Description
Mr. Kocher recalls the conditions of his six boys and how one solider had ignored his hygiene to the point where his silk stockings became embedded in his feet.
Lyle Kocher
Mr. Kocher was born in Clive, Alberta on June 2, 1918. He was the youngest in his family with three brothers and two sisters. After six years of school he decided to quit and help his father with farming. As a young boy, Mr. Kocher joined the Royal Fusiliers of Edmonton Reserves. He enlisted in Edmonton and then went to Calgary for basic training. Mr. Kocher spent much of his army life in Italy and Africa. After returning home he wrote a book about being a Canadian soldier during the Second World War. In it, he shares his story of lost innocence and self- discovery.
Transcript
Interviewer: How long did you stay together with these six recruits? About five months.Interviewer: What was the morale like? With those boys? Oh they didn’t ... the thing is, if they complained or anything and I would have had to send them back, they would have had to gone with ordinary troops and they’d a been different training and that. So they were kind of glad to stay with me. One boy didn’t know anything. He didn’t know how to shoot a rifle or nothing. And besides that, now there’s another thing that come up. This boy couldn’t hardly walk, from the postal department. And Snider was with him, and Snider kept telling me his feet stunk so bad. So I made him take his shoes off and his socks. And he got them off and he had a pair of silk stockings underneath and they had grown into his flesh. He had never washed his feet for I don’t know how long. His wool socks were just stiff. So we couldn’t get those silk stockings off of him. So we sent him down to the MO and Burns went down. Mr. Burns went down talked to him and charged him with, I don’t know what the word is, but with damaging himself so he’d get out of being in the army. So anyway, I got him back finally and had to look after him. And anything that come up regardless what he was like, I had to take him with me. But he got over it, finally. They were a good bunch of boys. Now that’s another thing. Those boys didn’t smoke, they didn’t drink, and they didn’t swear.