Old Fashioned Canadian Christmas at Sea (Part 2 of 2)
Heroes Remember
Old Fashioned Canadian Christmas at Sea (Part 2 of 2)
Hey we were young, I was 18 then you see and
the majority of the crew were all the same. There were very,
very, very few people that were old and had the backgrounds, you
see. Anyway, one of the highlights I would like to tell you
about, I interviewed the, interviewed the captain, Admiral de
Wolfe in Ottawa and years ago when I was out here I was
president of the Haida Association and so I had organized two
reunions here; one in 1980 and one in 1990 and I had to sort of
help him along, he and his wife Gwen, and I got to know them
very well. So every time I went to Ottawa I always went and had
tea with him or had a beer with him. The last time I went there
of course his wife, Gwen had passed away and he said, "You know,
I harken back to that Christmas day." He said, "I always
remember the Germans going down on the ships that we sunk and I
used to think we like Christmas, think about all those families
that are going to be doing without their fathers," and so on.
And this is what he told me. Then he said, he said, "The
highlight of the whole thing," of course we'd been ordered to go
along side the Sheffield and have a Christmas day with them and
I said "No we'll have a Canadian Christmas." "Fine." Later in
the afternoon he got called up to go along side and meet C&C
Burnett and come and have Christmas drink with him and so he
went over. It was darker than Egypt's night, the coxswain was
along side waiting for him to come off and they were told to lay
off, so we layed off from the ship, from the quarter deck of the
Sheffield. Finally we called along side and the Captain went on
board and the coxswain said "Where to sir?" He said, "Back to
the ship." He just said "Where's that?" He said, "Never mind,
never mind," he said, "get away from the ship, now shut her
down." They got about a mile away, shut down the motor and they
listened and they could here way off in the distance, "Roll me
over in the clover," in marked Canadian accents. He said
"That's the way, that way." So that was,
that was one thing that he told me about.
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