this,” was becoming a paratrooper and joining an airborne battalion and that’s how I got in there. I didn’t join up, believe it or not, in my home town of St. John's. I joined up in Toronto. I was in Toronto at the time. Believe it or not, I wanted to get out of Toronto. I never had the money to get out because we used to get paid, we lived week by week, you know type thing. And when the Korean War broke out I said to myself, I said, “I’m gonna go up and join the forces.” And that’s it. That’s how I got there. That’s how I got out of Toronto. I wrote my mom and dad and told them what I had done and of course my dad always thought I would join the air force rather than the army or navy but, no. But my mom, she wished me luck and she said, “Be careful,” and all that sort of thing. But I was home. I went home, you know, on my yearly leave and then I was only back in camp, I think it was about two or three weeks and I was home again. Of course, when I went home the second time they knew that I would be heading overseas.

Description

Mr. Rees discusses the day that he and his buddy joined the Canadian Forces.

Charlie Rees

Charles Rees was born in Lance Cove, Newfoundland on July 14, 1930. He first experienced the consequences of war at the age of 12, when he and the rest of his community were involved in rescuing the crew from two ships torpedoed nearby. While working in Toronto, Mr. Rees made the decision to enlist for service in the Korean War. He was sent overseas with the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, where he served a one year tour of duty on the 38th Parallel. When he returned to Canada, he trained as a paratrooper. After leaving the service, he was a pressman in the printing trade. Mr. Rees joined both the Atlantic and Canadian Korean Veterans Associations.

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