Starving in Holland

If you ever go over to Holland, make sure you got a Canadian badge or something on.
Interviewer: Great respect for the Canadian soldier.
Yeah, and for two reasons, you see. Canadians liberated the country and then they fed them. They were starving to death then they got food into them and that was one of the biggest things. Even after the war was over, we came back down into Holland in a little town not too far from Amsterdam. There was people there looked like walking skeletons. Just a little bit of bone left hardly. The place we stayed, was quite a big house there, and the woman told me they were using it for a hospital and there was 16 of them died in one week there, starved to death. Seeing little kids like that you know . . . the first morning we was there, we had this, it was like a back shed on this house and had a driveway come in on the house and it was kind of hedged liked all along the side. Everybody has these hedges kind of shrubs there. And there was a back kitchen on there and that is where we had the cook stove set up. And we come out of there and look they just run and grabbed the mess tent right out of our hands just clawing for anything that was left in the mess tent. The sergeant major, he tried to keep them out so he put me on guard on the gate to keep them out. I told them, I said, "Go around the back and go in."