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Description
Mr. Dowie describes his impressions of the Dutch people and guarding German prisoners.
Vernon Dowie
M. Dowie est né à Montréal, le 9 juillet 1920. Son père, d'origine jamaïquaine, était médecin et avait reçu sa formation à Cambridge, en Angleterre. Il ne possédait pas de licence pour pratiquer la médecine au Canada et, pour cette raison, il a occupé divers emplois, notamment peintre et porteur pour une compagnie de chemin de fer. Au mois d'août 1940, M. Dowie s'est joint au Three Rivers Regiment et a fait partie de la 1re Brigade blindée canadienne. Instruit en Angleterre, il a servi en Italie, en Sicile et en Hollande. Il œuvre toujours auprès du Three Rivers Regiment.
Transcription
Interviewer: Mr. Dowie, what was your impression of the Dutch people that you met during that spring of 1945?
They were very welcoming to us. They needed a lot of food. And because we were scroungers in our regiment, we had lots of food leftover from our sea rations and sea packs because we lived off the land whenever possible. We were able to give them food that we had because we knew our next load was coming up anyway and they were very cooperative. We had a different feeling than we had in Italy with them and they sort of welcomed the fact that the Canadians or anybody was there to relieve them from the Nazis. We held them in this stead. Although, at the end of the war, our last job was guarding German prisoners against the underground. As the Germans surrendered, they were put into compounds and our job was to prevent the resistance movement from getting in and killing them because they'd given up all their arms and were all there, which was a funny position to be in.
Interviewer: Protecting the very people who, not too long ago, were trying to kill you.
Yeah. But they were mostly young kids. Mostly teenagers, and I don't think half of them knew what the heck they were doing anyway.