Duty and Patriotism

Today, in Newfoundland you would get an 80% vote at least to confederate with Canada. So therefore I think all the younger people would automatically think. In the makeup that our people are, you wouldn't need conscription. Now MacKenzie King brought in conscription but you had to volunteer to fight, after you were conscripted. That was wrong, they should have had general conscription but he was afraid of Quebec. I ain't a bit afraid of Quebec, not even today. I don't know. There was enough warning from the time that Hitler first invaded Poland or Chechoslovak or whichever he did first, that the warning was there that this fella couldn't be contained. So I guess everybody was glad to do their part. And other than that like I say for a lot of us young fellas it was an adventure. But then of course it became a commitment. The longer we were over there and the more training we got we realized if you were going to survive you had to have the training. And I think today, that the young people should automatically have to have two years military training at the end of their highschool, well of course the ones that are not physically capable. But you'd have a hell of a lot better citizen coming up if they would have had military training. In my mind, I wish my own boys had had it.

Mr. Baggs speaks about duty and patriotism and the importance of military training.

Eric Thomson Baggs

Eric Thomson Baggs was born in St. John's, Newfoundland on March 3rd, 1918. He grew up in a fishing family and worked with his father at Royal Stores in St. John's filling fixtures and looking after wholesales. He joined the boy scouts when he was twelve. Mr. Baggs was accepted into the Royal Air Force in 1937 at seventeen but his father wouldn't let him go. He then tried for the Royal Navy but was refused because he was too young. When he was twenty-one he enlisted in the Army's Heavy Artillery Branch. He was trained in St. John's and then escorted to Liverpool in 1940. At first, Mr. Baggs was primarily on costal defense. Later his battalion became the 166th Field Artillery which became known as the best artillery regiment in all of the Allied Forces. When Mr. Baggs returned home to Newfoundland, he went on with life as usual, continuing work at his fathers store.