Our section went to the Bull Ring.

Heroes Remember

Our section went to the Bull Ring.

Transcript

It was a real training camp. Each morning you're up at 6 o’clock and look after the horses and shovel the stalls, go back and get all washed up afterwards and go on parade. On parade, we were taken to various things, taken to a field and we were shown a little bit about the artillery guns and so on, not much. But we were shown them and we were given a little position on the gun crew for a while and we were rotated and so on. And then after that, we also had to go to work duties, but we were back again and with that, we had also training in signalling, semaphore, and flags and so on. Also the Morse training which didn’t give us very much training, but it did give us a little idea of what it was. That is, comes to the point when it was time for us to go overseas and we were on draft from Whitley. And it came about that we were sent down... Here it was brought together and all of the men were on parade and we were divided up and sent. Well, you go here and you go there and we were sent down to go to... Etaples. Etaples was then based in France and from there we were divided into sections. A section for here and there and we went to, eventually, our section went to the Bull Ring, what they called the Bull Ring, where they sent the recruits off to various batteries. And we were there for three or four or five days. Then, that is the time where I was sort of a misfit, because the rest of my stuff had already gone before me, you see, and I had been kept in England with four others and I came on this draft, went to the Bull Ring. Then we were sent around to various places. And a funny thing in France, that the four of us that came late were sort of by ourselves and remained by ourselves. We were, came there for draft, were being sent around to various units. We came late and we were taken, the four of us, around by some officer or a lieutenant of some kind to various units of the heavy brigade artillery and went to one place and they went to one place and pretty soon I got hunches to what was going on there. They had four fellas or five fellas, four I think it was, and we would go to one place and this lieutenant would go in and speak to the commander of the place and then they would drop off a man. And then they would go on and there would be three of us left, and we would go to another place and drop off another one. And I found that I was the last one to drop off. I got dropped off at the headquarters of the second brigade of artillery, which was the luckiest thing that ever happened.

Description

Mr. Manson describes his training regimen at Whitley camp, and being deployed to France. He describes his good fortune to be attached to 2nd Brigade Headquarters.

Arthur Bennett Manson

Arthur Manson was born in Nanaimo, British Columbia on March 5, 1899, as the second of three children. His father worked as a lumberman, then became a provincial politician, moving his family to Fort Simpson and finally to Prince Rupert. The family moved to Victoria when his father became BC’s Minister of Agriculture. Arthur Manson’s older brother had enlisted as a machine gunner and had attained the rank of lieutenant. Mr. Manson enlisted at Victoria in March, 1917, stating that it was “the thing to do.” He trained in Petawawa, Ontario as an artilleryman, and did the same at Whitley in England. However, he was spared front line duty by being attached to 2nd Brigade Headquarters. After the armistice, Mr. Manson joined the army of occupation in Germany. When he returned to Canada, Mr. Manson obtained his medical degree and practiced medicine in British Columbia. When the Second World War was under way, he joined the Forces as a Medical Officer in BC in response to the perceived threat from Japan.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 4:13
Person Interviewed:: Arthur Bennett Manson
War, Conflict or Mission:: First World War
Location/Theatre:: Europe
Branch:: Army
Units/Ship:: 2nd Brigade Headquarters
Occupation:: Adjutant

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Date modified:: 2019-06-20