First leave

First World War Audio Archive

First leave

Transcript

Well, I was sixteen months before I got my first leave. So I went

Two Soldiers reading the newspaper.

up to Scotland. I liked the Scottish people more so than the English. We stopped off at London, got into the bank there in London to get some more money and then we took the Flying Scotchman to Waterloo Station for Edinburgh. And the first thing that meets you when you get up to Edinburgh and get out is the big Edinburgh castle way up in the heavens and from there we went to the Maple Leaf club. We got washed up and got our breakfast and one thing and another. We started to do the town and walked around, we was thinking a nice restaurant there, we thought we’d have our dinner there when the time come. So we went to the restaurant at dinner time. I hung up my coat and cap, so did the other fella. When we had our dinner we come out. He got his coat and cap and I got my cap and I couldn’t find me coat. My coat was gone, somebody had stolen it. “Well,” he said, “what are you going to do now?” “Well,” I said, “there is some nice coats here. Wait until I try some of those on.” I got a nice coat out of it, alright. It had no stripes on it. I said, “Let’s get to a tailor and get a couple of stripes on it so they can’t claim it.”

Description

Mr. Turner describes his first leave in England and his trip to Edinburgh, a preferred location for Canadians on leave.

Brenton Harold Turner

Brenton Harold (Jack) Turner was born in O’Leary, Prince Edward Island on September 24, 1889. His father was a general merchant, and he worked in the family business. Mr. Turner enlisted in Charlottetown on September 25, 1915. He sailed to England aboard the Lapland, arriving in December, 1915. He trained in Horsham, and then went into action as a Corporal in the 2nd Canadian Siege Battalion, arriving in France in May, 1916. Mr. Turner saw action at the Somme, Vimy and Passchendaele. Despite orders to turn in all cameras, Mr. Turner smuggled a German-built 2" x 3" format camera in his clothes behind the front lines and took approximately 100 photographs from the war zone. After the war, he returned to Canada aboard the Mauritania, married, and became a farmer. Mr. Turner died on October 6, 1989.

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