191 The Royal Canadian Legion MANITOBA & NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO COMMAND www.mbnwo.ca RADFORD, William Bruce WWII Bruce, born in 1917, enlisted with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry army unit in Winnipeg, Fort Garry Barracks, on September 29, 1939, 28 days after the outbreak of World War II. He was 22 years old and working for Wm Morton, MLA, running his farm. He was posted overseas the second week of December 1939, boarded a train for Halifax, and then the SS Orama Barra bound for Britain. This ship would later be sunk by the Germans in the Irish Sea. His ship was part of a big convoy of between thirty and forty ships, the first troop convoy to go overseas. Corvettes and other escort ships protected their convoy and were kept busy dropping depth charges. They zig-zagged, trying to avoid the lurking subs. After two weeks, they made it safely to Greenock, Scotland. The Canadians were inadequately equipped, with some old and some new equipment. Bruce’s PPCLI regiment trained near Aldershot for about a year, including assault training with live ammunition. Unfortunately, they had a few deaths. They endured 100-mile marches that took three days; they had sore feet, but it toughened them up. Eight hundred men of the PPCLI were sent east of Brighton on England’s south coast, to guard against a German invasion. As Bruce said: “At that time we each had only five rounds of ammo for our .303 Lee Enfields and one Molotov cocktail (a bottle filled with gasoline and explosives – an anti-tank weapon).” They spent a month doing coast guard duty, then back to Aldershot for more training. Once, when Bruce was on leave in London, which was heavily bombed, the Germans made another bombing raid. The wooden stalk of his rifle was hit with shrapnel, but he never got a scratch. “On one special occasion, we had a Royal inspection by King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. That was one time our buttons were really shiny.” In mid-1941, Bruce was transferred from the PPCLI to the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders where his brother, future brother-in-law, and a lot of friends were also serving. They did a lot of training in Hayling Island and Portsmouth, plus other places. On January 24, 1942, Bruce took on a “special assignment”: he got leave and went to Edinburgh to marry Elizabeth (Betty) Ross, whom he’d met the year before. He got into trouble as he hadn’t secured permission to do so, and upon returning back to barracks had “the book thrown at him” and “KP” assignment. Also, both he and Betty lost six months’ pay, and Bruce was confined to barracks for two months. So, the honeymoon had to wait. Despite his brush with the Army law in January, Bruce was promoted to the rank of Corporal the following April and posted to Petworth area for two more years of training, together with thousands of other young Canadian men. One day, during a German air raid, a school took a direct hit and 56 children, and their teachers were all killed. One family lost all of their kids. During the Battle of Britain, in the south of England in the area where Bruce was, 190 Allied and German planes were downed in two days. The air battle raged from daylight to dark. Another time, at Saltdea, near Brighton, a ship was sunk on the Channel. Bruce: “the cargo was barrels of wine (110 gallons in a barrel), about 500 of them. My regiment crawled through barbed wire and mine fields to get to that wine! We filled bathtubs, cooking utensils, and everything that would hold wine.” In 1943, Bruce was sent on a Commando course inWales. He trained with British, Australian, and two other Canadian troops, and it was real, tough training. At Christmas, he was posted back near Brighton for the winter. (continued)
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