Escorting without Landing
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- Medium: Video
- Owner: Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration: 3:27
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Escorting without Landing
The ship escorts other ships full of soldiers to Scotland and England. They were not authorized to land in Scotland . . .
Robert Huot
Mr. Huot enlisted in Québec. His mother was strongly opposed and even went to see the Prime Minister of Canada at the time, Louis Saint-Laurent, to keep her son from enlisting, but without success. He left Lévis by train for Halifax. He was paid $1.20 per day, which was good pay at the time. It was at Halifax during training that he learned English. His military service was on board the HMCS Saint-Laurent. Mr. Huot liked his experience in the Navy during the Second World War; he tells a number of stories that give a good idea of a sailor’s life during the war.
Transcription
Escorting without Landing
We’d come to get soldiers in Halifax, at the port, and brought them onboard. They came on board ship. There were two ships, the Lady Rodney and the Lady Nelson. They got onboard. When everything was ready to leave, we left, not five minutes before, not five minutes after. So, we left, we came to get the ships. We left Halifax . . . “Send overseas.” We escorted them. No lights at night, no . . . When you saw a ship with a light, the porthole open and lights, you chased that ship. You turned the lights off . . . There couldn’t be any light, nothing. No one could know that you were there. It was very, very discreet, Sir. When we arrived in Ireland – we Canadians, we didn’t go past Ireland – we went to Londonderry and there the British navy came to get the ships. Ireland was a neutral country, we weren’t allowed to disembark . . . Offshore . . . . No disembarking. No disembarking. We disembarked at Halifax, in Newfoundland . . . Halifax . . . Newfoundland . . . I don’t remember the other places. But not when there were convoys. When we had convoys, no, we went to the open sea, we went someplace else. We stayed there beside a – not an oiler – a boat that gave oil: President III. It was all Chinese that were on board there. You pulled up along side and took on oil. They washed the boat, and everything. It wasn’t us that washed it. After that, when . . . It could last ten days. ‘Cause we burned a lot of oil. And after that, we left again with another convoy. They took us to Newfoundland, Halifax . . . I did that for a long time. Things were rough on the ship.Oh! A lot . . . Oh! Yes, indeed . . . There were big storms. You had to be tied. We were attached to the ship. When you started from the bow and you went to the back, you were tied. There were big steel cables because if you weren’t attached, a wave came and took you, and you wouldn’t come back [laughter]. We were sick. We didn’t eat, and threw up just the same . . . If you want . . . Sick . . . At times, sick for two days; at times for one day, and when the storm was over, well, we were OK. But it takes time to get used to that. We had totally empty stomachs and we didn’t eat a lot. If you drank one glass of water, you threw up four. Y’know?
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