Description
Mr. Fowler identifies his service and how the common threat for survival became evident.
Donald Fowler
Mr. Donald Fowler was born November 7, 1925 in Peterborough, Ontario. At the age of 12, he became a bandsman bugler with the Princess of Wales Own Regiment (MG) and at this time became war-trained at Connaught Rifle Ranges in Ottawa firing Vickers machine-guns and 303 rifles. Still in his teens, Mr. Fowler enlisted in the army as a private soldier with the 1st Battalion Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders. Mr. Fowler served during wartime as a drummer yet managed to see a great deal of action and combat up close and personal. Fowler holds great pride for his service and is deeply proud of his Metis heritage. He has had many opportunities to travel back to France and Holland to commemorate significant anniversaries. After the war, Mr. Fowler continued to play in the Queen's University pipe-band and later in other community pipe-bands. Discharged in August 1945, Mr. Fowler went back to school and ended up obtaining an education at Queens University holding under graduate standing in Honours Social Behaviour toward a multi-disciplinary study in Sociopsychobiology. Mr. Fowler held a career with GTE (General Telephones and Electronics Corporation). He is now retired and resides in Brockville, Ontario.
Transcript
I was two things, I was a combatant soldier and I was also a non-combatant soldier and I did my job both ways. One was easier than the other but it was not totally easy because you are always vulnerable and if you’re in England before it’s a hot war you are still vulnerable because you could have been bombed on with a flying bomb or with a rocket coming down you didn’t even hear especially if you were in London or Plymouth or any of the places where that happened early in the war. So the civilians and the soldiers share a common threat. The vulnerability that they experience as just being alive.