Description
During a fight, taking a direct hit was one way of getting out of a bad situation.
Raymond Smith
Raymond Smith was born on July 31st 1920 near Niagara-on-the-Lake. Mr Smith lost his mother as a young boy and during the Depression he worked raising hogs and cattle. When war broke out he decided to join the army, which gave him a much needed raise from five dollars a month breaking horses, to a dollar thirty a day. He got the call for training camp in Regina where he became a driving instructor. He recalls arriving from training camp to England on July 31st 1941. Mr. Smith was an army tank sergeant during the war when he met his wife and they married in 1943 while he was on leave in Manchester, England. After the war, Mr Smith returned home on April 2nd 1946 and worked as a truck driver and later at O'Keefe Brewery.
Transcript
I’ve seen us get into a jackpot (sp) one time and they questioned my orders. We had infantry all around us, we got in and I called artillery fire, our own artillery fire right down on my own position where I was sitting and we just ducked down and closed the hatch, take a direct hit but it was hitting all the way around the infantry. They had German infantry there, they soon scattered out of there then we were free, but that was the first time that our major said, I ever heard calling artillery fire right down on your own position, but we got out of it alright, not even wounded.