Paint POW, Make the Letters as big as you Can

Heroes Remember

Paint POW, Make the Letters as big as you Can

Transcript

Eating our little bit of rice in our mess tent, seen this plane coming. Jeez, coming, coming, and coming low and low and started dropping some pamphlets. There was one fell just in behind the camp. I went and I picked it up and Captain Price came out the door. The airplane had passed the woods on the other side and it broke a couple of tops of the trees, just going like that. So, anyway, got up again but there when I brought that in to Captain Price. Captain Price, about an hour after he came out. “Well boys,” he says, “I don’t want you to go wild.” He says, “I want you to be calm and keep quiet. Now that the war is over, we don’t want to start another one.” He says, “Try and keep calm. What we are going to do is we’re going to try and get some paint and we’re going to go up on the roof and paint POW (Prisoner of War) as big, make letters as big as you can so they can see them when they come in.” So me, there was another guy, I can’t think of his name, the other guy, we was just about done painting that on the roof, I seen this plane coming. “Jesus Mary,” I says. Me, I caught onto the side of the roof this way . I says, “He’s gonna alight on us.” He was coming down, coming down all the time. So, anyway, started dropping stuff; big barrels and parachutes. And there was one, it fell into the camp on the other side of us where we used to be there, where we used to sleep. There was Corporal Dowell, I guess and Jim Darrach was talking to one another and the barrel just went down between the roof between them. That was close. There was a school further on and there was an old lady coming across through the field and one got her, killed her right there.

Description

Mr. Hunt describes learning that the war is over and talks about the pros and cons of the American supply drop in their camp area.

Arnold Joseph Hunt

Arnold Joseph Hunt was born in 1910 in the village of Pabos on the Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec. He was the eldest son in a family of 16. His father was a river guide, and as a boy Mr. Hunt would carry provisions upriver to the fishing camp for his father. He also worked cutting pulp and cooking in a lumber camp, earning 50 cents a day. Mr. Hunt enlisted with a French regiment, but transferred to the Royal Rifles, one of three brothers to do so. He describes his captivity and in particular the severe beatings he endured, as well as other brutality that he witnessed. He also describes a desperate effort to save a friend. Mr. Hunt questions both the Hong Kong deployment and Canada’s commitment to its Hong Kong Veterans.

Meta Data