He must have got drunk and fell in the canal.

Heroes Remember

He must have got drunk and fell in the canal.

Transcript

There was sixty, yeah sixty of us in our platoon, counting cooks, and vice versa. And we were the first ones to hit Brussels, Belgium. Man what an awakening. Big city, people happy. Germans down at one end of the town, we’re coming into the other end of the town. We’re not a fighting force. We’re builders. And they said, gee, were going to have to stop here in the middle of the place, the City, to go to where we were going to go to the Andrelik (sic) Canal because we’re going to drop off bridging material there. And on the way going through, driving through the place, people was all over us. It was a happy thing for them. They were giving us all kinds of fruit, flowers and everything. It was like a, how could I put it, it was almost like a birthday party or something like that, you know. The war had just disappeared for that little while, although we know we were in it. We stayed in Brussels for two days. One of our personnel got missing and the next morning they asked people if they had seen him. And I like an idiot, I think I was, I must have been, I was only eighteen, I said to the captain, “Oh that old fool, he must have got drunk and fell in a canal or something like that.” Holy, what did I say that for? Because they did find him in a canal. So right away the Provo picked me up and said, “Hey, you’re going back to headquarters. We’re going to talk to you. Why did you say this guy got drunk and fell into a canal?” I said, “It was just a matter of speech because he was always drunk.” He was an elderly guy. He was an elderly man according to me. I think he was in his early 50s.” He was from Saint John, New Brunswick. So I go out they take me down to headquarters and asked me a lot of questions. So I told them, “No, it was just a matter of speech.” We had all went out that night to celebrate and he was a kind of a distant person because he used to get boozed up. But, anyway, they found him in a canal. They found him in a canal and he wasn’t drunk after they did an autopsy they found out he was not, he didn’t have any alcohol on himself. But he had a bruise on his head so somebody must have hit him and whatever. But I said that from now on, I’ll never open my mouth again about anything, you know.

Description

Mr. Berry describes the 86th’s advance into Brussels, the elation of the civilians, and how an off-hand remark erroneously implicated him in the death of a member of his Company.

Irving Malcolm Berry

Irving Berry was born on March 10, 1924 in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. He attended South End School, but left school early to find work. At the time that war broke out, he was working as a porter for the bus company, earning $3.50 per day. Mr. Berry was aware that the recruiting officer in Halifax was prejudiced against blacks, but managed to successfully enlist. His training took place in Camp Borden, and then he shipped overseas, joining the 86th Bridging Company, Royal Canadian Army Service Corps. Mr. Berry’s active service in France began twenty-one days after the D-Day invasion. His company’s responsibility was to deliver bridge building components to the Front, and if needed, assist in the actual construction of new bridges. Three major areas of activity were the Seine, Arnheim, and the Rhine. Mr. Berry left the Armed Forces after the war, but reenlisted in the RCASC in1952. He retired with the rank of Sergeant in 1974.

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