Ammunition train

First World War Audio Archive

Ammunition train

Transcript

Picture of three soldiers.

The ammunition train boys - there’d be four and two carts cinched behind them, you know, bouncing and there would be places -

Trains departing with soldiers and equipment.

of course, when they want to put up an ammunition dump, maybe just behind the ridge, pretty close to the bloody lines, where they couldn’t get because of them, they couldn’t take the casings in because of the confounded shell holes, can you. Well, then

Soldiers digging trench to lay down railway line.

they knew they didn’t like light railway troops people and some battalion fellows filled in running these light railways you know the bloody thing is about that wide, so then they could run the

Sandbags laid out beside railway line.

cars along these light railways and set up an ammunition dump.

Soldiers loading ammunition onto railway car by rolling it up on ramps.

And so help me, and it wasn’t uncommon, by God, for guys after all the bloody working, some confounded observation balloon would be watching them all the time. And just after the working

Balloon in the air.

was all finished... Boom! They start piling shells on the damn

Gun being fire and shell exploding in a field.

thing... blowing it up. What I am trying to get at, the type of

Rail car going down the line

fighting I was in anyway wasn’t trench warfare. It was more

Ammunition being off-loaded from railway car by hand.

movement, more guarding other chaps against, because when these

Ammunition being piled together.

poor buggers were running these lines through they couldn’t... They too were armed, you know, but they stacked their rifles.

More railway line being constructed.

They couldn’t be laying down these bloody railway lines and at the same time carrying arms so that’s our job is, if the Fritzy ever broke through and one thing or another, it’s our job to make damn sure he didn’t like it.

Description

Mr. Vale describes the method used to establish ammunition dumps in the front lines by way of narrow gauge rail lines, their vulnerability to being bombed, and his role as a machine gunner in protecting unarmed ammunition details.

George Vale

George Vale was born in Montreal, Quebec on September 22, 1897. His father quit his job at the CPR and moved to Rougemont, Quebec and took up farming. Mr. Vale decided to leave the banking business and returned to school to study engineering. When the war started, he was too young to join the Queen’s Own Rifles, so he joined a volunteer force at Stoney Creek, Ontario. Once of age, he enlisted with the Canadian Mounted Rifles in January, 1916. He then sailed to England aboard the Lusitania in March, 1916, joined the Royal Canadian Dragoons, and by May of that year was in France. His primary role was as a Farrier, serving with the Canadian Railway Troops. After discharge, he worked in the property management office of the CPR in Toronto. In 1929, he joined the Crown Trust company rising to the position of comptroller in 1948. He retired in 1962. Mr. Vale married Winnifrid Reynolds of Aurora in 1920 and had two daughters. Mr. Vale died in the Veterans "K" Wing of Sunnybrook Hospital on February 15, 1984.

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