Attention!
Cette vidéo est disponible en anglais seulement.
Description
Early in the moring of August 19, 1942, events began to unfold that would lead to the Dieppe Raid. Mr. Gorman was asleep in his bed.
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
The chap that was in charge of the signal office come and woke me up about 3 o’clock in the morning and he asked me if I would take over his shift because I was due to go on duty again at 8 o’clock in the morning and he said he was married to an Irish girl up in Tooting, London, which was the Irish district and he said he’d got a call that his wife was sick, and so I “Okay.” And I, he took one of the phoney passes and away he went and I went up to signal office and just got my head down cause it was quiet at night and that and anyway, we were to change shift at 8 o’clock, well I was due to stay on. So I let the other signallers go, because I always was the last to go and eat, because you always got a little bit better food, if you went into the cook house on your own, you know. And anyway, I went and had breakfast and I came out of the mess hall, and all the trucks were lined up and guys got their gear on and everything else and my platoon officer came up and he says, “Where’s Crawford? ” and I said “Oh, his wife’s sick he’s gone up to London to see her.” He says, “Get your gear and get on the truck.” and I says, “Well where are we going? ” And he says, “Well we’re going on a three day manoeuver”. So I went and got my kit, climbed on the truck and I was sitting there and the mailman, his name was Percy Such and he came running up, “Gorman” and he had a cablegram for me and I opened it up and it was from my father’s doctor, my father was dying and the doctor said, “Get compassionate leave if you can and get home as soon as possible.” So I got off the truck and ended up with the colonel and he looked at the telegram and he said, “We’re just gonna be gone for three days.” he said, “When you come back, you’ll be home.” “Okay.” So I climbed back on the truck and away we go on this supposed three day manoeuver. And we ended up at Southampton and we see the ships standing there and we started to think, we’re not going on no three day manoeuver, we’re going somewhere. And anyway, we loaded on and we got on, it was a ship called the Leopold.