‘I must be dead. Too bad, my parents will be sad.’
Michel Juneau-Katsuya was a 14-year-old cadet in 1974. He was at the CFB Valcartier summer camp on July 30 that year and in the barracks when a live grenade exploded and killed six cadets and injured 65 others, including him. Juneau-Katsuya, who worked wi
We were roughly midway in six-week summer camp. It was raining and we had just lost a young cadet the week before who had been struck by lightning.
We were sitting in rows in the barracks — half circles — and the captain and a corporal came in with two boxes with various devices. The course was about the devices we could find doing exercises on the base. They wanted us to be aware of the devices we could stumble upon. We were told there were blue and red devices that were dummy and green and yellow. They were live.
They pulled the devices out of the boxes and we circulated them. We were three platoons of about 30 kids so it took a while before the devices came around. I was at the extreme end of a row.
Two live grenades somehow had made their way into the box but what has never been explained, and is still a puzzle, is why two live grenades did not catch the instructors’ attention.
I was about six to seven feet away when one of the cadets pulled the pin and the grenade exploded. It went through the floor creating a crater — these were old wooden barracks. I was sitting in the ground but Mario Provencher stood up in front of me because he needed to go to the washroom. Mario got it all in the guts and died. He was the only one standing and he acted as a shield for the guys behind him. We were friends.
One piece of shrapnel went through my left hand and another piece lodged in my right hand. After the explosion, I saw white smoke and I remember thinking: “I must be dead. Too bad, my parents will be sad.” But I didn’t feel panic.
When the smoke disappeared, the reality hit hard. I was literally covered with skin, blood, hair, and body parts. I wasn’t sure if the blood was mine or somebody else’s. It was both.
An officer came along. I saluted and said, “I’m injured. He said, “Go to the infirmary.” It was a 15-minute walk. I had a buddy with shrapnel in his butt and he couldn’t walk so I helped him get there. At the infirmary, we waited a long time before anyone treated us.
Our barrack had been totally destroyed, so they put us in another barrack. It was a night of thunder. Next to me there was a pile of metallic double bunk beds. It came down in the middle of the night and made the same sounds as the explosion we’d just been though. Until then I was OK, but at that point I wanted to dig into the mattress and hide.
The day after we were interrogated. We were marched into a bunker one by one and had to answer questions in front of three military police. They were working under the assumption that one of us brought the grenade in. We were ordered not to talk to anyone about it, even to our parents.
It impacted people differently. Some had nightmares for years and continue to do so to this day. Some have noise sensitivity. Others had mood swings depending how much we saw and how badly we were injured.
Parents had to bargain for the price of the sons’ caskets. Parents requested that their sons be buried in their uniforms and were refused. There was no consideration or decency. We were “just cadets” and that is probably one of the greatest wounds that stays with you.
Several guys died of their injuries later, several guys have committed suicide and many suffered permanent injuries. I have permanent ringing in my ears, but I’m one of the lucky ones.
Until I was approached by the ombudsman, I never had talked about it. I have difficulties identifying my own feelings.
But we were good little soldiers at 14. It’s too bad that we were treated so indecently.