The Tank

Training... the engine, the nine cylinder engine, is a very fast rev. It just roars like... and the worst thing is cross-country. The first gear, you gotta open the engine wide open and you got to be real smart to get in second, otherwise you’ll be stopped again, because you only go, it looks to be you’re only going about three, four miles an hour in first gear, with the engine wide open. So then if you... well, I was a really experienced driver. I knew I could get in second. But then in second gear, if it’s really soft, you may not, she may stall on you, so you’ll find out that it’s going to stall. You’ve got to de-clutch it right away because you don’t want to stall it. So anyway, it’s pretty tricky cross-country, but on the road, on the good road it’s quite simple. It’s steered with bars. What happens, the right bar locks the rear axle. By the way, it’s the front because it’s a front-end drive. And then, the other one speeds up. So that’s just it. The only thing is, on an asphalt, it’s like driving a car on ice, you can slide. Sometimes, if the road is tipped, they’ll slide sideways. That’s with a steel track. Now, there is a rubber track that’s much better. But when we first got our tanks, they were all steel track and we landed on D-Day with steel track. To me, I was a truck driver first. Pass all my grades. I drove all the different size trucks, even the big one, so it wasn’t all that hard for me. But you never move it alone. There’s always somebody with you. You’re not allowed to move it alone. Because, and the gentleman, the soldier, is generally a corporal or a sergeant. Mostly a sergeant. You never move it, they give you the order. They tell you where to go. The 105 gun... it is not like a tank with a turret. We couldn’t shoot sideways. I had to be on the target. It was up to me, actually, to see the target first and then to tell my gunner, and he would say, “Yep, I see it.” Bang, you know, that was it. This was when it’s open fire. There was a little leeway on the tank, on the gun, sideways, but as you see in the picture, you can see, there’s two strip there. You could go up and down, but you could not lock a turret with another turret. We couldn’t go right around. So anyway, when they lined me up on something, said, “Okay, that’s it.” We couldn’t move while they were firing because we didn’t have gyro on our tank. Now they got that today, a gyro. They could fire a tank moving cross-country and the gun stays straight.

Mr. Ducharme describes what it was like to drive a self-propelled artillery tank, and use the 105 gun.

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.