WWII - Please meet Parkie, the young kid who made a man out of himself

[parkie]

On the march, we had been on the haul for a couple of days on the Arcona road, we had been strafed twice, The Germans would come in and hit and run, never staying long, just come in and buzz us, hit the odd truck, and maybe the odd guy, had my first run in with the Ghurkha’s on that road, we had been walking and we were feeling a bit weary, when all of a sudden from over the ridge, came this odd looking little track carrier with about four Ghurkha’s in it. They cut through our line and swerved back onto the road, with the vehicle coming up on one track almost tipping over, then over the other way, onto one track, Geez, you would have sworn there was a bunch of drunks driving it, they were all over the place, Then they finally got it under control, And this one little guy pokes his head up from the back, And he was smiling and laughing like he didn’t have a care in the world ‘Hi.Johnny,’he says, waving like a school kid, god that made me laugh, not a care in the world. We got up close to them. And he says ‘So, You Johnny’s got iny Jerries’, No we told him we didn’t get ‘INY’ Jerries.Not that day ‘well’ he says ‘we gots a few over de hill der’ ‘ if you need one, you cin have one o dem’And away they went laughing and smiling ‘gees we laughed for hours about that. Ya! If ye need one ye cin have one o dem. I never saw one have a bad day really.even when they were shot to hell and half dead, always looking on the bloody bright side, Joe and I happened on one Ghurkha sitting on the back of a three ton truck, probably waiting to get ride out. He had no leg below the knee on one side, Joe asked him or rather stated ‘got hit good, hey lad’ he looked at Joe and smiled and says ‘aw hell could be worse’. But that’s how they were, it must have been the life they were brought up in, I guess the war in Italy was a step up from what they were use too. And don’t ever ask one to see his knife. Christ, may have well ask him if you can sleep with his sister. Boy! They were sure sticky about their knives; I don’t remember if I ever did see one, I’ve seen what they can do, many a time. We found Germans cut from the neck bones all the way around like that, just one big slice, An guy’s said they found Germans dead from the Ghurkhas in the oddest position, some with pants their down, probably stopped to have a crap and got himself a new smile, others said they found them with their willy in their hand,dead, got caught having a leak! I could see it too. I have had them sneak up on me in the dark, And scare the absolute begeezus out of me, you can just imagine yourself sitting out in the woods at night, your already all nerved up looking for Germans and listening for any little sound, and all of a sudden somebody says HI, JOHNNY!! In your bloody ear. good god! You almost crap your pants right there, holy smokes, it scares the hell right out of you. When it started to get dark they would wrap themselves up tight so there was no loose clothing and off they would go into the bush, For us a evening of night patrol could be nerve racking, for them, it was an evening of hunting.but, in terms of a soldier, you couldn’t ask for a better guy to have on your side. Hi!! JOHNNY!!

                                    A.C.(parkie)

 

[Hunter]

Hi Parkie,

I printed some of your stories and took them in to read to my grandfather tonight.  He's got creeping dementia and he's not very expressive, but he listened with rapt attention as I read to him.  He's usually pretty withdrawn and not very expressive, but his eyes followed me as I read, and I could tell he was listening intently.  When I finished I asked him if he wanted me to bring in some more stories to read to him.  He broke into a big smile and nodded his head - a big reaction for him.  He was a mosquito pilot during the war and did a full career as a naval aviator, retiring as a Lieutenant-commander.  I visit him a couple of times per week at his nursing home, and I want to tell you that your stories brought out the biggest reaction from him that I have seen in a long time.

God bless you, Sir, and thank you once again for sharing you memories with us.

Hunter out.

 

[parkie]

This piece has taken me three days to write. It was the first time I engaged in hand to hand with an enemy soldier, It changed me forever, it showed me how primitive man was, and when they say kill or be killed, they mean kill! No bloody question! We had been forcing an attack on a ravine near the Moro, at least I’m pretty sure it was the Moro, This happened about two weeks before Ortona, The Germans had set up a strong defensive position across a ravine, The 1st was given the duty of clearing them. CO’s were arguing about something, and the men were picking up on it. When the CO’s have a disagreement, more of us die then need be, usually. Who knows, we just do has we’re told, because that’s who we are. One of the other regiments started an assault on the ravine, but they were so fast they ran into trouble from their own artillery. The pats went in with another unit, we got so dam close to the German’s .we could have hit them with a stick.
We were lying in bushes on the top slopes of the ravine, No more then a few yards away a German machine gun crew was firing on the far slope, they must have heard us, because they turned the gun on us. Hot lead was flying over our heads like swarm of hornets, One of the boy’s threw a grenade, but it did nothing, it only made it worse because now they knew how close we were, three of us made a decision to skirt under their fire using the slope, and the rest would hold their fire. We were fumbling through the bushes. Getting close, how close? We literally fell into their gun nest. The first one was the gunner on the MG. I pointed my Thompson in the general direction and let it do the rest, from ten feet away it literally made him explode from the waist up, a mistake! I had emptied my mag.Behind me I could hear somebody Grunt and say you son of a Bi*ch. The next thing I felt a sharp pain in my left breast. One of them had swung a knife at me with a backstroke and it hit me in the top pocket, it was stuck in small metal case in my shirt pocket. I kicked him in the groin has hard has I could and he was on me, trying to push that bloody knife into me, All I could think to do was to try and take out his eye. But in trying this, he latched on to my thumb with his teeth and was trying to bite my bloody thumb off, Jesus H Ch**st that hurt, I tried to yank it free and did, but Fell back with him falling with me,I landed on something soft and only recognized it has a uniform, whatever it was it wasn’t moving and this bloody German was still trying to kill me. With me lying on my back, he reached down and grabbed me by the testicles and squeezed, Jesus, it felt like my guts were going to explode. In desperation I took my thumb and drove it into his eye has far has it would go, He screamed, and let go of my bag. He tried to clutch my hand I had in his eye, but I had him. With both his hands trying to pull my thumb out of his eye, I grabbed him by the back of the head and pushed my thumb in has far has it would go, I can still to this day remember the feeling of holding his skull between my thumb and my hand, He was making a strange whimpering noise, but all I could see was red, And the smell of hot blood in my breath, he was done, I held him by the back of the head with my thumb still buried in his eye, and pushed him back onto the ground, his knife was still dangling from my shirt pocket and I tried to pull it out, the whole pocket came off, he had stuck his knife into my small metal smoke tin, I twisted the knife out of the tin and finished the fight, I had become Parkie the killer. From then on I would think of myself has a killer; if I had to I could kill.And would

 

[William Webb Ellis]

Wow, thank you....it seems a little hollow and insufficient, but it is all I have.

 

[parkie]

Hi Parkie,

I printed some of your stories and took them in to read to my grandfather tonight.  He's got creeping dementia and he's not very expressive, but he listened with rapt attention as I read to him.  He's usually pretty withdrawn and not very expressive, but his eyes followed me as I read, and I could tell he was listening intently.  When I finished I asked him if he wanted me to bring in some more stories to read to him.  He broke into a big smile and nodded his head - a big reaction for him.  He was a mosquito pilot during the war and did a full career as a naval aviator, retiring as a Lieutenant-commander.  I visit him a couple of times per week at his nursing home, and I want to tell you that your stories brought out the biggest reaction from him that I have seen in a long time.

God bless you, Sir, and thank you once again for sharing you memories with us.

Hunter out.

Hello hunter
Thanks for taking my stories and reading them to your grandpa, He will enjoy these, because being a soldier is all us old vets are, for a lot of us it’s what we hold onto to keep us young, or at least to feel like we’re young, it’s funny that us old guy’s, share these stories with each other, but not with the younger generations, Some I hear, ‘oh.the younger people, they don’t unerstand’. Well! How the hell are they going to, if you don’t tell them everything? They enjoy the stories, so tell them what you did; it’s not like their made of glass or something.
I’ll bet your grandpa smiles when he hears stories like this! The war is the most amazing thing that many of us did, It made us who we are, I bet the war is the most important thing, that your grandpa hangs onto, I know it’s that way with me,
Hot dam! A mosquito pilot.eh! We use to get stories about them down through the ranks, I never got to see one fly, sure would have liked to though, saw a bomb for a mosquito once, the boy’s called it a cookie. I think it was made for bunker busting. Great big thing, must have weighed probably a couple of tons or more. Supposedly they were all explosives, real thin skin. The boy’s use to write TO ADOLF.on their big bombs, who knows maybe he got one,? Say Hello to your grandpa for me. Tell him I miss those times too.
                                            parkie

 

[parkie]

I was reading a note from another fellow about an old army truck in military history, and into my old mind popped something that had been buried for years,
In the fall of 1943,we were on the march and we had received a couple of days leave, Joe was still with me then, and we went to see the sights in one of the small towns there
A bunch of us went in on the back of a three-ton dodge, troop truck. Joe and I, we weren’t much for drinking and carrying on, well, not too much anyways! We went to see the old buildings and a few things like that, We were near where we had been dropped in the town, when a young women, she couldn’t have been more than 25 years old, came running up to us waving her hands and making strange noises, Joe tried getting me to ask her what the problem was, but she couldn’t talk right, She scribbled a note that was I was hardly able to read, that said something about a bunch of orphans. I told Joe that the note said something about orphans, and well, Joe being the mother Theresa of the first division he went banana’s, he was just frantic about us helping her and trying to get me to communicate with her, but it was hard to do, So we went with her down a couple of streets and in a dirty little room on the second floor of a building, she had about twenty children, of all ages from about 1or 2 years old to about 9or 10.most looked like they hadn’t eaten in days and they were severely malnourished. One of the older kids was able to relate to me that they all came from about six different families in the country, their parents had been captured has part of the Italian resistance and executed, Before that, their parents thought they were in danger of being caught and they had sent all the children to live in the town to be safe, but apparently the children of anyone connected to the resistance were worth something to the nazi’s, because the Germans had been looking for these kids for some time before the area fell to the allies, this young woman had been hiding them on her own, everyone else that had been connected to the kids had been caught and who knows what happened to them. The kid told me they thought maybe they still had some sort of family left in the country, but it was quite a ways out, has near has I could tell at the time somewhere between Rome and Naples, We couldn’t just leave them there to starve and we didn’t have a truck anyway, The army frowned on the use of their trucks for such things. Joe went looking for some sort of transportation while I kept watch, You have to remember that while the Germans were out of parts of the country they were still in control of a lot of places, and going near Rome would be a risk, also, many who were connected to the resistance had enemies, and revenge would be brutal on the children if they were captured by the wrong people. About an hour or so later, Joe came back, and he said he had a truck big enough for everyone. We snuck the kids down a back ally, and Holy! Hell! Joe had the truck we had come in on. I asked what the heck did he do? Well he says I just walked back to where the driver let us off, But I couldn’t find him anywhere so I just brought the truck anyway, well;okay. I figured what the hell. A little crap will be worth it to get these kids out to where they might have family, We flipped open the tarp on the back of the truck and there was the driver passed out on the floor of the truck. Drunk! We loaded all those people in the back of the truck and away we went, it took us some time, If I recall it was about 6-8 hours before we came across a guy standing on the side of the road selling wine, He had a sign up that said Italian Champagne. (They use to take just horrible red wine and they put god knows what in it to make it fizz and they sold it to the troops has Italian Champagne). The girl we met in the street, started waving her hands and banging on the truck. One of the kids recognized this guy standing on the road; it was an Uncle or something. Anyway, we got all those kids safely into the country on our side of the fighting, And I think all went well, except maybe the driver might have wondered how he got to where he was when he woke up, because we left him with the truck about fifty miles from where we took it.
The people in the country gave us a whole slew of stuff for bringing the kids to them, one thing I’m holding in my hand has we write this, A small black clam shaped case, and inside a small silver statue of Jesus on the cross with Rome written on it,
A treasure, for saving someone else’s treasures.
                                                A.C.(parkie)

 

[Hunter]

  And I think all went well, except maybe the driver might have wondered how he got to where he was when he woke up, because we left him with the truck about fifty miles from where we took it.

That's some funny stuff Parkie!

Thanks for your kind words about my grandfather.  I regret not taking the the to get a permanent record of his stories before the curtain of dementia started creeping over him.  It may have been a futile effort anyhow.  I can count on one hand the number of times I heard him speak directly about his war experiences.  Mst of what I know is from reading his letters to my grandmother, which he wrote many, and the immaculate mission logs he kept, an research I've done on his career.

One letter in particularly stays with me.  Dated May 9, 1945, he wrote about a big day of conflicting emotions.  The day before had been his 25th birthday, and it was also VE-Day.  Lieutenant Hunter the big day by riding a motorcycle through the mess hall, and then his flight crew 'pantsed' him - they took his pants off him and ran them up the flagpole. He got a mild rebuke rom his CO.. 'Lieutenant I realize you've got a lot to celebrate today, but you are and officer and all that sort of thing, think of your example to the men.'  My grandfather elnisted as an ordinary seaman at the outbreak of the war and got a commision from the ranks - he absolutely HATED the snobbery of the officers at the time.

 

[Jacktheknife]

The story will go on. We’ll either write seperatly, or sometimes in the same letter, since we hang together pretty tight, anyways. And since for right now, we all use the same computer. For reference for those of you reading.parkie is pappy, buster is preacher. Jack is cuts. Those are the names we grew up with and called each other, always will.
Jack Here.
Three soldiers, first, three boys’s growing up in the same small town in Manitoba. We were raised in the bush, all of us; we came from dirt-poor families that for the most part barely had enough to eat. Many around that time did not.
We three grew up not five miles apart, easy walking distance in those days, well! Walking distance. It wasn’t like you could catch a bus down to parkie’s or busters. We all had big families. Parkie’s had about 13 or 14 people. Mine I had five brothers and three sisters.Buster.well I think Busters family found him on the doorstep or something like that. Probably ate too much where he was. Growing up he was always telling us right from wrong, that’s why we called him preacher. I was always playing with knives when I was young, use to try and make them out of old scythe blades; So I got the handle, Jack the knife, pappy called me cuts, because my hands were usually covered with them. We called parkie  Pappy, He was two years older, and though he never admits it, he was a tough has nails pot licker when he was young. He would haul Buster and I, up into the hills for sometimes three or four days. Moose hunting, we started doing this when we were so young that it took three of us to shoot the old rifle we used. Two with the barrel on their shoulders, one sighting and firing. Shoot moose, deer elk.bear.Hang it, and go up on horses and pack it out.If you never ate bear,well,it tastes just like chicken,That’s if the chicken your eating tastes like the dump,something like that. Actually it was pretty good,just god awful greasy.another we use to really enjoy,was beaver tails,cut the tail off,throw it in the hot coals,until the skin blistered then peel it and fry it,or eat it just like that,absolutely delicious.pappy use to make a mean squrrel stew,and he still does,when he can get the squirrels,hope there’s no big squirrel lover’s out there,If there is sorry! But their even tastier than they look.

                                                              Jack

 

[preacher]

Buster wants to have a try at this.
Buster
hello.
I am not use to this yet, so I’ll just speak a bit until this gets easier for me, I think most everything Jack said, is pretty close to how life was for us growing up, there was always lots of hard work to keep the home fire burning, so to speak, my family, I had six brothers, And no. I wasn’t found on the doorstep, but they did call me preacher. I guess somebody had to keep these other two in line, not that they listened to me, But I do think the life we led growing up, made our life has soldiers, easier, if that’s the right word, it didn’t hurt anyway. It was amazing, when we were signing up, just how many boy’s there were from the country that had made the trek into the city to enlist, from places we never even heard of, something I remember about being in the city, when you went to a social gathering of any kind, there sure use to be lots of fights. All it took was two or three guys after the same girl, and the scrap was on. Never anything to serious, mostly just the usual bloody noses and black eyes, boy! That was lots of fun. You know .I see something that parkie and Jack didn’t mention, when we were about 10 or 11 years old. Pappy found an old bike, It had no seat on it, and not much of a bike at all, But to us it was really something, One day pappy was riding it and the old pedals broke off, and that steel seat post went about a foot up into his guts. Tore him up like hell. We took him to a midwife’s house and she tucked his guts back in and sewed him up. He went all through the war with his insides hanging down into his scrotum.Boy.that must have been painful.but, I don’t know, maybe this helps tell you the type of guy parkie was.
                                                                      Buster

 

[parkie]

Something new. Us old guy’s sit and talk with ourselves quite a bit, So we want to include you in the coversation, we’ll give it a try. Maybe you’ll enjoy it.

Parkie-I see the boy’s talking about mortar attacks, man, I use to hate those dam things, specially when they brought out that bloody thing that shot off about a dozen at once,

Jack-oh, ya, you mean moaning Minnie, that’s what the boy’s use to call it. I think they held ten rounds, I’ve seen where the Germans had about thirty of them going off at night,

Parkie-Jesus, hard to imagine getting hit with about 2-300 mortars at once.

Jack-ya, they could blow the hell out of a lot of guy’s in a hurry. They liked those long-range pot lickers too. They were the worst, at least the moaners you could hear them coming down,

Buster-ya, they sure shot the hell out of us in Holland with the mortar crews, just blew guy’s right to rat shyte, up on that dam canal we went across you could walk on a dam carpet of bodies.

Jack-ya.they had you guy’s marked good for that one.

Buster-Can’t remember but man we lost a hell of a pile that first couple of days

Jack-Ya-I know buster, us too, in the first few minutes for us,

Parkie-no bloody kidding, every time I think of that bloody liri, I think Jesus the whole dam regiment gone in a few minutes. At least somebody got a medal out of it I guess. Better than what most got.

Jack-Ya I suppose beats the hell out of pine box, hell pine, I guess more like a dam garbage bag. Some way to get sent out.

Buster-I always thought those bloody rail guns were a kicker on the guy’s

Parkie-holy, jesus, you wouldn’t believe what those dam things will do to a group of guy’s in short order,

Jack-So that one they used on you, that was that dam Anzio annie the boys use to talk about after the war,

Parkie-no.I don’t think so.maybe.I think it was further south from the one that hit us a few times. That one they had in the hills by us was about a 240mm I think that Annie was a little bigger maybe not, we got one used on us one night down in the southern part of Italy, maybe that was her, whatever it was it shot a dam small car across at us.

Sure had a wicked effect on guy’s nerves, up near Ortona they hit us with that bloody thing every night for a couple of days, jesus, the younger guy’s that were fresh in, use too cry themselves to sleep at night poor buggers.then have jerry snuff your lights out with a bloody full scale long range mortar attack,oh ya,nothing like getting clobbered by about 500 mortars in about an hour to make you closer to god.

Jack-I still think about that story you wrote about percy,I think his wife would have liked that,at least to know what really happened to him.I guess,

Parkie-I couldn’t tell her that stuff Jesus jack that would bother the hell right out of her, maybe not now, but man, back then with a new born baby, jesus. I still have problems with that one, man, to end up standing in him like that, turned that poor kid into mush, he was a nice kid too.real chipper,

Jack-so you never told her anything about how he died.

Parkie-No, well, his sister came to see me about 5 years after the war, I just told her, she would have been proud of him, he died standing up, like a man, and he did too, so it was no lie, helped her out a bit I guess.

Jack-I remember that kid you use to hang around with when his dad use to come to the fire station,

Parkie-ya.Elmo.he died on the windflower just off the shore of Newfoundland in there somewhere, got hit by a supply ship or something, I think they lost the whole dam works on that ship.

continue-

 

[parkie]

Jack-ya, I remember his mother moved away right after she got word that he died

Parkie-say Jack before you went out west did you ever meet the sister of the Anglican minister here

Jack-no

Parkie-She was a church worker, in china when the Japanese invaded. Real nice girl, real quiet.

Jack-no. I never did meet her, real quiet was she?

Parkie-well, ya she was, but not by choice, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.

Jack-Why, what did she do?

Parkie-well.it isn’t so much what she did, but, it’s what the Japanese did to her, they cut her dam tongue off,

Jack-What!!

Parkie-Ya-The bas*ards cut her tongue off about half way down, poor kid; all she was doing was working for the

ministries.

Jack- Jesus .man they were cruel bas*ards.well didn’t her brother serve overseas,

Parkie- ya, he was a sniper in one of the outfits that landed in Holland a bit before buster did

Buster-oh.ya that’s right I can’t remember what that outfit was,

Parkie-well, anyway’s that’s what they did to his sister, bloody heathens anyway.

Jack-may has well forget about that parkie,

Jack-That guy you were attached to in England that your wife said years ago did us all a favor, that time,

Parkie-Military Intelligence.Ya, I worked with him, well sort of worked with him for about three years, he was quite the guy, could sure get you what you wanted to know, sure did us some good in Italy. He got me mixed up with those two guys’ that worked for Volkes, man. That was one guy I couldn’t take much of.

Jack-That guy you knew in England

Parkie-No, Volkes.

Jack-ya.how do you think I felt when they changed the sentence of Meyer, after what he did.

Parkie-oh.ya.well they went around and said you guy’s shot them. After they surrendered.

Jack-man. I’ll tell you pappy after what they did at the abbey, that was a bloody shame what they did to those young guy’s, and those young guy's from town here, bas*ards just took them and shot them.

Parkie-well look at it this way jack at least it wasn’t a four foot fall on a three foot rope for that son of a bi*ch, he got to sit and watch the world go by,

Jack-never mind I seen a guy on here say that your outfit did some bad things around Ortona.

Parkie-What!

Jack-ya, I guess, he was at some library in Germany and there was suppose to be some real bad stuff you guys did or something,

Parkie-well, that would be the place to go to read about fair deals that the Canadians gave, eh.

Jack-ya, that’s kind of what I thought,

Parkie-ya, I can just imagine what they would have to say, bunch of crap. Still can’t get over that picture they showed around years ago about that young SS soldier that the sherbrookes roughed up a bit.

Jack-ya, can you bloody imagine, Look what the Canadians did to our fine young soldier after he surrendered,Dam thing should have read, murderer gets slapped around a bit after murdering unarmed men. What a bunch of a A#1 Ass*oles, throw people in an oven and burn them up like garbage, and complain when some boy’s show up to put a stop to your bullshyte.

Jack-I remember watching this clown from the panzer division that was in France on television, saying, no! Malmedy didn’t happen. It simply did not happen.

Parkie-ya, I seen him to on one of the history channels, some nerve eh, Jack.

Jack-Christ. I remember watching that, and thinking to myself. Man I wish I was there with just one good round of hardball ammo for that ass*ole.

Continue tomorrow.

 

[Roy Harding]

Parkie:

I'm glad you and your friends are still here, Sir.

Please keep the stories coming - half the time I can't cry for laughing, and the other half of the time I can't laugh for crying - you are a living testament to everything that is good and true about soldiers and soldiering - past and present.

Please keep the memories coming - we need them.

Respectfully,


Roy Harding

 

[parkie]

Jack-pappy tells us about Eril, You never spoke much of him. But I see you wrote a little about him in your story, how did you meet him and what happened in Poland,

Parkie-geez jack that’s a long story, I met him in about 41,it was just around the time of the killings at a town called Lwow in Poland, eril had been a member of the polish scouts before the war, In English they were the grey rank, he had been studying in Scotland for something to do with literature, I met him through him being in contact with military intelligence and the home guard scouts in Poland, when the war broke out in 39 it really got to him, I think he knew exactly what was going on over there, how I’m not really sure, perhaps I knew once or was told but I’ve forgotten now, he came from a section of Poland that was not far from Warsaw,

Jack-So what did he work for the army in Scotland or something

Parkie-No, he was a scout. Like a boy scout. He was trained has part of home guard army, I don’t know what kind of training they got, but he had quite a network of friends in Poland. Or at least he did before the war broke out. I think a lot of them were killed by the nazi’s, or sent to the camps.

Jack-so when the nazi’s caught him they knew he was with the resistance, or what the hell happened that he got caught over there.

parkie-I think somebody recognized him or something, I’m not sure, I know his sister was executed by the nazi’s for something to do with the Warsaw uprising, I think she was part of the grey ranks too, like a girl scout.

Jack-so that Lwow was some sort of thing that the Nazis did, or what happened there

Parkie-well, the SS took everybody with an education out and shot them, you think that’s bad, near a town called khatyn the Ukrainian’s under the Russians nailed little kids to the trees and wrapped them in barbwire. I’m not sure how many died there, I think around fifty thousand

Jack-You know how the hell, do you know who your friends are in those places. Christ, life doesn’t mean anything to some.

Parkie-ya that’s right Jack, it means nothing to some and everything to others. Like Eril told me once, The only way you survive, is you have to turn into an animal just like the one’s running the show, if your weak they use it against you, So,you tell us what we want to know or we’ll kill all these people. Eril said you just have to come to terms with it, and say go ahead, your going to kill us anyway.

Jack-that’s some bloody way to have to live. Dog eat dog.

Parkie-well the worst is he didn’t know who to trust to help him find his family. You know before the war broke out there was Gestapo in Poland, different forms of it, a big portion of the Germans who lived in Poland belonged to these different organizations, and they almost all had something to do with the Gestapo. I still have all these papers of Erils that he left with me years ago. He had a whole list of places that were under investigation for war crimes, He gave me these papers that he carried all those years, here’s some of them here that he wrote down. Palmiry, wawer, khatyn, Lwow, Vilnius, Odessa, Kaunas, Simferopol, Babi -Yar, Bialystok. I don’t know how many were suppose to be the work of the nazi’s but a lot of them even if they weren’t done by them, it was under their supervision or using their weapons and such, quite the killing operation, mass slaughter, mass produced.

Jack-So, where did they have him when the Gestapo got hold of him,

Parkie-I’m not sure anymore, I use to know, but I’ve forgotten over the years, one place they had him for awhile was a place by the name of chelmno.i think from there they took him out somewhere into the eastern provinces there, like Latvia or something like that, he told me that one place was near or in Russia, where they buried a whole hospital full of children that had tuberculosis. Something like that, anyway it was like a sanatorium for sick kids and the nazi’s did away with the whole works, and to save lead they had the slave labour they picked up, do the digging and the burying of the kids, Alive.

Jack-christ.pappy.why the hell would god put such vile people on the earth,

Parkie-I don’t know jack, I really don’t. I look at it this way; god put that scum on the earth so I would have somebody to shoot.

Jack- (laughing). Ya, I guess, never thought of it that way, now that I do though, it was pretty decent of him in that respect, if nothing else they made good landfill. Like you said,

Parkie-ya, I guess hey Jack, You have to use gravel to build roads, so if you have to fill the holes back in, why not use nazi’s.

Jack-Jesus that’s funny parkie, Christ I like a good laugh.

Parkie-better laugh jack, if you thought about all the crap those buggers did to innocent people you’d cry for the rest of your life.

Jack-well. I cried enough at the end of the war has it was

  Parkie-ya me too, me too.

Jack-so, how did eril get away from them to make it out?

Parkie-they moved him back to that chelmno, because I guess something blew up there or something, and when they were done the repairs the nazi’s were moving them some other place and he managed to slip away, just pure luck. I guess, I think it took him over a year to get back

Jack-so he made it back to England, or he went somewhere first or how did that work.

Parkie-no.he ended up somewhere in northern Scotland and made his way south from there, I was already in Italy when he made it back. But I guess he told all he knew about what went on where he was, they told him that his information helped hang a few of those sadistic pr*cks anyway, whether it did or not who knows, poor bugger suffered enough it’s nice to think it did anyway.

Jack-well, still it’s nice that the poor bugger found some family, must be tough when somebody, just decides to wipe out everyone you know.

Parkie-aw, hell Jack you know, I use to look at that poor guy, only one eye, and could never have children or a family because of what they did to him, At least in the forty’s sometime a doctor in Glasgow. Fixed his tongue up for him, enough of this Jack, let’s talk about something else, let the poor bugger rest,

Jack-ya I guess pappy, Rest in peace Eril

Parkie-Yup, rest in peace
Continue-

 

[parkie]

Jack-so, I see mrs.gray just a waving at you, what’s up there

Buster-ya, pappy’s got a girlfriend.

Parkie-no, nothing like that, she had come over from England to get away from the invasion, if the German’s took England, you know when I got back from the war that women came to where we were living and fell to her knees in front of me, sobbing and thanking me for saving England from the nazi’s, it was the most humbling experience I’ve ever had.

Jack. -It’s funny, when you meet people who were civilian’s in Britain during the war, some are so happy that somebody went to help them out, it just makes me feel so dam good about myself.

Buster-when we went over to Holland a few years ago, boy! You want to see people who appreciate what we did for them. Jesus that makes my old heart proud to have helped them out. I couldn’t believe, even after all these years, they still treat us like we’re heroes or something.

Parkie-well.you are buster. What’s wrong with being somebody’s hero?

Buster-ya, Iguess, it’s just kind of embarrassing, man! All those people giving you flowers and that, cheering for you and running up to you.

Parkie-well, it’s nice that they teach their children what they suffered through under the nazi’s, and they should remember that, lots of them lost family in the camps,

Buster-Something I found kind of sad. You know you hear so much about the camps behind the lines in Germany and Poland and those places, but some never even knew there were camps in Holland,

Parkie-it’s not the fault of anyone though buster, There’s just so much of that stuff that any sane person can handle,

Jack-hell, with all that happened in that war, and what it cost to stop it, man! I see these people standing in little groups on TV, waving their dam signs and spouting off at the lips about our boy’s being in Afghanistan, what a bunch of bloody idiot’s,

Parkie-well, I guess it’s nice not to feel that anybody else should have the freedom of speech and religion, while your exercising yours.

Jack-Kind of like old man,*******, who told us Canada would have been better off if the Russians took over

Buster-can you imagine, What the hell is that about, Guess he doesn’t realise that if they would have taken over, his type would have been the first one’s gone.

Jack-ya, no doubt. He was the perfect age for going to war, but we never saw him over there

Parkie-he told me once that he couldn’t go to war because of his kids

Jack-well geez.if everyone who had kids would have stayed home we would have been a lot smaller bunch

Parkie-sure,only he never had kids until the early sixty’s.his son’s are 46 and 51 years old.

Jack-what,their that young

Parkie-ya I guess he figures everybody’s as bad at math has he is.

Jack-well,he must think everybody’s stupid to go around and say you didn’t go to war because of your kids when you didn’t even have any yet.

Parkie-well I guess he must have meant the thought of having kids kept him home from the war.

Jack-HA! Ha! That’s a good one, well wasn’t he one of the one’s giving us a hard time about talking about joining the army years ago.

Buster-sure he was. I remember him telling everybody that there was a better way then going to war, didn’t you have a go with him years ago pappy?

Parkie-ya, him and I had a good one after a dance one night. Because all the girls knew we were going to join up and they knew he was a coward.

Jack-what was it that his sister told us about him

Parkie-that he lived the last three years of the war in her old chicken coop in case somebody came looking for him. Well I got a surprise for you guys. We have to go take the dog’s out to the community pasture, their having problems with wolves and coyotes after their sheep out there. Won’t take but a couple of hours

Jack-so what are we going to do with the dogs?

Parkie-you’ll see.





We all just returned from coyote hunting with my six Great Pyrenees hunting dogs

Parkie-so, what did you think of that you guy’s

Buster-holy shyte, those dogs are something, when we ran into those two coyotes out by the community pasture, man! That is something to see, those dog’s are sure made for hunting coyotes.

Parkie-well, their suppose to be herd dog’s. Their made for guarding flocks and herds, so coyotes and wolfs are just fair game to them, With the problems people have around here with the coyotes, We get quite a few, calling and wanting us to take the dog’s out to clean things up for them.

Jack-what size of gun do you guy’s use there.

Parkie-338 Winchester magnum

Jack-boy.it sure shoots nice for that distance

Parkie-ya.I don’t shoot it though,to much kick for me

Jack-jesus those dog’s can sure work a hunt.

Parkie-ya, my son raised them from pups.he got them in the states when he was working there and raised them on his acreage, they’re sure bred and trained for hunting.

Jack- so how big is that lead male that heads the bunch

Parkie-he weighed in at the vet at 195lbs,when we had them there last. But they all sit around 150-200 lbs,

Parkie-what were we talking about before anyway’s

Jack-Ah.hell with that pappy,Iwant you to tell me about the liri.,you tell me about that,what it was like and I’ll tell you what it was like when we hit the beach,maybe it will help me  talk easier.

Parkie-okay.lets continue this tomorrow

Jack-promise?

Parkie-ya I’ll talk about it tomorrow.If you do.

Jack-Ya,I promise
Continue-

 

[parkie]

Jack-well pappy, here we are,where do you want to start

Parkie-I guess, in the morning of the attack.

Jack-That artillery barrage they let off, must have been something

Parkie-jesus  jack .it was like nothing you can imagine,being close like that with all those guns going off,I thought for sure that nothing could survive that,But.They were well dug in. with pillboxes and those dam machine gun nests they had hid away,

Jack- can you remember if the boy’s mentioned the offensive in france,did anybody know anything if it was going to happen?

Parkie-No.we knew nothing of that,at least the guy’s on the line didn’t.we thought we were the big offensive, has far as we were concerned we were going straight through to berlin,

Jack-Sorry,continue pappy

Parkie-That was the most peaceful feeling I  have ever had in my life.That morning.For some unknown reason I knew I was going to Die.it must have been looking at that line of barbwire,and thinking back to the old guy’s from the first war talking about curtain fire at the wire,and how men were mowed down like grass. I don’t  know what it was,but,I was just totally at peace with myself,The only thing I thought about was that my wife, who I had only been married to a little while would have to be alone.

Jack-what were the other guy’s saying

Parkie-well,hell,we all knew we were going to get it good,we talked about the fight we had at that ravine before ortona,And we knew that if it came down to it,we’d be sent in no matter how bad it looked.Lots of us who had been together for the whole time in italy .we said our goodbyes to each other and exchanged words to pass on to each others families if we fell.

Jack-you guy’s must have been short  handed then or were you at a decent strength


Parkie-no.we were in bad shape all the time.I don’t know if there was ever a time when we were at our full strength.there was times when we were probably close to it,but one good mortar attack,and everybody that had been brought up that day would be gone.

Jack-So,lots of  men were brought up from the pool.

Parkie-oh ya,sometimes twenty would be brought up,and by morning hey would be all gone,some you didn’t even have the time to say hello.that’s what bothers me a lot today,that those guy’s deserved more than that, somebody should be able to say,ya,I knew that guy.but I didn’t.All they were was fresh mounds in the morning when they were buried.

Jack-the line. Pappy! Tell me about the attack.

Parkie-sorry about that.kind of slipped away there for a second

Jack-you want to stop

Parkie-No.Just give me a second here.

Jack-Okay now?

Parkie-ya better now.

Parkie-Where was I. Ya In the morning before the attack I remember seeing a formation of planes coming in,And I think everybody there thought maybe they would bomb them to hell,I know I did,But,hell what they dropped didn’t amount to nothing.or at least it didn’t seem to anyway.You  would think that with 700 or so artilley guns going there wouldn’t be anything moving after they were done

Jack-  so, the germans had artillery on the ridge  with the mortars.

Parkie-ya  they had a lot of artillery going when we left that line.lots of mortars too,I think the dam mortars raised more hell than the artillery did,boy,when we got up into that grove of trees,jesus it was raining stuff down on us.

Jack-laughing-So it was raining cats and lead then

Parkie-ya,I guess,ha ha,I needed that little laugh.

Jack-You remember when you fell on that bloody seat post on that old bike.

Parkie-sure.of course I do.Why?

Jack-just trying to change the subject for a while.remember buster runnin around screaming .pappys going to die. pappys going to die

Buster-Aw,shyte jack I was not.

Jack-sure you were buster you were scared shytless that parkie was going to die.

Buster-well weren’t you

Jack-well,I have to admit.you don’t see somebody do that everyday.

Parkie-jesus we were way out by the old river bridge then too,

Jack-ya,close to four miles buster and I pushed you on that bike,with that dam thing stuck up inside you.

Parkie-man.that makes me hurt down there just thinking about that.

Buster-I still can’t get over that midwife that sewed you up,Christ they had that bloody pig on the table beside you sewin it up too.

Jack-ya,that’s right,they had that pig that got stepped on by  some cow,and it’s insides needed to be sewed in,

Parkie-jesus,how do you guy’s remember this crap

Buster-well it isn’t everyday a guy turns himself into a Popsicle like that.

Jack-laughing, oh Christ, I cant quit laughing,

Parkie-thanks for that one buster,you pair and your dam jokes

Jack-well,you have to admit,it was pretty funny.

Parkie-laughing,ya I guess it was at that.

Buster-remember when we told your old man about the pig,he said we would have to watch you didn’t start turning the ground with your nose in case she got things mixed up

(Now all three are laughing like mad).

Jack- you know I never thought they would have let you in the army with that bulge you had hangin into your sac like that.

Parkie-believe it or not,they didn’t even know I had it,until in Italy,when I got wounded there,That old doc they had working on me.saw that rope I had going from my neck down between my legs holdin my guts in,and he thought I was nuts or something.

Jack-well,you were,who the hell would go around the country in a war, with a dam string holdin’ their insides up.

Buster-That must have made him wonder.

Parkie-well,I got a shrapnel wound once before that down in southern Italy,and the old  doc we had runnin things down there,found it to.but he was so drunk,all he said was, ‘my boy I can have that fixed in a jiffy’

Jack-well,why didn’t you

Parkie-ya,Christ,would you want some guy with a bottle in one hand and a knife in the other cutting you up. Cut my dam head off or something.

(Now they’re all laughing again)

parkie-okay,now where was I.ya,that dam grove of trees we had to get up through,you know jack,by the time they got out of the woods,there was hardly anybody left of the regiment,we were cut right to hell.

Jack- I think they say that about two made it to the line

Parkie-wouldn’t doubt it. There was bodies everywhere from the boy’s.we went from 2-300 men to nothing in minutes.

Jack-D-day dodgers,eh pappy

Parkie-ya,the D-day dodgers.

Jack-well,that’s enough for me pappy.let’s do mine a little later tonight

Parkie-sure  Jack

Continue

 

[Rackemup]

Lads,

I can’t tell you how much I read this thread with rapt attention. My wife was saying, “What are you reading?”
“Nothing you would be interested in.”
“Stop wasting your time!”
“It’s not wasting my time, its learning!”

Geez!

I’m not a CF member, nor a Vet. I grew up with a deep interest stemming from my Father and “Canadians at War”. Yep, that encyclopedia set my Dad had bought many years ago. I read every volume, I think over 24 of them. Lot’s of other books as well. Why? I don’t exactly know, maybe it was because in the early part of the war, when a great debate was going on about Quebec’s involvement or non  involvement, was a dividing issue at that time. I have a photo that came from the Ottawa Citizen, it has 5 of my uncles and my Dad and it came from a front page story. These six Quebecers joined at a time when many in the rest of Canada questioned, Quebecer’s will to fight. Two joined the Army, two the airforce and two the navy.

One of my Uncles’s, Clement Bowie, was in the Artillery, he was in for the duration, and served in North Africa and Italy. My Dad was in the Navy, based in Halifax, on Coastal duty. He was young and could only join in 41. The rest were in from the beginning. Uncle Cletus was in the Airforce based in Burma for a good part of the war. Uncle Griffin was a Navigator on bombers, based in England. Uncle Ray, a Seaman, on a Corvette, running with the convoys for most of the War. Uncle Charlie, based in Ottawa, operations. Six of the eight boys joined, the other two were too young. The second youngest joined in 46 and left around 48.

I guess that’s why I’m so interested. They didn’t talk much about their experiences but a few stories came out

Uncle Cletus was a “Card”, I remember as a young lad around 6 or so in 1968, he was shuttling me from one of my relative’s houses to another, in Ottawa. It was one of the get togethers that my Dad/Uncles had all through my childhood. Uncle Cletus and I, driving along in that huge car. My little frame in the passenger seat, he a huge man, well over 6 feet and heavy, along side. . He reaches under his seat and pulls out a bayonet, saying something like; “look at this Tommy Boy” you see this, pointing at some stains on the blade. “This is the blood of a Jap!”

I later learned that was probably not true, as Uncle Cletus was a bit of a Card! Most likely it was rust on the blade. Haha.

Anyway, Parkie, Jack and Buster. Thank you very much for allowing us into your private thoughts and memories.

Tom Bowie
Edmonton

 

[parkie]

Old vet here.
we are just taking a small break from the story,Jack is feeling a bit glum, of late. His ghosts are coming back.So,we'll give him a few day's to  settle and we'll continue.
Thank you for the messages and all your support,it sure helps.
                                                parkie

                                                     

 

[NadineR]

hey,

Hope jack is going to be ok...just tell him
to drink a glass of water each day and he will be fine!
you too parkie if your feeling like jack.

Nadine

 

[NadineR]

if i have offended anyone im sorry.
Just meant have a glass of water cause thats how
i make myself better.
sorry :-[

nadine

 

[parkie]

nadine
No.you did nothing wrong,Jack is just feeling down a bit ,from the war.he will be fine in a few days.such is the price that us old guy's pay for you to enjoy your youth,Talking to you makes jack very happy. he'll write again when he feels better,
                                                                          parkie