Archie Patterson (Primary Source)

In 2011, The Memory Project interviewed Archie Patterson, a veteran of the Second World War and Korean War. The following recording (and transcript) is an excerpt from this interview. Born in Fort St. John, British Columbia, on 14 June 1926, Patterson enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1944, but soon transferred to the Army. Although he was demobilized at the end of the Second World War, he rejoined the armed forces in 1948 and served as an armourer until 1971, retiring as a warrant officer. In this testimony, Patterson recounts his service in the Korean War, describing the weather and mountainous terrain, his work as an armourer, a brush with a North Korean spy and the death of a young lieutenant. After retiring from the military, Patterson had a second career with Consumer and Corporate Affairs Canada, Weights and Measures division. He died in Coquitlam, British Columbia, in 2012.

Please be advised that Memory Project primary sources may deal with personal testimony that reflect the speaker’s recollections and interpretations of events. Individual testimony does not necessarily reflect the views of the Memory Project and Historica Canada.

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This one poor young lieutenant come and joined us and he just got in the front lines, I think 15 minutes or something, and a mortar bomb landed right in his trench with him.

Transcript

Okay, well, I was an armourer, one of two armourers with the Royal Canadian Regiment. And we kept all the weapons, the smaller, what we called small arms, serviced. That was pretty well everything except tank guns and cannons. Normally like the, say a private soldier on the Bren gun for example, Brens stop shooting sometimes, he turned it into the quartermaster stores and they in turn would bring it to the armourer shop where I was. And it was my job to find out what was wrong with it and repair it and test it like I said and then get it back to them. Everybody got along fine with everybody as far as I know. Certainly in our group. We had fun, we used to play softball at night sometimes against each other, whatever, you know. A lot of guys spent some time with those two bottles of beer I told you about, that you were eligible for. That sort of thing. But I used to climb all the hills around for something to do on a Sunday afternoon or something. But they were fairly rugged but they weren’t very high where we were. Well, the weather, you know, we went through the winter 1952/53, it wasn’t that cold but it’s cold enough, like we used to have to do two hour watches during the night and you get up 4:00 in the morning or something, it’s cold enough. But I think the coldest I remember it being was about six below Fahrenheit [-21°C]. Which to somebody from Fort St. John [British Columbia] is not that cold. One of the most trusted of Korean guys that worked practically for our CO [commanding officer] I think, was actually a spy for the North Koreans. He had apparently been a captain in the Japanese army during the war, World War II, or so the story I get anyway. And one morning, the ROK [Republic of Korea] policemen come looking for him and he was nowhere to be found because somebody had already warned him they were onto him. He just disappeared, never saw him again. One time, this one poor young lieutenant come and joined us and he just got in the front lines, I think 15 minutes or something, and a mortar bomb landed right in his trench with him. Chinese used phosphorus [a highly flammable chemical] a lot, they used to like phosphorus and that’s horrible stuff. Yeah. So that saddens you, even if I didn’t know him, you know, he was only like 22 or 23 years old or something.