We Should Remember

Heroes Remember

We Should Remember

Transcript

That we should remember what happened to most of the soldiers that went overseas… so many of them didn’t return. There was thousands of them killed while I was in Italy. I should remember that. I had a whole list of the battles we went in and how many got killed. We went into Pontecorvo and the tanks, we were with the Suffolk tanks, and they were supposed to be ahead of us. We, the boys and I, of course we were always went on the right side of the 22nd platoon. We were sometimes called 23rd platoon and we were suppose to climb the bank and make sure that we could take the anti tank guns out. But instead of that, we went around it and come up the other side, and we were under the heaviest barrage that would ever happen up there so far in the war. That morning when we had our meeting, the one colonel resigned rather than send his men into a massacre. We were told that they would outnumber us ten to one, and yet we attacked. When we finally got to the top, most of them, any of them that hadn’t surrendered were… they were already shellshocked or killed. And in the book, my daughter had written thousands… we walked through thousands of body parts and that. But I said my idea was hundreds, but anyway… and that was the first line of defence for the Germans. The next line of defence, there was no one left, no officer left. They’d all deserted but these boys, and we figured some of them were like 14, 16, maybe even younger, from other countries like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, like that. Some of them were crying. Some of them, just standing there. Some of them had their hands on their head. Others had been wounded and we walked through them. Our orders had been “Don’t take prisoners” and when I was questioned the next day, I said, “We probably didn’t have enough ammunition to shoot them all.” One boy, Craig, says, “There’s no way I’ll shoot those little boys.” So we got through it. But we probably kind of scary for those boys. We were dirty, bloody, unshaven and we looked kind of tough, I guess. Got no sleep for days.

Description

Mr. Kocher reflects on Remembrance Day and shares his opinion on how important it is to remember the thousands of soldiers killed during wartime.

Lyle Kocher

Mr. Kocher was born in Clive, Alberta on June 2, 1918. He was the youngest in his family with three brothers and two sisters. After six years of school he decided to quit and help his father with farming. As a young boy, Mr. Kocher joined the Royal Fusiliers of Edmonton Reserves. He enlisted in Edmonton and then went to Calgary for basic training. Mr. Kocher spent much of his army life in Italy and Africa. After returning home he wrote a book about being a Canadian soldier during the Second World War. In it, he shares his story of lost innocence and self- discovery.

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