Description
Mr. Husbands describes the training that was required to become an Army signalman.
Lloyd Husbands
Lloyd Husbands, one of nine children, was born in Montreal, Quebec. He worked in an asbestos shop to help support his family, and admits that constant irritation from the asbestos led him to enlist in 1942. After basic training, Mr. Husbands became a telegrapher and took advanced training at Kingston, Ontario. He served in post D-Day France and Belgium as a signalman. After the war, Mr. Husbands joined the CNR, his career lasting thirty-eight years.
Transcript
We were assigned to... to like to... radios that were installed in the back of, not jeeps, but sort of like a jeepish type of car and of course we had to learn the..., the morse, the code, signal code, and also how to speak on the... on the telephone or radios. There were certain words you had to say like this is so and so calling, and you had to follow a protocol of how to speak on the, on the radios besides learning the... signal code and we also had to learn signals with lights and signals with flags. You have two flags in different positions would signify the letter a, or b, or c, different positions would... that’s how you could, would know, that you know, it’s not the same, same letter all the time. So different letters with different positions of how you held your flags so on and so forth. Of course, naturally there would have to be through eyesight, whereas with the signals, the signal code, you could just listen to it and you’d pick it up by air.