If You Beat Him, He Will Want You

But Montgomery did come to see us, because after we finished Sicily, when we were done with Sicily, before we went to Italy, I remember they had us all lined out in a three-sided square, had us sprawled up around this camp table, just an ordinary table. Montgomery stood on there, and he's giving us the works, telling us what a wonderful bunch of guys we were, best soldiers in the world, why we had 1st Division, see, it's only 1st Division went down there. We had five divisions, eh. But it just 1st Division that went down there. And he said, you remember in England, in ‘42, 1942, they had this big scheme in England, and had gone off for bringing it up to Wales. I was on that scheme, too, Tigers scheme was the name of it. And, on this scheme, the 1st Canadian Division beat the British 8th Army, which was Montgomery's outfit, and he said then, he told us about that. I didn't realize anything about the who won the scheme, just an exercise as far as I know, but he said he said then if he ever was recruiting troops, he wanted the 1st Canadian Division. They were the crack troops, they were the buns that beat him in England. That's why he had us down there.