TRANSCRIPT

I come out of school because we were very hard up, and I went to work. Well then the war came and I started going with my husband at that time. We used to go ice skating down at the Oshawa arena and we'd meet at a little place for a hamburger and that, and he, [I] guess he saw me and he decided that he was going to see if he could get to go with me. So at one point in time, I thought oh he's all right, ya know, but then again he phoned me and he took me out on a date we went to the show. And then the rest is sort of? we just kept going together and got into 40 and he was working in GM. That went on for a little bit then we decided that we'd get married. So in 1943 we were married in our church, he had a 48hr pass, and we were married on the Saturday and he had to be home Monday to go back to basic camp, training camp. After a while we'd get letters and one thing or another, and we wouldn't see one another too much because of his training and all that, he ended up in camp Borden. I always looked forward to the weekends because my husband would come, if he could get leave, he'd come home and it was kind of like one day or one? he'd only be [here] over night or something and he'd go back to camp. In 1943 I remember I got my car license. And in those days you just took the car over and you tested, and you got your license. The next week or the next month, I forget how long it was, but anyway I decided that I'd picked up two more girls in Toronto and we'd go down to Camp Borden to see the gussies. So here we were at camp Borden the 3 of us? the three couples and we had a picnic lunch and we just more or less said good bye and hope to see you. But we knew that they were being on draft so I think most of us, on the way home, had tears in our eyes because we weren't going to see them again until after the? come back from overseas. So consequently I was fortunate to be able to take these girls up and we were happy we could go up and see them for the last time before they went over seas. However, he stayed in England for a few months, and I was getting mail all the time, and then he was drafted to go with the regiment to Italy. And of course we didn't know what was happening. And [there was] a lot of news in the paper about the war. And he landed in Naples and I found out that he had to, adjoin to the Perth regiment. And they went to, up the Lear valley and of course I kept getting hear about his experiences in Italy. And it was a very descriptive letter, which I was surprised they let him come through because they used to sense the letter you couldn't write just anything. Of course I always sent my husband boxes overseas. I sent boxes over and some of them he didn't get and some of them he did, but I used to send one about every month. Right around Christmas I received a letter, telegram saying he was wounded so I thought oh dear, he was slightly wounded not severely but slightly wounded.
So anyway I got this telegram and I thought well now he's not really severely wounded but I thought well maybe it's just a little bullet wound or something, but anyway what happened was, he was walking up the ditch with the platoon, how many is in a platoon sometimes there's 25, sometimes there's 30, sometimes there's only 20 depending on how they can? you know he said, I was thinking oh well he'll be all right. But He was walking up with his platoon. And the Germans machine gun unit was sitting up on a culvert, and they sprayed the whole platoon, these 25 or 30 or how many there were and as it happened he was walking up the ditch, and he, [was] hit, the bullet came up and out here, which would have gone in his stomach if he was caring, he would? and there were only 4 came out and he was one of the 4. And he tells me that they picked him up and put him on a hospital train to Rome, and he was in Rome for a few days. His experiences after since then were just in the hospital mostly and when he came home, he was scheduled to come home, that happened on, December the 16th, 1944 and he didn't get home until March of 45. Very pleased to be together again and it was just after a honeymoon type of thing you know, you just can't wait to start get a home together and have a family. And we were fortunate to get a house, to rent in Oshawa, which there was nothing, during the war there was no building done or anything, we had to, sign up for a telephone, sign up for a fridge, and a washing machine, and there just wasn't any appliances available, because they were doing all the war work. We were rationed during the war and for my wedding, sugar was rationed and coffee and tea and gasoline, but I was fortunate to get a wedding cake, but the place I got the wedding cake from they were allowed to buy sugar because it was a cake shop and they were allotted so much sugar for their business. And I had a wedding just in the church and then at my sisters home, we just sort 'a, it wasn't big. But the war, we were like, everybody was in it. All the girls that I worked with, well most of them were in the war, so we were all in the same boat. And we all, looked for letters to come home and some of the boys didn't come home, but I was fortunate to have him come home so we were very happy, had a wonderful marriage, and I miss him a great deal so? Because he liked red hair, and I had beautiful red hair, but I haven't got it today but he liked red heads, I guess he liked reds, I don't know. It must have been what he liked about me I don't know what it was but, at first you know, you don't know whether you want to go with him, and then of course you kind's get going together, and it becomes quite a close relationship. And I had trouble getting my wedding dress, they weren't making them to well then because all the material was going into all the other things that they needed for the war and they were making the mosquito bomber that he worked on. Part of the fuselage was cotton material of course that is where a lot of the material was, they were using this for the air planes. And they weren't making other material so for my wedding dress was we just had to take what was on the rack. I didn't have much choice. But, I was happy to get the dress, the brides maids they got dresses there too.