Albert Hugh MacBride
Albert MacBride was part of a five-man tank team on Hill 355 during the Korean War. He arrived home safely but others he fought with were not so fortunate.
New Westminster, British Columbia
Korean War
Biography
Albert MacBride was born July 25, 1932, in New Westminster, British Columbia. When he was 18, he joined the Canadian Army, enlisting with the Armoured Corps and the Lord Strathcona's Horse Regiment. He underwent basic training at Camp Borden in Ontario and later in Meaford, Ontario, with his tank regiment. He served as a driver/gunner with the Armoured Corps assigned to a tank. Mr MacBride served at Hill 355 in Korea as a part of a five-man tank team. After returning home in 1953, he joined the Canadian Air Force and transferred to a career as a crash rescue firefighter for 20 years. He was married in 1954 and stationed all over bases in the Royal Canadian Air Force from Summerside, P.E.I., to Germany. After leaving the Air Force, he became a provincial fire inspector and, later, a fire marshal for the federal government.
Heroes Remember interview
View all of Albert MacBride's videosCasualties on Hill 355 - HTML5 Transcript/Caption
Mostly, if you were five men in a crew, you know them five men
and you might know the next tank over. But you don't know
anybody in different crews, different, different troops. See, in
the, the armoured corps we only had one squadron in Korea, which
is twenty tanks, and maybe four more was, was headquarters. So,
we had five men to a tank, and we didn't have the whole
regiment. We just had one squadron, so we were less than any of
On 355, I was there in October 22nd, 23rd, and . . . 21st, 22nd,
and 23rd, and we got her for three days straight. We got one guy
killed. Gordie Waldner got killed. We had one fellow won the
Military Medal, Roy Stevenson(sp.), yeah. And we got her for
three or four days straight, and there was 18 RCRs killed and
about four or five, I think, taken prisoner, and lots, lots
wounded. We had . . . My loader was wounded and the code guy was
wounded, and I just got scared. Everything scared me
Interviewer: Were you afraid?
Well, I had three weeks to go home, and that's when you usually
get it. I didn't want to get it three weeks. And I got out of
there in three weeks safely. All except for this.
Where they served
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