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Serving on the home front during the Korean War, Art Cuthbertson was an Operator Mechanic in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
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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Transcript
I took a meat-cutting course in Fredericton [New Brunswick], but I stayed there for about a year, after, and, I didn’t really care for the job, so I decided I had to do something else, and, at the same time I was an Air Cadet. And I thought, well, I'm going to try the air force. So, in 1949 I applied and I wasn’t successful – they were a little sticky back in 1949, so in 1950, they wrote me and asked me if I would reconsider. So I came to Moncton and I joined up.
Oh, I liked it right off the bat. I have no regrets from being in the military. And I have no regrets when I retired.
Well, I started off what they called an OP MME, which was an Operator Mechanic Mobile Equipment. It was a heavy equipment operator, basically. And I was operating snow blowers, cranes, snow plows, bulldozers, you name the heavy equipment and that’s what we operated.
Well, I was quite aware [of the Korean War] because a lot of my friends back in Fredericton joined the army, and, I would meet them before they would go over and they would talk to me and then they would talk to me, after they were repatriated back to Canada, about working with, what they called, the ROK Army, Republic of Korea Army. They had a pretty rough time at times. But I had some friends that went in support of the Korean Airlift out of Tacoma, Washington and also in Tokyo. They weren't over in Korea, they were somewhere, but I didn’t know anybody that was accepting the freight and so on in Korea.
