Description
Mr. Bevan describes embarking for the journey overseas, and a close call during a storm.
James Bevan
Mr. Bevan was born in 1924, in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was an only child, and at the age of 6, moved to Red Deer, Alberta, with his family. Mr. Bevan first joined the service with the Calgary Highlanders, but was booted the next day when it was discovered he was underage. Wanting to join the Navy, but unable to convince his parents to allow him to join, he signed up at the local barracks with the 78th Artillery Battery - part of the 13th Field Regiment When War was declared, Mr. Bevan was sent to Calgary and Shiloh for training before eventually shipping overseas. After arriving in Great Britain, the regiment trained until shipping out as a part of the D-Day invasion. After action in Falaise, the 13th Field Regiment worked its way across France and into Belgium, and eventually into Germany - soon after which, the war ended. The regiment remained in Germany for a short period, before returning to Holland to help escort German POWs. Soon after, Mr. Bevan volunteered to join the battle in the Pacific; however, the war ended before he shipped out of England. He returned to Canada soon after, and entered training on a printing press, followed by a 40+ year career.
Transcript
One night we had a hell of a storm. There was, when we had it worse was, there was, two freighters, there's a big convoy left ahead of us, and these two freighters for some unknown reason were left back and they joined ours and we had two small destroyers, four destroyers. So we had to speed, travel the speed of the freighter, which is slow. And this one night there's a terrible storm, this freighter's cargo shifted and he started heading right to us and just about the time, past your turn to wave hit, we came within one degree of turning over according to the, the... The Navy was all scared, we thought it was funny.
Interviewer: You must have been afraid.
We weren't, no, we didn't know any difference anyway. They were the, talking to some of the guys that, old guy that was in the thing, that had been on the North Atlantic for thirty years and he said "It was the worst storm". ‘Course they're always the worst storm.