Description
Mr. Baggs describes the "beaten army" surrendering in North Africa (Tunisia).
Eric Thomson Baggs
Eric Thomson Baggs was born in St. John's, Newfoundland on March 3rd, 1918. He grew up in a fishing family and worked with his father at Royal Stores in St. John's filling fixtures and looking after wholesales. He joined the boy scouts when he was twelve. Mr. Baggs was accepted into the Royal Air Force in 1937 at seventeen but his father wouldn't let him go. He then tried for the Royal Navy but was refused because he was too young. When he was twenty-one he enlisted in the Army's Heavy Artillery Branch. He was trained in St. John's and then escorted to Liverpool in 1940. At first, Mr. Baggs was primarily on costal defense. Later his battalion became the 166th Field Artillery which became known as the best artillery regiment in all of the Allied Forces. When Mr. Baggs returned home to Newfoundland, he went on with life as usual, continuing work at his fathers store.
Transcript
Interviewer: How did they appear? They were marched back to a concentration area by their own NCOs and officers. They had thrown away their weapons. They were completely beaten anyway and rather than be driven right into the sea, or blown to smithereens, which we would have done, they just had enough of it and they downed their weapons and marched - 200,000 of them. I rode up and down the side of the column one day and all these fellas they were seeing this fella with his head bandaged up, instead of being back at the hospital somewhere. They must've figured we were a hard crowd.
Interviewer: Did they look like a beaten army?
Oh yes very much so. Interviewer: So there was no cockiness or arrogance?
No, no, no, no they were beaten and they wanted out, and prisoner war camp was a better deal than staying in the line.