Description
Mr. Austin describes some of the events he took part in at war’s end.
Stephen Austin
Stephen Austin, Sr. was born in Holyrood, Newfoundland on December 16, 1916. He was the second of four children and was raised on a family farm. His father was also a fisherman. In 1936 he started working as a truck driver. Mr. Austin went to England at the outbreak of war and worked in lumber crews. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force where he trained for a heavy engine mechanic. Mr. Austin served first in England, where he maintained the equipment which raised anti-bombardment balloons. After re-certification, his tour of duty took him to post D-Day Europe where he maintained military vehicles during the Allied advance on Germany. Mr. Austin married a Belgium national, and returned to Newfoundland where he worked as a mechanic. He later returned to France, working several years at the war memorial in Beaumont-Hamel.
Transcript
When the war finished I was in Eindhoven in Holland the day the war, well I was in over the border in Germany, three or four of my friends and myself actually. We went in from Eindhoven, we were in to pick up some tools because the place had been bombed out and those machines had, not for us but for you know, for the unit. When we come back we didn’t know what to think of it. I mean everybody, women, men, girls all riding the jeeps and the cars and everyone going mad. That was the fifth, I believe the fifth of May and I had a few francs and I paid 80 guilders for a bottle of Johnny Walker.