My Name is Hilliard Gardypie and my date of birth is August 28, 1941. I belong to the Beardy's & Okemasis First Nation. I enrolled in the Armed Forces in 1959. After leaving the boarding school in 1958, I tried a little of the railroad work and found it wasn't for me. So I went and joined the Army back in 1959. The date of my enlistment was October 30, 1959. I went voluntarily. We went to Prince Albert, I was with two other guys from my community, one of the guys name was Tony Okemaysim; he's deceased. Another one that's deceased was a Metis fellow from the town of Duck Lake. All three of us went to Prince Albert, and while in Prince Albert they gave us a couple of tests, kind of educational type tests. Once that was done they gave us tickets to get on a train to Regina. When we arrived over there in Regina, again we went through different kinds of tests, medical tests, our hearing, our vision, and a complete physical test of our bodies. Then there were some other kids of tests, you know the kind of education we had, and this and that. Then when this was all done, I was marched into a Colonel's office and they had the Bible out and I was sworn into the Armed Forces. Then after I was sworn in they asked which outfit I wanted to go to, of course being from this town of Duck Lake, I thought that the Princess Pats was the place for me to go, I told them that's where I wanted to go - to the Princess Patricia's. So after that was done I came out of this office, I was sitting down with two of my other buddies. And I asked them: "did you guys pass all of your tests?" And he said "yeah." But I kept waiting for them to get called, in which they never did get called in. Finally they said, "no we didn't make it, we failed in some tests." But I had already sworn in so I had to go, so I was taken from there to the paymaster, and I was given $35 and I had to come home for a couple of days. And this $35 was to me a lot of money; in them days, this was 1959. So I come back home and my mother wasn't on the reserve, they were working in the sugar-beet country in Alberta. So there wasn't really anybody here for me on Beardy's at the time. So I spent a couple of days with my auntie; deceased Mary Cameron. So when the time came I took the train again to Saskatoon, from Saskatoon to Edmonton. I believe I arrived in Edmonton seven in the morning, and there were a couple of soldiers waiting. There was not only myself, there was about three others from different parts of Saskatchewan. We were driven to the Army barracks in Edmonton, I believe it was called Grease Ball barracks at the time. We went through the security gates at grease Ball Barracks. There they gave us some meal tickets; it was breakfast time so we went in. We went into the dining room, and who was punching tickets there was Bobby Greyeyes a gentlemen that I knew. He's been in the armed forces for maybe thirty years but at that time he was only in for three or four. So he recognized me, while I was standing in a line, and from a long way off he yelled at me "Gardypie what's the matter, the reserve getting hungry" and by God did he embarrass me. But then you know, the next couple of days we started our basic training. Basic training was very hard at that time; you know lots of physical fitness tests. We did twelve weeks in Edmonton and then from there they shipped me to Chilliwack B.C. We were there for another six weeks and there was my training of eighteen weeks. From there I was sent to Victoria B.C. The first Battalion Princess Patricia's were stationed there, that's where I was sent to with my whole platoon. So I spent the whole summer, well I shouldn't say the whole summer - up to July. In July they sent us to Waynwright Alberta, for six weeks of training with all the other outfits within all of Canada. And there we played war games; we were using blank ammunition with our rifles. They were using tanks and the whole bit. What fire power they had within the Canadian Army, they even used jet plains, they used sandbags for bombs and you'd see these jets coming down and they'd drop around twenty sandbags and gosh you kinda had to find a place to hide because these sandbags coming down that fast could hurt a person. And then in the Fall, we had our thirty day annual leave they use to call it. I came home and by gosh you know I was so happy to be home, and then after thirty days I had to go back, in September back to Victoria. In my young days, you know I always felt that I was a good hockey player. So I tried out for the battalion team, and sure enough I made the team and that how I spent my winter in the Army, just playing hockey. It was enjoyable for me, there was also three other boys within my company that played for the battalion team, and then we got scouted. We were playing in one of our Army games against the Navy. And we got scouted for a junior team at that time in B.C. in Nanaimo. They asked us to go for a tryout; there were four of us from the battalion all eighteen-year-old boys. So we went and tried out and once again we were lucky to make the team. But at that time when you are in the Army your acting kind of like a macho type guy, liquor really came into our lives and we were kind of drinking quite a bit even though we were playing hockey, still using the alcohol. It kind of interfered with our hockey. So we didn't last very long in junior hockey, we got booted out because of our drinking. But I played the whole winter for the Army team, and then spring came along and hockey was over and I got back to Army training. So I spent three years of my life with the Princess Pats. I was discharged in October 1962. It was a three year stretch I had, no medals no decorations, but like I said that's my life in Armed Forces, and I got to meet a lot of nice fellas out there. There was no racism in the Armed Forces, I don't remember any, and you know all the friends I've had. My name was Gardypie to them and vice-versa, everybody was called by their last name, and that's how it was for me.