Joining the Service
Heroes Remember
Joining the Service
Living in Halifax, of course, you rub shoulders with day to day
military situations, or naval situations, that you perhaps
wouldn't run into in, Saskatoon. I, I don't say that
disparagingly, it's just that, when you're close to a lot of
military people and the comings and goings of ships and convoys
and you see ships coming into the harbour with their, holes blown
in their sides, they just hanging, hanging together by a
thread, and, and the casualty lists and so on, yeah it, it was,
it was a tough, tough road for them to hold.
Interviewer: Against this background, you left school and
started working?
I went to work, yes, for a tobacco company in their
advertising department, and the, that was age 15, 16, as soon as
I flipped over and was 17, of course, I started badgering my
mother to allow me to join up. I'd been in the Sea Cadets and so
on and learned how to say, "Yes, Sir. No, Sir." And so when I
managed to get my mother to agree to all this, she said, "Well,
I'm going to tell your father, but in the meantime, I can't stop
you." So in, I guess sometime in the spring of 1943, I joined up
and they eventually called me early in June, to go to Lachine,
Québec, which was the, I guess, what did they call it, Lachine
was the, Manning Depot, Eastern Manning Depot.
Interviewer: Tell me, Mr. Pitt, why did you decide on
the Air Force?
Well, I think after having had time in the, in the Sea Cadets,
the thoughts of a hammock in a Corvette were not, too, too
enticing, maybe that sounds a little bit cowardly. And then my
Dad being in the army, I thought there was always the possibility
I might come under his aegis and discipline, and I thought I
could do without that. So the Air Force, it's, they
always used to say "Men of the Army and Navy", "Gentlemen of the
Air Force", that had an appeal too. There will be a lot of
people will not appreciate that, but it went.
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