We Never Dreamed of Anything but Victory

Heroes Remember

We Never Dreamed of Anything but Victory

Transcript

It must have been an awful feeling for, when they started losing because they kept retiring, falling. We had that feeling of victory and we knew we were winning you know, which is different. At least one American Airborne Division, several thousand men went in the same time, hundreds of planes, each plane took 20 jumpers, I think it was, the C-47 Dakotas. Our battalion was in the 6th Airborne, 9 battalions, 3 brigades, we were in 3rd Bridgade. He said, the power you seen, the hundreds of planes and the power going down a few miles from the Rhine, it was a tremendous feeling. Some, they were waiting for us some of them, but we, they were overcome pretty quickly, the Jerries. See, that was in March of ‘45 and the war ended a couple of months later. Things were folding up. So I don’t think anyone ever dreamed of anything but victory. They were Jerries and we were the conquerors, we were, we were winning, they were losing, and we were well-armed and so on. Some of them spoke some English, some of them were young and some were, they were the enemy and we had been trained, I guess not exactly to, well, you might say to hate the enemy. Anyone that took infantry training was, I’m a little ashamed to say that, we were trained, they were human beings the same as we were, and they were fighting in their service like we were. But they were Germans and they were the enemy and . . . We knew for days things were folding up and we could sense the end was near. When we heard V-E Day, I think it was the 8th, we heard first I think it was the 6th or 7th, and that proved false, it didn’t quite pan out, and then the 8th come. Well, we didn’t celebrate much and we didn’t go through much no, no celebration. We were in an old bombed-out house in Weismar our section. We felt a bit of relief in a way, and we felt, oh God, we made it, we survived, and we’d be going home. God, we went home a little over a month later. We were the first outfit that got home around the end of June.

Description

Mr. Barron describes allied superiority and discusses Allied attitudes toward German POWs as the war draws to a close.

Reginald Roy Barron

Reginald Ray Barron was born in Greenfield, Hants Co., Nova Scotia, in 1922. His father was a farmer and a sawyer in the local lumber mill. As the only boy, Mr. Barron was expected to do much of the farm work; being tied down from dawn to dusk all year long didn’t appeal to him. He therefore lied about his age to enlist in June 1940, thus escaping his “primitive life on the farm.” After a short stint in the Princess Louise Fusiliers, he joined the Royal Canadian Artillery, with whom he spent two years in Newfoundland involved in coastal defense against the German Navy. Wanting to get overseas, in June 1944, he responded to a call for volunteers to join the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, with whom he served until war’s end. Mr. Barron saw limited action, only having been in Europe for the final two months of the war. He was wounded in the leg while in action. After returning home and before hostilities ended, he volunteered to go to Japan with his Battalion. Mr. Barron returned to school and studied law.

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