Lie There and Pray

Heroes Remember

Lie There and Pray

Transcript

You often, even in movies you hear the “shewwwwwww” you know? They’re not gonna hit you. It’s the ones that you don’t hear is the ones that you gotta worry about. But no, you’d be there and you’d be almost clawing into the ground, “What’s wrong with you guys? Why don’t you just shut them up?” You know, type thing. Because you don’t know what they’re firing at because they were overshooting you know, the position we were. They knew where we were, but they weren’t right on us, thank goodness for that. When it comes to mortar firing and heavy, heavy artillery so that’s all you can do is lie there or hide there and pray that one don’t come where you are. I’ll tell you one little, one little incident was close, too close for me. This night, myself and the sergeant we left command post, the platoon command post. We were going up to sight in a Bren gun and we were gonna get it all lined up and we had every third round was a tracer. So we knew what we had to do, once we get up and we figure the sighting, let go a few rounds and see if they were going and then run like hell back to your bunker. And outside of our bunker we had a blanket and you went inside of it, it was sort of a little bit and then inside that was another blanket and we just got inside the bunker when the shell hit right out in the trench, right opposite the doorway of the thing. We went out and picked shrapnel and that up. It stopped shrapnel, believe it or not, loose blankets like and we had two, so it stopped it actually in the first one. As I say it must have been just a small mortar shell type thing, fragment. So that was the closest that, I look at myself today when it comes to mortars and that, that I was so close to, you know, from the trench inside of a couple of blankets into the command post. Interviewer: What did it sound like? Oh, it sounded and smelled like hell. Cordite and everything else. Boy it was a pretty loud sound especially when your inside of another building and it’s outside. And everything like our candles and everything, all our lights went out and everything else and it’s... I remember this very clearly, the officer that we had, he was a Second World War man and he won the MM as a matter of fact during World War Two. But he wanted to go to Korea. He had a job in Ottawa and but he wanted to go to Korea. He was still in the army, but he wanted to go over to Korea. So finally all the paperwork and that he got and he came up as our platoon officer. When we got the candles lit again, he was over... I’m telling you. It was, I figured that he was dead. He must have been hit with a bit of shrapnel. So I went over, but I could see movement in his eyelashes and that, so I gave him a couple of shakes and I said “sir, sir.” Finally he came out of it. Just sort of, but it was only for you know, a few seconds and that. He said “I didn’t think,” he said, “it was this close.”

Description

Mr. Rees describes being pinned down by shell fire, and a close call with exploding mortar.

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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