Damaged Oranges

Heroes Remember

Damaged Oranges

Transcript

In the camp where we had about eight or nine laborers working for us at the move and control section to off load the trains, stuff that come in. If there was a case of oranges come in, I hit on this one because it actually happened and it had been badly damaged so we had to sort out all the bad oranges if they were split, or crushed, or bruised and because when this stuff came in to us, we were in charge of it until it went to the ration depot which was covered by the Indian Army, they looked after issuing the rations. So we would pull out these oranges and put them into a hamper and we marked off one crate of oranges as “damaged”, so the Indian Army didn't have to account for that one, it's covered. It went up to the Indian Army ration depot and this young Jebadar which is like a Lieutenant in the Indian Army, he came down and wanted to know where those oranges were and we told them they had been damaged, crushed, blah, blah, blah....they're over in the hamper over there. And he went to check and he counted everyone of them to make sure that they had the right count and then he wanted that up to the depot and we said, “No, no, we'll look after that,” and away he went. When we were finished for the day, we said to, oh I forget his name now, Allie was the big guy, him and his eight or ten laborers, “You can have those oranges if you want!” Well boy oh boy they thought this was wonderful. We got ourselves in a sling because they were stopped at the gate going out with those crushed oranges which were of no value to them, it was garbage basically and the Indian Officer knew what we were going to do. He knew that we weren't going to keep those oranges. We could get whole fresh oranges, why would we keep that stuff but we were going to give it to those, so he told the guard battalion at the gate, “When they come out, check these people for...” They took all the oranges off them, raised hell with them, threatened them and everything else and then our Major had to call us in because he had been called over about what we had done, why, they were no good to us, people would use them, we can't do that.

Description

Mr. Floyd describes the situation where giving damaged oranges to the locals was a “no, no!”

Murray Floyd

Mr. Floyd was born January 10, 1931 in Toronto, Ontario. After receiving his education, Mr. Floyd became employed with a bus company. He later married and together he and his wife raised 4 daughters. Mainly for financial reasons, Mr. Floyd decided to join the military and enlisted in the Army. He took his basic training in Val Cartier and accepted his first posting to Vancouver with 11 Company having an occupation of Furniture & Effects Clerk. In 1964, Mr. Floyd traveled to Beirut, Egypt where he witnessed a great culture shock. His career would give him 2 tours to Egypt and later on in his career traveled to England to serve as clerk in logistic operations. At the time Mr. Floyd moved his family to England which proved to be a positive experience for all. Mr. Floyd retired from the military and resides in Toronto, Ontario.

Meta Data