Something To See

Heroes Remember

Something To See

Transcript

Well, we land in Halifax, and I couldn’t believe it when I first saw the Queen Mary. She was on the dock, right on, touching the dock actually. And it was like a sky-scraper. I couldn’t believe it. The most beautiful thing. I looked up there and we marched up the steps into there. We were the first ones on, actually. My officer says, “Okay, where’s our quarters?” He said, “What do you mean quarters?” He said, “Quarters are wherever you can find places.” He says, “There’s going to be a lot of people here,” he says. And we were the first ones on you see. So, oh great, we took off, you know. The minute we got loose on there, we took off and looked for our nice spot. And one of our guys found out about way down below, the pool. The swimming pool. It was empty and it was beautiful. Big old beautiful little glass and marble things, you know. So we took that over. About three days we were on, an officer come on. I was right by the gate when they came in, an officer from Quebec, and he had his whole regiment and they looked about a half a mile long. They were all in three, like, waiting areas coming in to embark. And he said exactly the same thing, and he said, he comes up to talk to the officer and the navy guy, and he said, “Okay,” he says, “I’m ready to come on.” Kind of a big-shot affair, you know. He says, “I’m gonna...” and he said, “Where’s my quarters?” Same answer. He said, the officer, the French officer, says, “What?” They speak fairly good English, but he says, “What do you mean?” He says, “Yeah,” he says, “Wherever you can find a place.” “No way.” So he says, “About turn” to his troops, and they set up on the dock. And they discussed things there. He wasn’t going to come on. But then they got some big-shot that decided you’re coming on. So anyway they came on after awhile. Now they were expecting trouble with these guys. They took our regiment, the whole regiment, they gave us the authority to be MPs, so they put a badge on us, an arm band and a little stick. So we had a, all the way across, we had a real go. We could walk all over the place and...but we ignored a lot of stuff, you know. We couldn’t be strict. There was a lot of stuff going on that we just ignored. But (inaudible) I never had to report anything bad. The worst of everything was pretty smooth going. The boat trip, the Queen Mary... Now, the captain came on the PA system and he said, “This Queen Mary, on the water,” he said, “is so fast that it doesn’t have to zig-zag to evade the German torpedo.” He says, “What we’re doing is going straight across,” and he says, “wide open, straight across into Scotland.” And that was quite a sight. At night you could just see a vapour trail on the both sides of it. Rrrrrrrrr. I used to go all over. I was on the back, you’re on the back end, you could just hear these propellers going Vvvvvvvv, going like this all the time. And boy, that was something to see.

Description

Mr. Ducharme describes boarding the Queen Mary and crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Scotland.

Paul Ducharme

Paul Ducharme was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1919. His family moved to Lorraine, Ontario where his father had a successful career with the Abitibi lumber company. Mr. Ducharme left home, penniless, at the age of thirteen. In the years leading up to his enlistment, he was employed as a trapper, a guide, a male poster model, and a mushroom picker. He enlisted in Ontario and volunteered for the new 19th Self-propelled Artillery Regiment being formed in Borden, Ontario. After shipping overseas on the Queen Mary, Mr. Ducharme took part in the D-Day invasion, landing at Juno Beach. He saw further action in France, Belgium and Holland. He was wounded by shrapnel in Holland and sent back to England. After leaving the service, Mr. Ducharme operated an auto body shop for 40 years.

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