They Had Thousands of Casualties

We got off the boat in a place called Oostende in Belgium and we started up through to the Ardennes. I saw some spots of blood in the snow and saw two or three tanks that had, there’d been some troops up there ahead of us. Some tanks were knocked out and some helmets and oh, debris and stuff. I began to think and I began to be scared. But I had some good fellas. I was what they called a bomber in this section, I was loaded down with grenades. And we had a real good sergeant, Sergeant Johnny Hills, and he had recommended me for corporal but I never got it, I don’t know why. I think some of the brass turned it down, they said I didn’t have leadership qualities or something. But anyway, I certainly began to think. We went in to an old pub and stayed overnight, I think it was twenty, Christmas Eve of ‘44, and then the first action we got into was up in the Ardennes in (inaudible) and the Americans paratroops were wheeling some of the dead paratroops up.

The Americans were overrun. They had a lot of green American troops and they were overrun and they had thousands of casualties. Our, our outfit were rushed over there around Christmas time of ‘44, and the Jerries were retreating and falling back. So, it was mainly just a buffer we were then, and patrols in the Ardennes. Myself and a few more, one sergeant was blown up with his grenade and, there was a few casualties, but, in Germany it was quite different. The boys that landed on the DZ they had quite a few casualties. And then we went, we rode tanks quite a bit. the Guards Armoured Brigade, a Scotch outfit and we liked that. It saved walking. And one day we were going and our captain was killed. His grenade went off in his pouch and he was cut in two. Sam McGowan, he was a captain in our company, but that was quite different. He would have been a major and he was going to take over the company. And, I don’t know, you might have heard of a (inaudible) grenade, it had a pin in it, and somehow or other this pin got out and the striker went; it was right full of shrapnel and it killed him. I liked Sam. Captain Sam we called him. But, yeah, we rode those tanks. The second of May ‘45 we went across the Elbe River and we took off and spent the whole day, the second I think it was, and met the Russian troops in a place called Weismar. V-E Day was about four or five days later.