It was December 14, 1965. I was a sergeant in North Africa during World War II, Vic Morrow in Combat to be precise. I had my weapon; my two fellow soldiers also had their guns as war scenarios played in black-and-white in our young minds. Now as a father of two young boys, I wonder how a child was permitted to watch this TV show. It played opposite Peyton Place with Ryan O'Neal and Mia Farrow so I was constantly battling two of my three sisters for the screen.

It was a crisp clear afternoon in suburban Montreal. The West Island had grown rapidly as young families, many Anglophone like ours, settled into bungalows sprouting in farmers’ fields and maple wood lots. There were still swaths of trees kids called “the woods”. In a multitude of clearings large holes had been excavated that summer for new house foundations and left for next spring’s thaw they filled with water, froze and were soon blanketed knee-deep in snow. We sought out one such sparkly clearing in the woods that afternoon. I strode across it with my trusted rifle, the Johnny Seven. I sent my men to either side of the treed fringes. We were seeking and dodging the hidden enemy, exposed in the open space. I sought cover beside a lone burnt out stump with branches. I was instantaneously underwater.

My army fatigues were a hooded winter jacket, snow pants and boots, knitted mittens all wrapped with a warm woollen scarf. I was immediately a sodden frozen sponge looking up at the blue sky through the hole in the ice. Breath held. Sinking. Flailing. I willed my eight-year-old self to the surface for a breath…down again.

Resurfacing.    A tree branch out of reach.    Down.

Then with the conscious understanding that I was drowning I wind milled myself to the surface. Soggy mittens reached for the twisted stump. I could hear the voices of my men calling my name and became aware that I had lost my gun, my Johnny Seven. Instinct and adrenaline pulled me, hauled my twice heavy body out of the hole in the ice and I stood in the crook of a branch trying to catch my breath. My soldiers tried to approach me but collapsed boot deep through the ice.

Go tell a parent! I kept appealing Get someone! Both boys tore off at full speed. Two police officers arrived in what seemed a very long time. I was hypothermic. One officer attempted to cross to me. They were speaking kindly and saying my name. They and I soon realized they could not help me, could not reach me. They called the fire department-a ladder was coming. More time, more cold.  A ladder inching across the ice, a kindly Angel was coming to me: a fireman crawling on a big shiny ladder.  He stopped halfway and slid his legs onto the snow. Now he was waist deep in water. Returning to the ladder he spidered across to me and wrapped me in a blanket.

We awkwardly crawled back over the ice on the ladder. My gun. My gun. My gun is lost, I repeated. I was quickly strapped to a rescue stretcher fiery red against the snow. Warm voices encouraged me. I was carried at a run by four uniformed men through the woods under the bluest ektachrome sky. The stretcher was on their shoulders their faces close to mine. The lofty ride was bumpy as they slipped and staggered in the deep snow and patches of ice. Soon I was in an ambulance immersed in sirens and warmth. Brandy in a paper cup at the hospital. The fireman at the foot of my bed demonstrated to me how tasty this medicine was, paper cup after paper cup under the eye of the smiling winking nurse. The intensity of the event faded, not so the memory. Two weeks later a pair of towering policemen rang the doorbell at our home. They had miraculously retrieved my treasured gun from the frigid water in the deep woods and presented it to me on our doorstep. They of course had understood.

Peter Allan,
Fulford Harbour