Irony of War

One of the ironies of war, we were fired upon to my platoon and there was a barn and I said, “Hit the barn!” And the guys all ran for the barn and we no sooner got in the barn when our own tanks were coming up and they didn’t recognize us as Canadian soldiers, they thought we were enemy and they fired upon us. And Ernst Wagner from my platoon was hit in the stomach and I held him, gave him a shot of morphine, we carry morphine in our helmets. And I gave him the shot of morphine and I had to stop the enemy, the tanks from firing upon our position. And this is the thing, it would be very difficult to task someone to say, “Go and stop those tanks!” These are the cases that you feel obligated yourself to do that so I left Ernst waving my hands running towards the tanks, “Hey, we’re good guys, stop the firing!” And climbed up on the back of the commander’s tank, one of the tanks and stopped the firing but these are the crazy things that happen in war.