Description
Donald Thompson
Mr. Thompson was born in West Saint John, New Brunswick on August 19, 1922. He was the middle child in a family of three boys. His father worked as a railway engineer and fireman with the Canadian Pacific Railway. Mr. Thompson was first introduced to military training at an early age becoming involved with the militia when he was roughly 12 years old. He received his Royal Canadian Rifles certificate as a qualified infantry machine gun sergeant in 1939 at the age of 17. He was chosen to go overseas with a company from the Saint John Fusiliers as reinforcements. He travelled overseas on a pleasure boat that was in the midst of being converted to a troop ship and arrived in Liverpool, England. From Liverpool he travelled by train to Aldershot and then on to Crookham Crossroads. There he joined the Cameron Highlanders and trained to support an infantry battalion. In 1943 - 44, while only 21 years old, he achieved the rank of captain and was in Inverary training for combined ops amphibious landings. They trained, in preparation for D-Day, in a camp that was surrounded by barb wire and no one was allowed leave. On June 6th 1944 he landed on Juno Beach as part of the second wave behind the Winnipeg Rifles. On the third day of fighting after landing on Juno Beach he was hit by shrapnel and subsequently sent back to England on a hospital ship. Although he tried to return to action his wounds proved to be too much and he was sent back to England a second time and then eventually back to Canada. After the war Mr. Thompson worked with the Canadian Legion (later to be the Royal Canadian Legion) in Saint John. He moved up the ranks with the Legion and ended up in Ottawa as the Dominion Secretary. In 1970 he was appointed Chairman of the War Veterans Allowance Board and held this position until he retired in 1987. Mr. Thompson was also named Honorary Lieutenant Colonel of the Cameron Highlanders.
Transcript
So they came with a stretcher and took me in to the first aid post and, and I remember having the strange thought in my mind that I'd get this fixed and be right back with the platoon, but it didn't work that way they put me on a, on a , on a...put the stretcher on a jeep with a rack on it for, you know like it had four stretchers or what it took. So we went down the road and it wasn't a very pleasant feeling to go down the road and the road was still being shelled and on back down and eventually ended up on the beach or near the beach, I should say, where they had marquis set up for, for field hospitals I believe they were called. And eventually from there back to a, on a hospital ship and back to England to a hospital there and that's were the surgery was done.
I hadn't, I hadn't realized till I looked back on the record there, awhile go there, there was five days from the day I got hit with a piece of shrapnel about the size of your thumb until they did the surgery on it in England. So that's way it was so badly infected, that I was lucky that I didn't lose the leg, but I remember the surgeon coming around to me the next day and saying, Captain, he said your lucky, I said, I know I am sir, yes he said, when I looked at that leg it was so badly infected, he said, I put my hand in my pocket for a coin to toss to take it off or leave it on, but he said, luckily for you I didn't have a coin, I said I am glad you were broke sir. So he, he laughed and so that, that was, that was that.