Description
Mr. McCabe describes the sapper training he underwent, particularly assembling bridges in total darkness.
Eugene McCabe
Eugene McCabe, the third of six children in a blended family, was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island on August 21, 1923. Mr. McCabe’s father was a carpenter. He finished Grade 8, and like most of his friends, decided to join the army. Between 1937 and 1939, he served as a batman, earning an extra ten cents a day. After shipping overseas, he joined the 30th Field Company as a sapper. The 30th Field Company saw action from France through to post-war Germany, clearing and laying mines, but principally building bridges to facilitate the Allied advance. After the war, Mr. McCabe worked at St. Dunstan’s, UPEI for 38 years.
Transcript
Then you’d go on exercises. And all the exercises we’d go on, we had our own, carried an 80 foot gap, the bridge footers all the time and we hopped all along laying bridging. And that went on for about probably six months and they’d wondering why, well we knew why. Each bridge that we built there was a bridge in France or Belgium or Holland. That was the idea of getting this. And we always built them in the night time. No day work, just to get you used to the, they’re very strict on making noise and you never make noise and your mallets were the pins in the bridge, they were silenced. You never make a noise. You never talk. You knew your job. You done your job.