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Roy McIvor joined the Canadian Army in 1951 and served in the Korean War.
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
My name is Roy McIvor. My service number was SH4762. I joined the Army on October 25, 1951. When I got to Korea, we got there by air via Japan. We landed in Seoul and we were taken to the front lines of the 3rd Battalion. They were in the process of attacking a major point: Korea’s Hill 355. Then I got posted to a bigger company as a riflemen. We had nightly patrols into enemy territory. The first night I got a really hard lesson: keep your head down. Three people in my platoon got killed and we were in the front lines, but we got a rest period there because no one wanted to do a frontal attack on 355, the Americans were doing that.
We were sent to B Echelon, a rest area. One afternoon there was a big explosion in the middle of the camp. A huge shell came in and washed out the administration tent, which housed the company clerk. Then they were looking for someone for administration and because I had taken a course in administration in Edmonton, I was asked to fill the position. Then I became the company clerk with duties of administration and the responsibility of looking after KATCOMs, the Korean Army troops attached to us. They were a nice bunch except for one who was a bit of a thief. To this day I feel so bad that I turned him in. His officer came, took him from us, took him around back of a hill and shot him. They took a jerry can of gasoline, poured it all over him and that was the end of him. And that was because he stole two shots of chocolate bars, etcetera.
