Encounters in Bayeux
Heroes Remember
Encounters in Bayeux
Transcript
Used to go up to Bayeux and sit with the old fellas, French guys
and a lot of them could speak better English than I could.
Yeah. So we had, I always had a good chat with them.
I befriended one farmer, an old farm gentleman and he was, he
was gonna go out and cut this field of grain. And I said,
"Don't you think you should wait till we go through and make
sure there's no mines in that field?" "Oh, no, nothing there, I
know they would never put anything in my field." About two days
later he was cutting grain, it was oats and one of the horses
stepped on a mine and him and the two horses were killed and the
binder was just a shambles. It was kinda sad,
that's one of my first yeah.
Oh yeah it was an open city, yeah. Everything was just like it
was. Oh we had one little thing happen there. The first time I
went up there every once in awhile there would be a zing you
know and you knew it was a shell from something, a small shell
and at last there was three British guys sittin' at a table and
they had an officer with them and at last he got up, "The hell
with this," he says. And he got up and says, "Come on."
Whoever he picked, one of his guys and they come pulling up with
a 17-pounder. Here there was a girl in the steeple of the
church and he, just one shot, gee he could set up a gun in a
hurry. One shot and there was no more zings going. It was all
over. She was a wife to one of the officers in the German Army.
We found that out later, yeah.
Description
Mr. Ney tells of two encounters while in the 'free city' of Bayeux.
Ken Ney
Mr. Ney was born in Stratford, Ontario on 21 September 1923. His father was a farmer so the Depression didn't really affect his family. He began his training in Chatham. Mr. Ney joined the signal corps and was also a dispatch rider during his service. Mr. Ney volunteered to stay for another year after the war but contracted TB and was sent home.
Meta Data
- Medium:
- Video
- Owner:
- Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration:
- 02:29
- Person Interviewed:
- Ken Ney
- War, Conflict or Mission:
- Second World War
- Location/Theatre:
- Europe
- Branch:
- Army
- Occupation:
- Signalman
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- Date modified: