A 50 Mile Forced March

Heroes Remember

A 50 Mile Forced March

Transcript

I had the misfortune of losing my hearing in, outside of a little town called Minden where I, we had support from the Amer-, British tanks. And I happened to be standing between two of them when they started firing and I, I lost the, the hearing from my left ear almost completely and quite a large portion of it from my right ear. And one of our other, other chap from the platoon lost most of his hearing in that. Anyway, we worked our way up through Germany and the Russians were coming down through rather quickly and Montgomery wanted the British to, or the Allies, to reach the Baltic Sea before the Russians. And, one day, in a 24 hour period, we made a forced march, and we forced march of pract... I think it was around 50 miles we covered, and that's quite a, that's quite a feat, when you, you know, and, but I... One of the, one of the humourous things here, I had a friend in the platoon who's now dead, chap from Cape Breton by the name of Johnny Solvat (sp) and he, his parents were Polish and Czech, and he had learned some of the language. And I learned how to say, "Hello. How are you?" and that sort of thing from him in Polish and, so, as we went through Germany... Of course, the Germans had, after they'd overthrown Poland, they had taken quite a lot of the people from Poland and made them into, we called them forced labourers, and so they were quite... Johnny could speak to them in their own language and, of course, it was very advantageous to us because they told us many things, you know, of where we could find the food and this sort of thing and the other things that go with food. Ran into, as we were going up through, we got into a factory, and a factory where they made these rabbit skin, rabbit skin jackets. So, everybody, practically everyone in the battalion wore a rabbit skin jacket. It was a rabbit skin body and the arms were, were knitted, were knit. Anyway, we, we eventually reached Wismar, which is just on the coast of the Baltic, and we reached there, I guess, just about two hours before the Russians would've would've reached there. And they came down through, and they, they came down through another city. I forget the, forget the name of it now, another town, but... Rostock, and so they came down and joined us. And the Germans were coming through, the Germans were coming through in, in droves. They wanted to give up, give up, you know, surrender to us. And we had, between us and the Baltic, there was an airfield, and we set up a very large concentration camp there, and the, the German troops who gave up, we marched them down there, and they went into the concentration camp, and so on. So, we, we stayed there for about, I guess, maybe a week, week and a half, or something like that. And then we returned to England, and shortly after that, the battalion came back to Canada.

Description

Mr. Melanson describes reaching the Baltic ahead of the Russians and the hoard of German POWs in Canadian care.

Russel C Melanson Sr.

Mr. Melanson was born in Mill Village, Nova Scotia, on August 16, 1922. He worked on a farm and in the woods, and completed his education before his first attempt to enlist. He was turned down by the navy as he was underage. Similarly, after joining the West Novies, an artillery regiment, he was discharged for being underage. He was finally accepted into the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion and completed his basic training in Shilo, Manitoba. Once overseas, he was attached to the 3rd Brigade, 6th Airborne Division. Mr. Melanson's first action was at the Battle of the Bulge. His second was the Allied /Russian advance into Germany from the east. After leaving the army, Mr. Melanson became a hydrographer, and retired as the Regional Hydrographer, Bedford Institute of Oceanography.

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