Life In Germany

Heroes Remember

Life In Germany

Transcript

Germany was very interesting. We had our full complement of soldiers we had good equipment and we travelled around Germany on exercise with our allies, German allies, American allies and we learned a lot. We worked with French allies as well and it was tanks and armoured personnel carriers that we used. A typical day in Germany would be morning PT -physical training, so we would all go and run and go through an obstacle course and I was a company commander. I had about one hundred and twenty men and we had a bear pit we called it. We dug it out and put sandbags around and it was about 15 feet across, not unlike a boxing ring, and the idea was so many go in, I think it was about 20 at a time, and the last man is the one that goes into the next and the idea is to throw people out, throw them out of this bear pit, and that was very popular. We enjoyed that and it was good exercise, of course. The rest of the time we did weapons training, communication training, tactics, of course, and the other thing was maintenance. The vehicles, the armoured personnel carriers M113's American, they required a lot of maintenance, a lot of track maintenance, and that sort of thing so we worked on our vehicles everyday to make sure they were up to snuff and our weapons, our heavy weapons, of course, our heavy machine guns, 50 calibre machine guns anti-tank missiles we had to work on those so it was a fair bit of work to keep the equipment in shape. And then we would go on exercises that would be up to six weeks at a time, where we would fire our weapons, we would practice our tactics and we would move with our colleagues in the tank - the armoured core and the artillery and helicopters and so on. We worked together with all of them and practiced what we would probably have to do in war time.

Description

Mr. Leavey speaks about his time in Germany and the extensive training he received.

Bill Leavey

Mr. Bill Leavey was born in Belleville, Ontario in 1948. He was the second oldest of 8 children. After obtaining his education, Mr. Leavey was very anxious to find employment and had a great sense of adventure for the Canadian Forces. He was very involved in sports and hunting and felt the army would be a good fit. After joining, Mr. Leavey received his basic training in Camp Borden, Ontario and became part of the Black Watch Regiment - a regiment he holds great respect for. As well as service in Canada, Mr. Leavey travelled to Germany and continued training for combat with greater focus on exercise and weapons training. In 1997, a highlight of Mr. Leavey’s career was when he joined the team in the recovery of the C-47 in Burma. After his retirement from the military, Mr. Leavey joined Veterans Affairs Canada and presently works with the Occupational Stress Injury Social Support (OSISS) network assisting military personnel and families after discharge from the forces. Mr. Leavey and his family reside in Belleville, Ontario.

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