Overseas on the Empress of Scotland

Beside our repair depot there was a service training school so there was a lot of trainees, a lot of training going on. A particular buddy of mine decided we would do that together. What happened, we went to the padre and he gave us classes in mathematics, I guess just to bring our math up to date so that when we went before an aircrew board we had enough mathematics to be accepted. And the padre did that just on his own, it wasn’t an official thing. We asked him and he helped us. After we trained we went across on the old Empress of Scotland and then when you arrived in the reception depots in England, you were crewed up. We went in a large room and all aircrew trades were there and a navigator, an officer navigator, a Canadian came over and said we’re looking for two gunners so he took us. We met Vic North who was the pilot and he had already found the bomb aimer who was a Canadian and then we all looked around, a group of five of us and we found a Royal Air Force Scotsmen as a wireless operator and a flight engineer who was an English policeman who had re-mustered. He was the old man of the crew, he was thirty years old flying with all these kids. I was with a fellow from North Bay and we stayed together as two gunners and then we flew in the same crew together.