Treated Like Kings by the Americans

And they'd fumigate us with some kind of spray stuff and then we had to have a shower and everything and this and they had showers all set up in there for us. Of course, myself, I was a, and then we all went for x rays, we went through the doctors, we had x rays and other doctors, and more doctors, and then I was put on the Marigold hospital ship. There was 37 of us, was put on the Marigold hospital ship in the bay there and then we didn't know how long we were gonna be there and they said I had a spot on my lung about as big as a 50 cent piece, that's what they told me anyway. I don't know what they told the other guys but they told me that I had a spot on my lung about as big as a 50 cent piece and I had to have medical treatment. So then we stayed on the ship and we didn't know where we where going from there either. Americans never told us too much either. But then we went to a... I stayed on there about 10 days... 10 or 12 days. We got treated like kings, everything we wanted and we were issued American officer uniforms. Anyway, then we pulled out of the dock and went out to the bay and they told us that they were gonna make a, that they were gonna take us all to different islands. They had these seaplanes, the Crash and Cancels (sp), said that they were gonna fly us to these different islands where we were supposed to be going. Here they were filming us all over these islands - the Johnson Islands, the Missouri Islands, the Hong Kong, we went back to the Philippines, all with the American, flying with these Crash and Cancels (sp). Finally we wounded up in, well we wounded up back in, into Pearl Harbor and to Honolulu. And then we, then they took us on a big plane from there, after we had left there, they took us from a big plane into San Francisco. And then I got on a train. They kept us in San Francisco there in the barrack blocks, wasn't a barrack block, it was a hotel. And then we went from that hotel to the train and back into Canada.

Mr Lynch finally makes his way to an American ship to start his journey home with a few pit stops.

Wilbert Lynch

Wilbert Lynch was born in Portage, Manitoba on April 6th 1923 and was raised on a farm with two brothers and three sisters. He left home when he was 13 years old and worked for five dollars a month plus room and board at a few local farms. Three days after turning seventeen he joined the army and trained on the Bren gun in Camp Shilo and became a member of the 18th Manitoba Reconnaissance Battalion.