He Hit A Mine

We had no idea what kind of a ground we were gonna land on. I was lucky. The captain, the guy that was running my LT, he opened up both diesel engines and we went right on dry land. Yeah. And when the door opened, that's when the nerves start to work. But the gate, that big gate on the front of the LTC, you knew you got to get out. And the officer goes and starts your engine. My job was to make sure that all the engines were running, and then I had my co-driver. He started mine, then I jumped in. He moved over and then we got the word to go ahead. That was a little nervous. I was pretty nervous on the accelerator, yeah. Yeah, because there was a lot of bullet flying you see. And I had a trap, my trap ... I can bring a trap down, close my gap except for glass, and it was never hit though. But if it is hit, you’re completely blind because the glass all falls down to the floor. What happened, you got a little bucket on the side with three more glasses. They’re, what they call that? The glass that goes up like, you know... periscope. Some kind of periscope, you know. And you push it in, you shove it up and it locks and you can see again. I never had to use it in the front line, no. But what happened, we land on the dry ground. We got out, go as fast as you can. My tank on my right was right next to me. We’re both together. He hit a mine. On his right boogie, the front left which is a drive boogie. What happened there, he couldn’t drive anymore, so I had seen one protecting each other. I drove mine right in front of him crossway and I was allowed to do that because I was a navy field-fitter. I moved over and I had to do all the repair I could If I couldn’t do the repair, I would have to call the recce and then we’d just take off and leave them. But I went out. There was also tanks smashed up. I went out and got parts. We fixed it and we got them going probably about 10:30 or 11 o’clock. We got them going again. Our sector was not that wild. It was a lot of machine gun firing. And we were never hit with small arm on my tank, so we were kind of lucky there. We had shell parts flying off the side, like, you know, shrapnel. But we were very lucky there. Yeah, very lucky.

Mr. Ducharme describes his D-Day landing and repairing a disabled tank while still on the beach.

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.