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Description
Mr. Gorman served as a dispatch rider for a period of time while stationed at Aldershot in England. He was asked to explain the high casualty numbers among dispatch riders while still some distance from the actual war front.
Donald Gorman
M. Gorman est né le 23 juin 1921. Son père était mécanicien de machines fixes dans une école secondaire de Windsor et était un ancien combattant de la guerre des Boers et de la Première Guerre mondiale. M. Gorman a quitté l'école après avoir obtenu son immatriculation junior et a travaillé dans une boulangerie, une poissonnerie et comme apprenti mécanicien à l'usine de machines à écrire Remington-Rand, à Windsor. Après s'être enrôlé le 16 septembre 1939, il a reçu son instruction élémentaire à Windsor, avant d'être envoyé en juin 1940 à Borden afin de recevoir son instruction avancée. M. Gorman s'est rendu outre-mer avec le Royal Hamilton Light Infantry Regiment et a participé au raid sur Dieppe.
Transcription
We used to do point duty, and so you’d ride up front with the colonel, behind the colonel and came to an intersection and you’d drop off and you’d kept civilian traffic out of the convoy you see. And then when the convoy went through, you’d go like hell to get up to the front again and in the mean time there was three bike riders in the regiment at that time, one was the colonel’s aid, and we used to do this point duty. Well sometimes, we never had it happen in our regiment, but it did happen in other units, a civilian would break in and then they would skip along try get ahead and a DR would be coming along there hell bent for leather and he’d bang right into him and that was the end of his game and there was a lot killed like that. Fact, the Lord Haw Haw was working a radio in France at the time and he said, “If you give the Canadians enough motorcycles, they’ll all kill themselves,” you know. We used to listen to Lord Haw Haw because you found a lot of interesting things that went on that you never saw in the British press or anything like that. You took it with a grain of salt too and that. But one time, I was on point and a little English bread truck/van come up and the fellow motioned that he wanted to get in and I just said, “No.” And we were issued with, at that time DR’s were issued with these 455 Magnums there, a ready big canon you know. And so he backed up his little van and he’d sneak up a bit and I’d “Back” and he did this two or three times and finally I got fed up with it and I took this 455 and I pointed it straight at the windshield. Well that man moved back about 100 yards and he stayed there. But there was a lot of casualties because guys, the civilians would cut in.