Points and the German Occupation

Heroes Remember

Points and the German Occupation

Transcript

And I went up in the occupation afterwards. At that time, I was pretty disgusted with the whole thing and everything. I had been with the regiment for, oh, I had been in the regiment a little over a year. And there was a lot of reinforcements that come to the regiment that had been in Canada until just before the war was over. And, of course, then they shipped everybody, anybody at all, they had to go.And it was them that was ... they had been in the service from ’39. And they had points enough it was a point system - and after the war was over, we had the choice. And I don’t know of either … the first choice was to go home, second choice was occupation, the third choice was Japan. And after you had time to think it over, you’d wonder why that you’d put in for anything else but Japan. Because we all knew right well that if the war kept on, we’d all be going. It wouldn’t make any difference where we signed up for, we’d be going. But I signed up for home first, naturally first, or occupation. And of course I went on occupation and I never was sorry. It was one of the best educations I got, was the occupation. Because German people wasn’t one bit different than we were. But after we got up there, we were doing – the bunch that I was with - we were doing guard on ammunition dumps, places like that, that’s what we were guarding. And the civilian people, when we went up first, you wasn’t supposed to even speak to them. You carried arms of some kind with you all the time. Well, we weren’t there a week ‘til we were going around without one thing at all, just going around. And the English weren’t too far from us and the Americans was there too, and of course, they were just... But the English, we used to laugh great at them. They’d go for … they’d have a pot of tea boiling some place and they’d go. And you’d see them going to get their tea, and they’d have their rifle slung over their shoulder and their coffee mug or tea mug on top over the end of the barrel. But we mixed right in with them as soon as we got there. They never done anything for us talking to them. We weren’t supposed to, but the civilians were just as nice to us as ... you just, we couldn’t believe it ourselves. We used to take our wash out to the civilians to get our wash done, sometimes, and this woman – she was quite an old lady - and of course, the language was hand language and stuff, and tea was one thing they hadn’t seen for years. And this old lady, she was wishing that she had tea, she’d love to have tea. So I wrote to my mother and I told her and she sent me a box, sent me a pound of tea in it. And of course, in no time at all, I don’t know how they travel so fast, but it was no time at all, I got a parcel from Mom and a pound of tea was in it. I took it out and give it to this old lady. Well, it was just the same as if it had been gold, it wouldn’t have been near as valuable to her. She just couldn’t believe that anybody would do anything like that, you know. It was just things like that, that you found that the people, the civilians, they weren’t a bit different than any of the rest of us. Just the nicest people as you’d ... and even the prisoners that we worked there, there was quite a few of them could speak English. We never had a bit of trouble with them, not one bit of trouble with them at all.

Description

Mr. Enman explains his frustration with the point system for returning home, describing how he volunteered for Japan and ended up in Germany, while recent arrivals returned to Canada. He then describes how he ended up appreciating the lessons the occupation taught him.

Murdock William Enman

Mr. Murdock Enman was born in 1922 in Victoria West, Prince Edward Island. Aware that a draft was imminent, Mr. Enman enlisted in the army in January 1943 and was sent to Nova Scotia for training. He became sick, however, and was forced to re-start his training, remained in Nova Scotia for almost a year. After training, Mr. Enman shipped overseas in support of the West Novas in England. In September 1944, Mr. Enman shipped out of England and was among the first troops to land at Naples, Italy. From there, his command fought their way up the entire country. Following the end of the Italian campaign, Mr. Enman and the rest of the Canadians fought their way through Holland and into Germany. Following the end of the war, Mr. Enman remained in Germany as part of the occupation forces. He eventually left Germany in December of 1945, and returned to Canada the following March.

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