LEST WE FORGET 189 HANDFORD, Mervin Campbell (continued) On March 15, 1944, I went to Camp Borden for my advance training in the tank corps. What a change from basic training. Now they were teaching us how to drive tanks. There was very strict discipline in everything we did. Everything had to be neat, clean, and tidy. The bed had to be made with your kit bags and big pack, small pack, and haversack all placed neatly on the shelf. Your shoes were to be polished, soles laid up on your blanket, which was called a “death blanket”. There was a black stripe right down the center of the blanket. They were double-deck bunk beds. The tanks we were trained to drive were Ram, Sherman, and Churchill. The Ram and Sherman tanks weighed 35 tons each, and the Churchill tank weighed 60 tons. They had Rolls-Royce 9-cylinder airplane engines in them. They used to take 400 gallons of gas to fill the tank, which was enough to last ten hours in the fields on the training grounds. We used to have to wash and clean them down with Varsol – all over and underneath the tanks. We would come into the barracks after ten hours of driving, go around the kitchen, and make sharp turns, throwing sand up through the screens in the windows. The cook would say, “You guys got sand all over my pies.” I went back to Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan for a week of embarkation leave to visit my family and all of my friends before going over the blue Atlantic bound for England. I returned to Camp Borden, Ontario, and prepared to pack and get ready for our train ride to Halifax, Nova Scotia. We left Borden in May 1944, by train headed to Halifax. Upon arrival in Halifax, we boarded the ship for England. The name of the ship was the “New Amsterdam”. It was a Dutch ship with a Dutch crew. They spoke their own language over loudspeakers. We wondered what they were talking about. Sometimes the German U-boats were attacking us. We changed course every fifty-nine seconds to prevent the Germans’ submarines from getting a good shot at the ship. The Dutch crew used to set off depth charges. They were so powerful they would rock the whole ship. I think there were about 600 of us servicemen or boys on board ship. It took about five days and six nights before we landed in Greenwich, England. I can remember us staying out of the harbor until they cleared the circle of mines surrounding the harbor. We then went to the old army garrison at Aldershot, England. It was quite a sight. What an experience for a young soldier from the wheat fields of Saskatchewan. As I recall, we went to Blackdown, which was not too far from Aldershot, for a refresher course. But, as it turns out, they needed some troops for D-Day. They said we could choose any regiment that we wished, or they would place us where they wanted. I thought, “Well, I joined in Regina, so I will join the Regina Rifles, 3rd Division, 7th Brigade.” We went to a holding place in southern England to prepare for the invasion on June 6, 1944. On the morning of D-Day, we waited to get into the landing craft tanks (LCT’s). It was a very frightening time for a young guy like me. We boarded the landing craft and set sail for France. It was not really a sailboat; it was powered by a gasoline engine. We landed on Juno Beach in Normandy and started to disembark from our landing craft. I thought, “If there was a hell on earth or water, this must be it.” I lost a lot of my buddies that fateful day. When I look back on it now, it makes me wonder what it was all about. Their lives were taken at a young age. Why I was spared I’ll never know. God must have had his hands on me. For some reason I came through it. I was not eighteen until June 27, 1944. After we landed at Caen, we began to do what we were trained to do in Orillia and Camp Borden. We had a few tough battles for a few days; after that it was trying to keep in touch with the “Jerries”. (continued)
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