Cape Breton's Magazine

Hong Kong City. Now, they had to march us from Stanley Village across the island-- well, you couldn't go across it directly-- you had to go around in a circle. So they lined us up 4 abreast. Now, a great deal of us fellows weren't in any marching condi? tion. A lot of them were wounded, and all this. But they told us, they told the colo? nel, that they had no time for stragglers, that there'd be a hundred men, a carrier with a machine gun onto it, and then anoth? er hundred men. So, anybody fell out, was gone, dead. So we had to struggle pretty well, now, try to keep the weak fellows in the centre of the line, and keep them on their feet. They were marching at a good pace, too. We had roughly--I suppose we had about a 15-mile march. In the meantime, some fellows just gave out, they just couldn't go, they'd give out completely. I remember there was a big Western fellow with us. There were two units--there was a Quebec unit and a West? ern unit--in the thing altogether. Anyway, he was marching next to me. And one of his friends fell. And he said to me, "I'm going to have to carry him." I said, "Can you?" You had to keep going. He said, "I'm going tO; try, anyway." You know, he put that fel? low on his back, over his shoulder, and he carried him for at least 5 miles, till we got to the North Point. WE HAVE MOVED TO A NEW LOCATION EFFECTIVE NOW the address ot the 196 George Street FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE OUR PHONE NUMBER REMAINS THE SAME: Income Security Programs 564-7350 ?? CANADA PENSION PLAN ?? OLD AGE SECURITY ?? GUARANTEED INCOME SUPPLEMENT ?? SPOUSE'S ALLOWANCE ?? FAMILY ALLOWANCES Canada 1'1; Te Security Programs Prograr There was a lot of that, there was a lot of that. People that actually drug fellows, just dragged them along with them, you know. Kept them going. But just before we got to the camp, we were going through one edge of the city: the damn Chinese lined up. And they rocked us, you know, with ev? erything they could find. Pieces of stick, or rock, or a piece of mud, or anything they could find. Piled it right to us. Couldn't do anything about it, couldn't get out of line, or anything. Until one of the Japanese just opened up a machine gun-- Bruuk!--you know. It must have knocked down at least a dozen of them. The rest scat? tered then. But they gave us a rough time there for a mile, I'll tell you. (Now, why would the Chinese do that to you?) I just took it myself that they were trying to (win) favour with the Japanese. The Japanese were going to be in command, you know. And I guess, too, a lot of it was that a lot of the Chinese didn't really like the British for all the years the British had been there. Because they were pretty rough on them. Before the war, for instance, going down the street, a British soldier would walk right down the middle of the sidewalk. Ev? erything parted for him. Because if they didn't part for him, he just simply knocked them down and booted them out, off the sidewalk. And when we went there, that wasn't our way of doing things. (The Btit- ish) told us, "Boy, look, you move for them, you'll be out on the road and they'll be on the sidewalk." And it was true enough. We only were there a couple of days and we had to start the same thing. They'd SYDCO FUELS Serving Homes and Businesses throughout Cape Breton Furnace Oil Stove Oil Diesel Fuel Gasoline Lubricants 24-Hour Emergency Service Distributor of Petrocan 3 BURNER SYDCO FUELS ra 38 Lewis Drive, Sydney River 539-6444 (26)