I was a medic so I encountered some of my first wounded folks
and it was difficult because as a young fellow you really don’t
expect what you eventually see. And one of our experiences
early on was we came across a group of American soldiers who had,
who had camped and they had only posted the minimum sentries
and they were about 40 of them all killed in their sleeping bags
So as a Canadian soldier we discarded our sleeping bags and used
blankets from then on. I realized that war
wasn’t pretty by that stage.
And, as a medic you know, like, it was a shock to see a casualty.
My first one was an accident. A soldier tried to get
into a half track vehicle with his weapon pointing towards him
and discharged, hitting him in the chest and I looked,
it hit him on the right side. So I rolled him over so I could
see his left, his right back. There was nothing there.
In the meantime a doctor was standing there and said
“Este, turn him over to the other side.”
I turned him over to the other side, the exit would was way
down low on his left side and that really shocked me.