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Wallace Hacking served in the Royal Canadian Navy aboard HMCS Huron during 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
Before I joined the military, I had been working sometimes 8:00 to 12:00. And I worked at various jobs. And I apprenticed as a silversmith in a jewelry factory in Ottawa. Then I went from there, I joined, well, my brother was killed on September 22nd of 1944, my brother had died in Belgium. And I tried to get into the army in the end of 1944, early part of 1945. I had already been in the sea cadets prior to that but that gave me more motivation to join the army at that time because I wanted to go and avenge my brother’s death. And why, I don’t know. My dad brought me out, I just was finishing up my training at the time that he brought me out.
Well, I was in the [Royal Canadian] Navy at the time that the Korean War broke out and we were all given an opportunity to stay on the ship or leave without any repercussions. But every man onboard our ship [HMCS Huron], to my knowledge, volunteered to go. I myself and people like me fought to preserve life. And unfortunately, in any war, you have to take lives to save lives.
