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Rough Pacific Ocean

Heroes Remember

Transcript
And we went over then in October, late October and that was the beginning of an interesting experience for us. We went into our first sea voyage, bunch of kids. We, of course, we thought we knew everything by this point, but a sea voyage is something else and we found, we didn't know anything about, about the ocean or about big ships, about hammocks and about the things that happen to people on board big ships when the water gets rough. And there was a period of time when the water did get really rough and the ship pitched and bounced a bit and many of our members couldn't handle that and they got sick. And we learned not to stand under stairwells because you could get necked full of puke. It was just that bad. You didn't do that, you know. Anyway, that... I didn't get sick, that wasn't a problem for me but it was for many. We got to Japan, we boarded a train that took us to a little place called Hara-mura. That was an advanced training base, live fire base, battle inoculations for Korea, that's before we jumped off. And that was interesting because we crawled around the mud and climbed mountains there for a month.
Description

Mr. Ferguson describes the voyage from Canada to Japan, particularly the rough weather, and goes on to describe his deployment to Hara-mura for training.

Luther Ferguson

Luther Ferguson was born in Mayview, Saskatchewan on October 23, 1933. He describes himself as being “unworldly, poorly educated and having low self-esteem.” Mr. Ferguson felt that the Army offered him the best opportunity to both further his education and improve his life. He enlisted in 1951, and soon found himself a combatant in the Korean War, where he served in the infantry. Mr. Ferguson’s accounts lean heavily on the psychological impacts of training and warfare, and the devastation experienced by the civilian population during the Korean conflict.

Meta Data
Medium:
Video
Owner:
Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:
1:51
Person Interviewed:
Luther Ferguson
War, Conflict or Mission:
Korean War
Battle/Campaign:
Korea
Branch:
Army
Units/Ship:
Royal Canadian Regiment
Rank:
Private
Occupation:
Infantryman

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