Joining with Occupation Troops

Heroes Remember

Joining with Occupation Troops

Transcript

The guys that were going to the Occupation, they took us out and we drove over to Germany into Holland, into Appledorn, formed up the occupation troops. We had our patches, the colours, the 2nd Division were blue and 3rd Division was blue, but pale blue, like the Air Force blue. So they give the name of the Occupation the 3rd Division because they were the ones that had went over on D-Day and had the square patch with the small thin one down at the bottom, that meant you were in the Occupation Troop. So the war ended in May and on the 1st of June, we moved, my outfit moved back into Oldenburg and from there first thing we started doing, first we would transfer a lot of displaced personnel around here and there and then they started weeding out the Germans, the ordinary soldiers, you know, and the SS Troopers and that stuff like that. The SS Troopers, they put them in one of the concentration camps outside of Hamburg. We loaded a bunch on, we loaded I think twenty truckloads of Germans, just ordinary German prisoners, they would just take them in this big camp and discharge them, they weeded them out and discharged them out but the SS Troopers was on my truck and another truck, they loaded them on the truck and they would put them in the, it was the first time I was in one of those places where they killed a lot of the Jewish people, went in there and you could still smell that, that was awful, so they dropped them off into the concentration camp.

Description

After making the decision to remain in the army, Mr. Cromwell moves back into action and begins the transport of displaced persons.

Everett Sylvester Cromwell

Everett Cromwell was born on December 12, 1921 in Weymouth Falls, Digby Co., Nova Scotia. He was the fifth of ten children. At age twelve, he left school to work in the woods because his father, also a forestry worker, had fallen ill. Both of his parents were soon deceased, and the ten children stayed in the family home supporting one another. Mr.Cromwell supported the family by working for a local farmer and then in the local lumberyard. He enlisted in June, 1941 in the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps. After basic training in Halifax, Sherbrooke, and Camp Borden, he sailed aboard the Louis Pasteur to England, arriving on December 23, 1941. Two weeks after the D-day raid, Mr. Cromwell arrived in France with the 2nd Division, Motor Transport. For the duration of the war, his unit was responsible for transporting fuel, food and ammunition to the Front in support of the Allied advance on Germany. After being discharged from the army and returning home, Mr. Cromwell, recently married, reenlisted because it was ‘steady work’. He and his family were to experience institutionalized racism in Halifax, being denied accommodations because of their black heritage. This in contrast to the fact that he felt equal in all respects as a member of the Army. Mr. Cromwell and his wife, Elizabeth, currently reside in Shelburne, Nova Scotia.

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