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Interview Brian Archibald
![A/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.]({"id":"4988be30-46c2-4ee2-961c-755d566df44b","disk":"s3","directory":"The-Memory-Project\/image","filename":"15188_600","extension":"jpg","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","aggregate_type":"image","size":38368,"variant_name":null,"original_media_id":null,"created_at":"2022-08-03T05:20:06.000000Z","updated_at":"2022-08-03T05:20:06.000000Z","title":"Memory Project Image #15188","alt":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.","caption":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.","creator":"Memory Project Image #15188 - Veteran #5327","source":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.","conversion_urls":{"original":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/The-Memory-Project\/image\/15188_600.jpg"},"url":"https:\/\/d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net\/The-Memory-Project\/image\/15188_600.jpg","credit":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.","pivot":{"mediable_id":"adae6fa2-b708-4173-a796-e1c8667eaa04","media_id":"4988be30-46c2-4ee2-961c-755d566df44b","mediable_type":"App\\Models\\Article","tag":"gallery","order":1},"translations":[{"id":"7fe27d44-de11-4f28-a436-5c176ef5cc2b","media_id":"4988be30-46c2-4ee2-961c-755d566df44b","title":"Memory Project Image #15188","alt":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.","caption":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.","creator":"Memory Project Image #15188 - Veteran #5327","source":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.","locale":"en","credit":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop."},{"id":"815a85ad-c9b4-4dca-aeff-4945ad8ce0b5","media_id":"4988be30-46c2-4ee2-961c-755d566df44b","title":"Memory Project Image #15188","alt":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.","caption":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.","creator":"Memory Project Image #15188 - Veteran #5327","source":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.","locale":"fr","credit":"A\/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop."}]} "Memory Project Image #15188")
A/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.
A/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.
A/CPL B.A. Archibald at the 39th parallel in South Korea. Mr. Archibald served with 25 Canadian Infantry Brigade Signals Troop.
My name is Brian Archibald. I was in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals, and I served in Korea from 1952 to 1954. I started with the CPR when I was thirteen years old. During the war they didn't have enough adults, so in 1946 I was allowed to join the railroad at thirteen, and I had to be inspected by the Technical Inspector every year to make sure that my grades were up.
In 1950 (that was the start of the Korean war), the CPR was on strike and I happened to be in the Winnipeg area and I joined the Signals Corps. I joined at Fort Osborne Barracks in Winnipeg. From there we went to the school of signals in Kingston. As I was already a trained Morse operator, I was sent to Fort Churchill, Manitoba, where I worked a year and a half in the northern in the northern wireless network. After that tour I was back to Kingston. I did a bit of instruction and waited my time, and was eventually sent to Vancouver.
I boarded an American troop ship called the Marine Lynx, and we sailed to Yokohama. We went by train to (?), which was a staging area for the Canadian troops, and then we were sent on a small, smelly little shipping boat to Inchon in Korea. Then we took a train from Inchon to Seoul, and from there we went by truck to the units we had been assigned to.
It was just normal, everyday being a soldier until the armistice was signed and then we were kept a little while after that. I became ill in the hospital, and because of that missed my troop ship home, but was lucky in a lottery that Air Canada was holding and flew home. I was discharged in Winnipeg in 1954 and returned to the CPR until 1967, serving all over northwestern Ontario and parts of Manitoba. I joined External Affairs in 1967 and was stationed in Ottawa. After that, I served all over the place – Cairo, Peking, Switzerland. Paris, France for four years. While I was in External I served in Vietnam with the Canadian Peace Commission. Basically, it was a military commission, but we had fifty-four civilians and we were awarded the same medals that the soldiers got for the tour of duty.