Description
Mr. Young describes having good cooks and food at Camp Bramshott, despite one amusing breakfast incident.
Percy Young
Percy Young was born in New Brunswick on September 13, 1896. At an early age he learned to shoot, driving nails with a .22 calibre rifle. Mr. Young later found employment with the Canadian Pacific Railway in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, the hub of western rail travel. Because there were 22 passenger trains a day in Moose Jaw, it was an active recruiting area. On September 15, 1915, Mr. Young, along with 14 friends, enlisted in the 46th Battalion. He took his basic training at Camp Sewell, Saskatchewan and qualified as a sniper. Currently, our information doesn’t indicate in which battles Mr. Young saw action, but he does describe the 46th Battalion being awarded the Chocolate Stripe for its superiority in all aspects of field training. Mr. Young joined the Saskatchewan Security Corps during the Second World War and later became active in the Royal Canadian Legion.
Transcript
At Bramshott we had our own cook and the food was good. We had Harry James, Charlie James’ father. He was a cook here in Saskatchewan, it was his regular job and he was sergeant of the cooks. And they used to cook our own bread. They got the flour in and cooked our own bread. We lived good in Bramshott. Always lots of bread for everybody, nobody went hungry there, believe me. The army had kippers, is it they call it, fish, for breakfast, and they cooked that in rice. To “C” and “D” companies, that was the first sitting that particular morning. We all went in and refused to eat it, and of course the colonel was brought down right away right quick to see what was up and he says, “Kippers and rice, kippers and rice? ” The cook says, “Yes.” “You mean, would you eat it? ” He says, “I wouldn’t.” So he sent us all back to the huts and gave them thirty minutes to cook something else. Get us something else. That was our own cooks, that’s what they had to cook. They got their stuff in here and that’s what they were told to cook. That’s the only incident we ever had in Bramshott while I was there.