Description
Mr. Golden admits that his training fell short of what he felt was necessary to adequately perform his instructor's duties prior to his deployment to Hong Kong.
David Golden
The third of four children, David Sinclair was born on February 22, 1920 in Sinclair, Manitoba. His father, an insurance salesman, moved the family to Vancouver, returning to Winnipeg when Mr. Golden was ten years old. In his third year at the University of Manitoba, he joined the Canadian Officer Training Corps. Mr. Golden missed his University graduation due to a May, 1941 call up by the Winnipeg Grenadiers. As a 2nd Lieutenant he served with the Grenadiers in Jamaica. After returning to Canada he was assigned as an intelligence officer to the Royal Rifles, with whom he went to Hong Kong. Mr. Golden was imprisoned in Hong Kong for the entire war. After returning to Canada, he practiced law.
Transcript
You know there wasn’t much training in peace time. We went to Jamaica, there was very little training, none of it very realistic. I would say that my own training was poor, very little of it was hands on, ya I spent a good part of my time telling people how to do things even though I didn’t know how to do them myself. I can remember being posted out to Fort Osborne Barracks during the summer of 1940 and I was teaching recruits how to disassemble and assemble a Bren gun. Well, I learned how to do that and I taught them. We never fired any Bren guns, we just assembled and disassembled them. No, I’m no expert, I led a completely civilian life until the war and never paid much attention to things like that although some of my brother officers were active militia officers. I can only speak for myself, I was badly trained and my impression of many of the troops, not all, was that they weren’t trained at all.