Description
Mr. Perry shares his experience of assisting a young girl who had nothing.
John Perry
Mr. John Perry was born October 30, 1936 in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. He came from a large family of nine children. During his teen years, he worked on fishing boats and local farms as a labourer and at age 17 decided to travel to Halifax to join the army. He accepted training in Camp Borden and spent two years in Manitoba. Too young to join the Korean War, Mr. Perry became part of the United Nations Emergency Force where he travelled to Egypt and worked in the motor transport area as a motor transport driver. After military service, Mr. Perry used his knowledge in motor transport and held various positions with the motor vehicle branch of provincial government. With 38 years service, Mr. Perry retired and settled with this family in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Transcript
Through little towns, or Suez city or near Ismailia, little town like El Kontara, Gaza City even. And they would always be around there knowing that they would get something from us. I remember this one time near the fence there too, we had to string a fence up to stop them from coming in and a little girl, probably five years old, came one day and “Monguria, Monguria!”, and then she started asking, “Cigaretten, Cigaretten”. Looking for cigarette, you know, for her parents probably. So I didn’t smoke and anyway we noticed one of her foot, her, I forget which one but it was bleeding. She had a cut on her foot and it was all bloodied and she was walking like on the side of her foot. So we got her close to the, and she didn’t want to come too, too close and she was poorly dressed. No panties on, just a little, funny little dress affair. Sleeves probably down to here and it was too tight for her and too big, or too small for her. Anyway we got her to come closer and one guy said, “Go get some food, quick get something.” He said, “chocolate or something!” So I ran in and got it and then just before I got out to the door he said, “bring out a t-shirt.” He said, “one of your under shirts”, he said, “you’re the smallest guy here.” I probably weighed 130 pounds. He said, “bring one of your undershirts.” I said, “What for? ” He said, “just bring it!”So I went into my kit bag and I got a undershirt, got it out and I hadn’t worn it all the time I was there yet. So anyway I brought it out and they eventually picked her up and got her over. Another guy went over and got a wash basin and washed her foot all up with soap and water, cleaned her up and the dirt you could see like the difference from this and that like you know, the colour and tore a strip off of my undershirt and tied it up and put the rest of the undershirt on her and tore off her dress and threw it away. He gave her a quick, quick, bath, and we gave her a couple of cigarettes and gave her a disc of chocolate and her mouth was covered with chocolate running down her mouth, you know. We tried to tell her you come back tomorrow and come back and it was about three or four or five days later, I wasn’t there the next time but she did come back and the bandage was all loose and everything but it was still there though.