The 18 Pounder

Heroes Remember

The 18 Pounder

Transcript

I liked the army, and I was good at my job, and I crawled up the ladder pretty fast. And I had my gun crew up at that recruiting shed this day and my back was turned to the corner of the building, and my gun crew, we had started off with the old 18-pounder, that was a First World War gun, and it's a big, good size gun. And it had high wheels, high iron shod tires on, it literally took the tire... you used to spend a lot... every year we went out to Petawawa. That's up near Algonquin Park, up in Northern Ontario, that's where you, that's where we used the guns up there. And they took the big tire, the wheels off, the high wheels off, and they put rubber tired wheels on, they were quite a bit lower, lowered the gun down a lot. And when you fired the shell there was a big wide trail at the back end, back end, there was sandy soil and the trail dug into the, they would jump off the ground altogether. And that trail dug into the, right into the ground. And you had a number seven dial site on there and that was fairly (inaudible). You had three, three aiming points, you had a gun aiming point and the battery aiming point. Well you got the, there was a dial site on, there was minutes and degrees on the dial site, so you, you turned that to the orders you got. And you picked, you picked your own gun aiming point so to try and get a little action before they... and you shot, what you shot at was a, a tank. It was made of plywood and it was a long distance away, and towed by a tractor with a long cable on it. So what we used to try to do was hit the cable to stop, so to cut the tank off from the tractor. You couldn't see the tractor of course, it was a mile away.

Description

Mr. Munro describes how he and his gun crew would use the 18 pounder artillery gun to train, shooting at wooden tanks that were pulled along by tractors on long cables, while on exercise in Petawawa, Ontario.

William Munro

Mr. Munro was born in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, May 21st, 1908. He was the only child in his family and his father was an engineer by occupation. Mr. Munro attended school until he was 13 or14. He then started working for the town with a pick and shovel. Mr. Munro joined the Canadian Army in 1924 and although he enjoyed the army life he left in 1930 to work as a bus driver and a street car driver. In 1939 he decided rejoined the Canadian Army and became an artillery instructor with 83 Field Artillery Battery. Mr. Munro served mostly on the east coast of Canada, with field training being done in Petawawa, Ontario. At the end of the war Mr. Monro opted to leave the Canadian Army as he felt that an army career would be hard on his family life.

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