A Shock Upon Arrival

Heroes Remember

A Shock Upon Arrival

Transcript

In France it was a shock when I got there because first of all I was very young and naive and I'd never ran into a place where they had women cleaning mens barracks and they didn't care when they came into clean them and it was sort of a shock if you were in the shower and heard a girl talking to you next door cleaning the shower and she'd ask you how you were and everything. You'd say, “Wow, this is different!” It was embarrassing because we were never used to it. After a year or so it didn't matter. Where Marville was it was in the North Eastern part of France, near Belgium. It was kind of backward. Like every village had the... the people all lived in villages instead of out on their own and every village had a big cow pile in front of their house and when you drove through there in the summer and it was hard on the nose but it was something that you learned to live by and food was different because I had never eaten escargots before and took me a while to realize what they were and they were very good. And the food the way they cooked it was good. You always got a really good meal when you were at a French restaurant so we enjoyed it.

Description

Mr. Batt shares his reaction arriving in France and experiencing the French culture.

Gordon Batt

Mr. Gordon Batt was born November 25, 1945 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. After finishing high school, Mr. Batt enrolled in the air cadets and decided to join active service with the Air Force as a result of his love of flying. He spent a great deal of his military career in Canada, but spent time overseas in France with ground crew operations as an armament systems technician and participated in operations with the CF104, Hercules and Argus aircraft. Mr. Batt participated in a fascinating sport as a sky diver performing with the Sky Hawks in several air shows in conjunction with military service and held rank as a qualified parachutist. This love for sky diving is one of his most memorable accomplishments. After his decision to leave the military, Mr. Batt opened his own retail business and eventually sold that and accepted a position as commissionaire in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

Meta Data