Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Remembering the People I Helped
I remember Back during the middle of the war, in 1942, I was sent on a mission to deliver much needed supplies to people out along the west coast of Great Britain. Little did I know that there was a fleet of German U-boats waiting for me as I left the St. Lawrence harbour. It was extremely difficult to out-maneuver those U-boats and I was almost sunk when I was hit on my starboard side right next to the engine room. Luckily, A fleet of naval ships went and saved my ship from further harm and the U-boats fought the new enemy. This gave me and my crew enough time to put on a temporary patch and pierce through the German forces and was able to make it to the open ocean. We were able to deliver our cargo and saved the people of Wales from . Do any of you guys have special memories about people that you have helped?
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Yes, as a tank commander, I obviously remember the people I helped. During the Liberation of Holland, the Germans wouldn’t go back into Germany without a fight and there were rumours that they were blowing up docks and bridges to flood the country and impede the advancing Allies. The Nazis became desperate and declared a food embargo on the Netherlands in the unusually harsh winter of 1944-1945. They told us Allies that if we didn’t stop advancing, they would starve out the Dutch! As the company leader of B Company of the Lord Strathcona’s Rifles, which was among the first Allied troops to reach the eastern side of Ijsselmeer, I couldn’t let that happen. By February 1945, the famine was so bad that many people were reduced to eating tulip bulbs and sugar beets; it was a terrible sight. Luckily, the Germans had already fled when they heard the Canadians were coming and I came prepared with plenty of emergency food from our own army cooks. When that food was quickly consumed, my men and I even gave the Dutch our emergency rations. We went to sleep hungry that cold February night, but it was good to know that the people we just liberated needed it much more than I did.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I hadn't rescued or helped as much people as Captain Lyndon did, I still remember one time in I rescued an man who was sick and fainted from starvation from the battlefield. As our squad was patrolling the sky for any Luftwaffe in a patrol aircraft called the Bristol Fairchild Bolingbroke, I had spotted a man lying on the ground in an open field. I was assigned to rescue the man. I first used my parachute to descend down into the open field and realized he was unconscious. After a couple of minutes, a landing aircraft transported the man to a nearby war hospital. The nurse said that he had a fever and needed rest. I hope that the man would be fine. A few hours later, he had a woken and was informed that I had rescued him. He thanked me for saving his life and that made my day a whole lot better of all the stress I was having during the war.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like we both like to share our mediocre food rations (then again, the generous soldier DOES thing about others before himself.There is one story that I remember vividly, about a group of people that I met when i was liberating Theresienstadt's prisoners. There was minimal gunfire on our way to this area, as it seems like we were beginning to push back the Germans. I could tell, just by looking at their faces, that they suffered malnutrition, and torture (I hadn't learned about any kind of disease that was contracted. I also noticed that they were not wearing shoes. Being the proper person I was, I lead them to where the shoes were being kept; a giant room. Despite they were unable to find their own under that heap of shoes, they swiftly found their own. Once they were finished with looking, and had on a pair of shoes for outdoors, they came to me and hugged me as if i was their long lost relative. It seems like these people would have lost their lives quite soon, had we not have come at the time we did to liberate Theresienstadt...I later learned that the loss of one's shoes at a death camp, it meant that the Nazi's had squeezed you dry of their ability to work. When they had enough, these human beings were killed brutally, typically by a furnace. By liberating this camp, we prevented the it from transforming into an extermination camp.
ReplyDelete(Major Rey Hypolito T.)
ReplyDeleteWas that you? I remember helping a group of you guys at one point. You were the men on that ship with that gash threw its side?...
I remember trying to get you men out of there. It was not easy mind you. Wow. Isn’t it weird how I have never met you yet I have saved you and your friend’s lives? Well it’s nice to know that someone appreciated the work that us men laid our lived down for. Knowing that at least one ship got threw safly is good to know…