A Plea for Understanding the Cost

Heroes Remember

A Plea for Understanding the Cost

Transcript

Let’s put it this way. There are a lot of school children, and I’m talking about even eighteen, nineteen years old, that have never heard of this Second World War. That’s what burns me up. Interviewer: You think it’s important that they understand? I think so. Because there was a big price that was paid. And somebody, even if they don’t pay it in dollars and cents, they should at least pay it in respect.

Description

Mr. Grand is asked if he feels that it’s important for Canadians to understand what he and his comrades went through during the years of the Second World War.

John Grand

Mr. Grand was born in 1909 in, as he described it, “a small hamlet in the wilderness of southern Manitoba.” His father homesteaded in Manitoba and then Saskatchewan. John Grand described his growing up during the Depression as poor and tough.

Mr. Grand was very interested in electronics as a teenager and held an amateur radio licence. He tried to join the Signal Corps in the 1930's, but was rejected for being “too flat-chested”. He remembers being so poor that he often joined the soup line to get something to eat. His first job was on the assembly line at Canadian Marconi for eleven cents an hour.

He joined the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals when war was declared in 1939. He was first assigned as a radio operator, but when his superiors saw his mechanical skills he was quickly re-assigned as a radio technician. His overseas service included landing at Dieppe, participating in the Normandy Campaign and in the liberation of Holland.

Meta Data