Description
Mr. Este describes the use of the Napalm, a favourite weapon used by our soldiers to clear out huts and caves and its effect on the enemy.
Gus Este
Mr. Gus Este was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1931. He is the oldest child with two brothers and two sisters. His father worked as a porter on Canadian Pacific Railways. After attending school and achieving grade 11, Mr. Este decided to find employment onboard ships as a skipper. In 1950, Mr. Este made the decision to join the Canadian Army Special Force obtaining medical assistant trades with training in Camp Borden. He then went to Seattle, Washington and received advanced training in the medical field and gave service during the Korean War effort as a medical assistant. He was discharged from the service and worked at Canada Post for three years. Mr. Este later decided to re-join the service in postal corp and held rank of captain participating in tours to Egypt and Germany. In 1987, he retired with recognition of 33 years of military service.
Transcript
The favourite weapon that was used by us and the Americans and other groups in the UN operation used napalm and that was a good way to clear people out of caves and out of dugouts. So after a napalm incident you had some horrific looking people. Lots of minor wounds, lots of them from picking up phosphoreus grenades and they’d be burns that you’d have to stop them from moving by immersing them in water and scrubbing off the phosphoreus. Lots of shrapnel wounds and that type. Well you try to help as best you can, you know. You had to be leery because you didn’t know really who the enemy was. A lot of the Chinese and North Koreans infiltrated the civilian population and you couldn’t tell who was who often. So you had to be careful.