Robert Menard

Yeah, one time on the hill there, there was a sniper up there and they said, “Okay Bob, you get, get that guy out of there,” he had a bazooka. So I got that bazooka loaded, bang, fired and the goddamn shell went off 20 feet in front of me, it was one of them duds.

Sometime it was funny, like you’re way up in the hills. One morning we woke up there, thought we were in heaven, right up to there, just we were in a cloud. You couldn’t see below you, right up to your waist and all the white stuff. It was funny.

And in the snow, when you’ve got to boil the water in the snow, used to get those little fleas, they’d jump, the little black fleas, you had to boil the water good to get rid of them buggers.

We were heading up this hill and the snow was so bad, you couldn’t see in a foot front of you. So my platoon, 5th Platoon, slid their way in, got away from the rest of them. We were all alone in the goddamn hills. Didn’t know which way to go, where to go. So I said, let’s flip a coin and go this way or that way. So we flipped a coin and went that way, went down the hill and we were in God’s country, thank God. If we went the other way, we might have been captured.

Them Chinese used to come at you by the hundreds, with their bugles and their horns and they just come like massive. Behind us was a machine gun. He was just slaughtering them guys down like flies. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah, that was the most memorable night.

When we were surrounded, the Yankees [Americans] was 1^st Div[ision], they chickened out, went back and they had the Yankees on this side and ROK [Republic of Korea] Army on the other side. They both chickened out and left us stranded. Nice guys, eh?

I remember this guy from Winnipeg, he had a real huge size head, I forget his name anyway. And he had to wait months and months before they could get a hat to fit him. You know, “They’re going to get you, they’re going to get you with your big head.” They did too. Right between the goddamn hat badge.