Daniel Segin

We get together, got the platoon together, and away we went. Got aboard the vehicles and down the road we go. So I noticed when we got up then to the bottom behind that ’cause it looked like high feature from the rear. So we got in behind there I thought, “Well how come we didn’t go straight ahead to go in behind The Hook^* area there?” We didn’t. We’re going right straight up. All the sudden I noticed, holy, we were on our way right up to the God darn position in the hill over there. Everything was going, happening with them over there.

Everything was going on. The poor God darn guys — it was — Bob, well, there’s nothing you can do about it. Anyway, the company commander just passed the word they were going to come up... Well, we knew what our platoon positions were going to be. Well, we’ll go and what have you, and everything else. So anyway up the hill I go. Well, I tell you this scared the hell right out of me. ’Cause I’d up there in the daytime I knew, but these poor guys were here behind me didn’t have a clue what was up there or what it looked like cause it was a lousy God darn feature that — ’cause to dig that — I must say, they didn’t do a hell of a good job on it.

Because the trenches, the communication trenches, most of those you were down about four feet, communicated right through and then you put your own fighting trench off to the side over there. We got up there. Well, I’ll tell you, I said, “Who there’s and where are they?” And there was a gap between my platoon and the other battalion, the RCRs [Royal Canadian Regiment] over there. But I didn’t know how big the gap was, or if there was a gap or not. Well, I tell you, I was God darn scared.

So we got up to positions. I gotta get these guys, no idea, these poor guys where they were going. So I had to go and spread them out, and I got everybody spread out there, and I was going to go down there and find out what the gap was in there and the company commander called something… and just as well he didn’t call me. ’Cause I didn’t go to that place. There was nothing there, but I tell you what scared the hell out of me. The next day, I went out there and go down to the bottom and the God darn gap there, and nobody was there. None of the Canadians were there at all. They were all the other way [laughs], but I got out.  And I said, “Those guys could have just walked into the God place right through the line and never even known it.” But, anyway, we went through the night over there, through the whole thing then, of course, we had to reshuffle around a little bit the next day.

^*The Hook was a small parcel of land near the Sami-ch’on River Valley and was key position for UN forces. It was the site of many Commonwealth casualties in the winter of 1952.