Description
Mr. Walsh describes having to deceive his mother in order to enlist with a close friend.
Graham Walsh
Graham Walsh was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, on January 22, 1925. He was the third of seven children. His father worked in a steel mill, and made a bit extra selling coke, a smelting byproduct. His father died when he was seven, and Mr. Walsh and his brother worked odd jobs to help the family. He joined the local reserves when he was fifteen and two years later, at the age of seventeen, enlisted for overseas service. Once in England, he was overlooked for Italian deployment and immediately volunteered for Normandy. Mr. Walsh served from France to post-war Germany, via the liberation of Holland, all with the Royal Regiment of Canada. He was fortunate to survive three wounds while in action.
Transcript
It was pretty sneaky, you know, I had a friend, there was two of us, we were very good buddies. We were, lived in the same neighbourhood and we worked together. And I was working the 3 to 11 shift and he came in one afternoon just before I left for work He said, “I got something to show you.” So he tried to join the service before that, he wanted to go in the air force. He was rejected on account of, he had a scar on his lungs. So he showed me this notice that he got that he had to report to Halifax in two days and to be inducted into the army. I went to work that afternoon and I was devastated. After I started thinking, I’m not going to have anybody. So this was the sneaky part come in, I went home that night and I had a bath and got all ready. And the next morning 8 o’clock I was all dressed and gone downtown before my mother even found out what was going on. My sister knew what was going on, she was up with me and that. And (excuse) she, I came downtown and I waited around until the recruiting office opened and when I walked in they probably didn’t even pay much of attention to me when I was walking around, but I had all the clothes I could get on, looked fairly big and everything. So there was a girl, one of the girl from the army. She said, “What are you looking for? ” I told her, I said, “I want to join up.” She said, “Oh yeah.” So they kept talking for a minute, she said, “You want to join up? ”, I said, “Yeah, I want to join up.” She said, “Oh, okay come on over and sit down.” So I went over and she, I said, “Now look there’s one thing I want to let known first before I join,” I said, “ If I can’t be on the train tonight, 7 o’clock, I’m not going.” She said, “What’s that all about? ” I said, “No, I’m not trying to leave town in a hurry, but my buddy is leaving tonight at 7 o’clock and if I can be with him I’ll join up.” She said, “You got it.” So after all the preliminaries were over, she said, “Be back at three o’clock, your papers will be here and your train ticket will be here.” Two of us took off for Halifax.