Storming Juno Page #6

the thing you just

sprayed it,

sprayed it,

anything that

moved with bullets.

And the a-h-h-and

ah, that was it.

Anyone that

ha-that was had a gun

and and wave it around

there was no hope for him.

It's either you or him.

Sergeant Snider said

the first guy he shot,

he had given up

and kept hollering,

"comrade, comrade!"

And he said,

"I shot him anyway."

He said, "There was still a

lot of fight left in him."

He said.

You know it's a

hard thing to say

but they said that there

was no way we could

take prisoners

because there was

no place to put them.

If there a German come

out, it didn't matter,

you disposed of him,

that was just it, till,

cause you had to clean

everything out of the way

so the next wave of soldiers

could come through.

And ah, that's ah,

the way it was.

And ah, how we ever got off

there without losing a man,

I'll...

[gun fire]

Some Germans,

they were medics.

And I said, "first you're

going to do my men.

And he says

"Nein."

He wouldn't do it.

And I says,

"and you gonna do me first."

And I told him,

in german,

"ich bin ein Jude',

you know, I'm Jude -

and you're gonna do

what I tell ya. Or else!"

And I, there was a native guy

standing beside me,

and said, "lift your rifle,

aim at his head,

when you hear the word

'nein' coming from him,

don't wait for me, just

shoot the sonofabitch.

Don't wait for any orders."

And boy he was just ready to go,

you know he was...

And this guy started

to shake he was,

he was really

scared of Natives.

He, he said, "okay,

okay, you know,

all of a sudden

he spoke English.

You don't even

think about it.

The thing is,

you've been

trained so long that,

"destroy your enemy!"

anyone you can,

and it,

you have no emotions

at all really.

But it's after,

I find it harder now,

to think he was a human

being, just like I was.

The only thing,

he was doin,

the same thing

I was trained to do.

Protect his country,

or protect

what he was supposed

to protect.

It was a while before,

finally the shooting stopped,

and that's when

my work started.

My job as pay-clerk,

was to record the,

the dead,

everyday,

the pay had to stop the

minute a man was dead.

Everyone wasn't

going to pay an extra

nickle if they had to.

There were

sixty-three bodies,

lined up on one side.

And the burial

parties removed the

lower half of their dog-tags.

They put em in a box,

and brought them over to me.

My job was to enter

the name of the person.

I knew most of them.

Some of the men

I knew very well.

When I finished my job,

I went back to the seawall,

I sat down,

and I started to cry.

I never...

I never cried so

much in all my life.

Finally the paymaster

came over and says,

"it's time for us to move on."

And that was,

that for D-Day.

You know sometimes you wonder,

"what the heck

am I doing here?"

Ya know?

I don't have to be here.

You know going through

this, and then you,

you liberate a

village, and then,

these people come out

from I don't know where.

They come out and then

you know why you're there.

[cheering]

Read the history books,

and the Americans won the war.

Oh sure, they,

they put a lot into it,

alright but,

the Canadians are

the ones that took the brunt

of a lot of

the ah, ah, attacks.

And the Canadians were

always put in

that position, that -

because they were

so good at it,

they were given that job.

Maybe it's just the

way the Canadians are,

when they get a job,

they go ahead and do it.

They say "well, w-we, we

gotta do it, let's do it!"

They thought we were

just a bunch of farmers.

[laughs]

but those farmers

turned out to be

good fighting men.

In fact,

we're the first regiment

to reach our objective.

You know it's all

over, you come home.

Uh, you sit up in

bed some night

and y-y-you'll

l-live a little bit

more of it too.

Your wife kinda gets

tired of this

you jumping out of bed and

walking around the room

and come back in

in a bit, you know?

I-I don't know, ah,

I'm glad I was there.

I'm glad I witnessed it.

I'd a felt terrible if I -

if I hadn't taken part and

did something, you know?

Everybody pulled

together,

it was only Joe,

and Sam and

Pete and Harvey.

I feel sorry for

the little guy

and ah,

there was lots of

them in the Army.

That was all they

had you know?

Yeah.

We stand for two minutes.

What did they stand for?

Sixty-five years.

Their whole life.

We, we came back,

we've enjoyed

life,

we had a home,

had a wife

and children,

they

didn't.

They didn't have any of that.

But how often do

we think about it?

How often do we

think about our

freedom really?

You know?

How often do you think

about your freedom?

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