A Friends Gives His Shovel
Heroes Remembers - Liberation of the Netherlands
A Friends Gives His Shovel
Transcript
This fellow that we talk about, Juszklewicz,
who gave me the shovel.
This fellow, Juszklewicz, says to me,
“Where’s your shovel?”
I said, “I don’t dig a shovel, I don’t need a shovel.”
And he said, “Here, take mine,
you’re gonna need a shovel.”
And then the last thing he said to me was,
“Keep your…remember you got to be like
a bird up here, you got to be watching all
the time and remember that!”
Because I was more interested in observing because
jeez there’s beautiful farmland and everything is fine.
So all of a sudden out of nowhere the machine guns
open up ahead of us and we hit the ground.
And I hit the ground and I thought
holy mackerel these people are shooting at me.
The very next night after he gave me the shovel that day,
I woke up in the morning,
got out of my slit trench and went over and
I said, “What’s happened?”
And here everyone was standing around looking
at Walter; dead, two bullets one in each chest,
two in each chest or two bullets in his chest.
And I said, “What the hell, why?”
I feel that it’s melancholy and I don’t feel good
about his having – such a wonderful man to do
what he did, to give me his only shovel and
why did he look upon me, I was a young guy
obviously he thought he was doing
me a big favour, you know.
Where did that kindness,
I mean you talk about humanity sometimes;
you talk about the bad things,
where did that come from?
This man, there was a certain gift and then to get…
The only son of a mother,
only son and here she was a Silver Cross Mother
she was and was active with the Canadian legion
which I am not and to think about
as a boy his family came, immigrants
came to this country and why does he get killed?
What the hell! The senselessness of it all.
Like it’s a good boy, you know,
I’m sure the Germans or whoever nailed him
might have been nice too.
So how do I make sense out of that?
All I see is a boy in the ground, pain of his mother.
His mother must have suffered terribly.
Her only boy.
Description
Mr. Preece shares a heart-warming story of the interaction he experienced with his buddy in providing his shovel and offering some advice only to find this friend is killed a short time later
Meta Data
- Medium:
- Video
- Owner:
- Veterans Affairs Canada
- Recorded:
- April 30, 2015
- Duration:
- 2:52
- Person Interviewed:
- John Preece
- War, Conflict or Mission:
- Second World War
- Location/Theatre:
- Netherlands
- Battle/Campaign:
- Liberation of Holland
- Branch:
- Army
- Units/Ship:
- Royal Regiment of Canada
- Rank:
- Private
- Date modified: