Loss of a Friend

Well, you've five guys in the tank, and you sleep with five or four , and at night, and one's on guard duty. You did two hours off. I think it was four off. Two on and six off, two on and six off per watch, right through the three months. And you, you get . . . you're a little upset if a guy's a little late coming to relieve you. You're going to wake him up and you're back again, and he doesn't wake up fully and you gotta go back again. So you, you, you know who . . . you never want to be next to that guy. Ozachavich (sp) was that way. It was hard getting him, him to come out because he'd fall asleep. Not, not deliberately, but he would. Gordie Waldner always brings back . . . like, I got his, I brought his picture here. I got a picture of his grave. He got killed on the 2nd of October of ‘51. On the left flank of 355, we were down further. He was closer and in a different tank, but . . . he was carrying out, helping carry out wounded RCRs, and a shell landed a little close to him and blew his head off. And when I got this, I didn't get, I didn't get word for three weeks that, later, that he had been killed. When we come out of the lines to go home, he wasn't there. So, they told me he got killed. And I didn't know he was killed. This was the 28th of October, so it was three weeks before . . . so, things like this, you didn't hear much. We were going to go home together, and he never made it. I went to see his mother and she wouldn't see me, so . . .