AWOL

I ended up going to Petawawa. We did so much, if you wanna call boot camp training there, parade square work and on the rifle ranges and everything else. And then we went to Wainwright. And when I got to Wainwright we did a lot of advanced training and that’s when I thought I would be going to Korea with the 2nd Battalion RCR, but it didn’t happen. They sent us, from... before the summer was over, they sent us back to Petawawa again. The whole battalion. At that time we weren’t paratroopers or anything else. I was wearing the khaki brae with the RCR badge and galoshes. But this is where they were forming the 3rd Battalion RCR and little we knew about it then. But anyway went back to Petawawa. And when I got back I know one thing, first thing I had to do the second day I was here I had to go up on orders parade. I was a bad little boy. I went AWOL with a couple of other guys. Fifteen, I was gone for 15 days AWOL. So, but I knew I had done wrong so I said, “That’s it. I gotta go back.” I went back and I turned myself in and I apologized to everybody, but I still had to go before my OC who was a major and I had my platoon sergeant and officer and my platoon section leader there and boy they were putting in some word for me. And my OC, he didn’t want to charge me. So he said I got to, oh there’s a word for it. I had to go before the OC, the CO, colonel of the regiment. I went up before him three times and each time he remanded me. That was the word I was looking for. And when I got back to Petawawa, the second day I was there I was on orders parade. I went up for him, the old RSM “Left, right, left, right.” You know, marching me in. Escort too when you went in. And I remember Colonel Campbell. He looked at me and I was looking down at the sheets and everything else and then he looked up at me he said, “Rees,” he said, “you know you did wrong.” I said, “Yes sir.” And then he put his head down, “I’m gonna be very light on you,” he said, “fifteen days and night on furbish pay. March him out Sergeant Major.” Phew, what a relief! That’s all I got. I didn’t get paid for the fifteen days and two days later orders came out then and I was on junior NCO course. A few more days after that out came a list of the fellows who were going to Korea. They were reinforcing the 1st Battalion to go to Korea. My name wasn’t there. Of course I went up the ladder, you know, the way you had to do it. From your section leader right up and I said, “I trained with all those guys. They’re my buddies and everything else. I’d like to go with them.” So I did get on the draft.