Shell Fire

Heroes Remember

Shell Fire

Transcript

Interviewer: At that stage I take it that you thought that we were winning the war? Oh at Vimy Ridge. Yeah. Well not, not exactly. In a way it was, taking the ridge was a big thing of course. Because they're up there and they could see everything else going on for miles back, ya know, and they didn't wanna give that up but they had to. And after that it was different. And I remember going over another place they talked about the war, the war started. We started this advance now and we took a place called Monchy, it was a big hill but farmers were all around everybody was building their homes in these, this hill. I mean and they just took it in the morning. So we're standing around there talking and the first thing, word comes through that we had to go take the Hindenburg line. The Hindenburg line was in front of us and it was on a big hill. This is our own, our own battalion, this is on a hill and a big valley down below ya see. And I was telling the boys about it ya know that we're gonna go over. I was a Sergeant. I was just talking to my own men and there was shell busted oh god a long way back of us and this thing come whistling through the air and I was talking to a fella and I was facing like this. The dug out right there and this piece of shell hit, hit me and took a jump out of my coat and buried itself into a, buried itself into a plank in the, in the dugout. And I, I never just scratched me. If I had of been that way a little bit I'd have lost the arm right there.

Description

Vimy Ridge had been taken, but Mr. Mason didn't think the allies were necessarily winning the war. He goes on to relate an incident that very nearly cost him an arm.

Alfred Mason

Alfred Mason was born in Tangier, Nova Scotia on January 4, 1895. After completing his schooling, he worked in the Tangier gold mines before moving to a job at the car works in Trenton, Nova Scotia when he was 17 years old. He would also spend some time at the steel works there and in the coal mines of northern Nova Scotia before going to Halifax in 1915 to enlist. He joined the 66th Battalion and then transferred to the 40th. He spent some time in Quebec in basic training and was then sent to England and, almost immediately, on to France. He arrived there in the Spring of 1916 as reinforcement for the 3rd Division, 8th Brigade of the 5th Battalion of the Canadian Mounted Rifles.

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