Nothing but Stumps

Heroes Remember

Nothing but Stumps

Transcript

Been about two, two drafts really, but it was first it was a hun... they picked a hundred to go and then two days before we left they picked, they took the other fifty. So there was a hundred and fifty. A hundred on the Missinobi and fifty on the Grampian. Went in out of Halifax. By the way we landed in there just about a week after the Halifax Explosion. It was horrific being through this, just out of this world. It was just a strip I don't know how wide, the whole woods of the city and it seemed to take everything, every tree and just nothing but stumps left in that area, in that strip through the, through the city.

Description

Mr. Boyd describes being aboard SS Grampian in Bedford Basin, and witnessing the devastation caused by the Halifax explosion.

Gordon Boyd

Gordon Boyd was born on March 18, 1899 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He enlisted with the 9th Siege Battery on March 17, 1917 and trained near St. John, New Brunswick. While in Bedford Basin aboard the SS Grampian he viewed first hand the devastation of the Halifax explosion. As a member of an artillery support unit, Mr. Boyd served in Amiens and Cambrai, where he was wounded by German artillery fire. He recovered in England and returned home after the Rhyl riots. Mr. Boyd joined the Veterans Guard for a short time during the Second World War.

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