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Description
Mr. Champoux explains how “The Raid” affected the morale of Canadian troops who were left behind. He also reveals his opinion of the true reason behind sending soldiers there.
Transcription
We were not involved with this. But we heard all about it. We saw some movies that the, that the Brits or Canadians, captured after the, after the war. It’s been shown on tv. Actual, action pictures that happened there and it was really gruesome.
Interviewer: How did it affect morale?
Actually we talked about it but the, the morale you know we’d been in uniform for so long by this time, that we sort of figured well, well we’re pretty lucky we couldn’t, you know our brigade might’ve gone there instead of them you know. It was a, it was a terrible thing that happened but we didn’t know how bad, really.
We had an observer, a lieutenant, he spoke very good. He was American. He spoke very good English, German rather. And he was with the with our regiment, but also had something to do with spying, intelligence. And he was asked to, to go with the 2nd Div. on that raid. Because they wanted, they wanted to capture the highest rank they could put their hands on and bring him back to the beach and put him on the boat and take him to England. That was the main, one of the, one of the things, there’s been a lot of stories about that. That, that wasn’t a second front of any kind. They were trying to see what they would have to do, if they did go, if we did go on the second front.