Underage Enlisting

Heroes Remember

Underage Enlisting

Transcript

Once I signed up with the medical, just go in pass the doctor you know. They give you an examination. I told them I was two years older see. And he said to me, the doctor, he looked at me and said "You're not that old." He never said no more than that. They wanted them in you see. I was big. I was the right measurements. I weighed 140 lbs then, naked, nude you know. So I was not overweight. I got sick up in the, they had the old berthing you know on the Navy Ship. But they trained there up in St. John's. I got Diphtheria. I come in contact, there was another fellow got it, and I went and I stowed away somewhere and they couldn't find me. And when they found me, rushed me right to the hospital. I was a month there.

Description

Mr. Andrews describes his enlistment and how his physical maturity outweighed his being under aged. His training starts badly when he becomes ill in St. John's.

George Andrews

George Andrews was born in August, 1900 in Point Leamington, Newfoundland. He was the eldest of five sons and attended the Salvation Army and United Church schools to age thirteen, at which time he went to work in a lumber camp. Mr. Andrews enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1916, serving aboard both the HMS Loch Maree and HMS John Barry. Mr. Andrews contends that without the Royal Navy, the war would have been lost.

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