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Description
Mr. Duffley talks about the weather in "the wettest part of the world".
Louis Duffley
Louis Duffley est né à Quispamsis, Nouveau-Brunswick, le 14 février 1920. Ses amis et lui se sont joints à la Force aérienne et, en 1941, se sont rendus à Toronto pour recevoir leur équipement et être initié à la discipline élémentaire. De là, il s'est rendu à l'école technique de Belleville. Il y a terminé sa formation en 1942 et a été affecté à Moncton, Nouveau-Brunswick. Il y a passé un an et demi avant d'être envoyé à Dorval, Québec, pour suivre un autre cours. Deux mois plus tard, M. Duffley s'est joint au 165e Escadron, sur la côte Ouest. Finalement, il a été envoyé outre-mer en 1944, avec deux de ses copains de la Force aérienne.
Transcription
We lived in tents from January until September in the wettest part of the world. The weather was a big problem, the, anything else was secondary even the enemy. We didn't, we had one air raid but it was the weather. It started raining in May and it rained until we left there in September, you know, it didn't rain every, this is a monsoon, it didn't rain every day but it rained most every day and part of the day and you could schedule events around when you could predict the storm was going to come. In the month of August we had 58 inches of rain, that's almost 2 inches a day, everyday. That's more rain than England, which is considered a wet climate, gets in a year. So it was, it was wet and we were in tents and it wasn't fun.
The tents were, somebody, probably the British Army had been in before us and set up the tents. We didn't, at least I didn't have anything to do with that. They were raised about a foot off of the surrounding terrain covered with tarred jute, a bagging material, and so it was, that, the floor itself wasn't a problem. The tents were double-roofed and they were about 12 x 12 with four, for four people so it was kind of cozy but the tents were double-roofed, about eight inches apart there were two roofs on the slope presumably to keep the rain off or the sun off, depending on conditions. But that, it was a bit of a problem but it wasn't, wasn't impossible. Shoes, when you put, shoes being sandals, you wore these thong type things where it goes between your big toe and so on, that was, they put them on in the morning, they would get mouldy overnight. Wash towels would be sour, a watch, a leather watchstrap would blue mold on your wrist. It wasn't, the climate wasn't good.