Training for D-Day

Heroes Remember

Training for D-Day

Transcript

Aldershot is only about an hour by train to London. We stayed in Aldershot and trained there for a while and then some of us went away on courses. I went away on a wireless course, others took other training in gunnery. So I was gone for three months then I came back to the battalion. We had moved, the time I was away we had moved to another part of England. And we had moved several times during those years and then every year, then we started training for D Day aboard ships. We would go out in the morning, board our ships, then get down in our landing crafts and you hit the beaches. We did that for four years. We went every year, every February we went to Inveraray, Scotland for two months training up there on the coast. They used to build the coast up, they said this coast will look like the same coast where we’re going to land on the second front. We didn’t know where that was. So we trained, that’s the way we trained. And then we trained off the Isle of Wight out of Portsmouth and Southampton. We trained there all winter after we came back from Scotland all summer. So the whole four and a half years training there was all for D Day.

Description

In preparation for D-Day, Mr. Chiasson explains the training regimen that would encompass a four year period.

Havelyn Chiasson

Mr. Chiasson was born May 14, 1921 in Misquamicut Island, New Brunswick. He attended an English and French school while his father worked as a fisherman. When war was declared in 1939, Mr. Chiasson was recruited to the Carleton York Regiment in Bathurst and later with the North Shore Regiment, a regiment he would remain with until end of wartime. Mr. Chiasson held the position of wireless operator and found himself travelling overseas which would become a 5 ½ year experience. Mr. Chiasson was part of the D-Day and Battle of Normandy landings where he reached the beaches in St. Aubin-sur-Mer, Normandy. He carried on through to Holland. Mr. Chiasson remains very active about his service years, speaking to our youth about the importance of service to our country.

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