Life on hold during the war

Heroes Remember

Life on hold during the war

Transcript

War took over everything in our lives, everything was on hold until the war was over. It just seemed to go on and on and on. Interviewer: Tell me about that, war took over your lives, in what way? Well you didn't make any plans for the future, you know I always said that I was going to be a nurse. I had several aunts that were nurses and I had a, and I had my, I had a sister and she was a school teacher, and you know we only knew two, my family were very insistent on education, and we only knew two professions, nursing and teaching. And my sister had gone to be a teacher and hadn't liked it and so had left the profession, and I ...and then I said well I would be a nurse. So, but we didn't plan to do anything until the war was over. But you know I don't think anybody has any idea, like how the war affected everybody. It wasn't just the people in service, it affected the people at home. You know, not that we ever suffered. I was talking to a, a women who had been, gone overseas in the early days and she told me about how she'd come home from some evening and found that her apartment had been bombed, they had no more apartment. You know, we didn't have anything like that. That was... and she was a Canadian who had gone overseas early in the war. She had joined up right as soon as the war started, as soon as they started the women's, and she was sent overseas right away and she was saying... And she said that, but she said "You know, I have really happy memories of the war." You know, there were several of my husbands friends were killed overseas, there were two or three boys I went to school with that were killed, this was in the latter part of the war. I remember one boy who wanted to get in the air force so he hadn't finished his high school, so he came back and did his high school and then joined up, and six months later he was dead. You know so, you know they were... And these were horrible things for us who had never experienced them you know. For the people who had gone through, my father had gone through the First World War and my mother had some idea of what it was like and that's I think why she was... But, you know, in spite of her reservations, she supported what both Bill and I did, by joining up so and she was very supportive of, of us in that, you know. I remember sending parcels overseas to my brother and hollowing out a loaf a bread and she, and booze, I mean my small town had, didn't sell any booze, it had bootleggers. And she'd hollow out a loaf of bread and put a bottle of booze in it, and send it and he'd get it. If there's a will there is a way. And cigarettes and she belonged to several organizations that were knitting sweaters and things to send overseas, you know. Every, and I remember at high school, we had to take first aid kit, first aid courses and I remember it was my doctor that gave the, did the examining and he knew I wanted to be a nurse and I flunked the first aid course. So he, but it was, I wouldn't want anybody to go through it again.

Description

Ms. Spence talks about how war took over their lives. She tells us how all her life plans were on hold until war was over.

Ruth Ann Spence

Ms. Spence was born in the rural farming community of Campbellford, Ontario, in 1926. Ms. Spence was no stranger to the realities of war as her father was a First World War Veteran. Upon her father's passing at the age of nine, her family moved in with their grandfather who supported them through the depression years. When war was declared, her brother enlisted immediately, and Ms. Spence knew she too would follow in the footsteps of her father and brother. In 1945 she was finally old enough to enlist. She was shipped to Montreal, Quebec, following her basic training where she became a part of the Dental Corps. Ms. Spence became a nurse after almost a year of service in the war effort and says she could not have done it without the discipline she learned while serving with the Canadian Army. Ms. Spence has spent the last forty years living in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 04:03
Person Interviewed:: Ruth Ann Spence
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Branch:: Army
Units/Ship:: Dental Corps
Rank:: Corporal
Occupation:: Dental Assistant

Language selection

Life on hold during the war

Heroes Remember