Description
Mr. Young describes the rough crossing from England to Le Havre, and going by train to the front.
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
There was a real blow on in the channel that night. And some of us that got in, there’s Walter Eddie, and Norm and Gordon McClellan, Bob Cole, and a few others there, and we laid round in the middle of the ship right where there would be less roll in there than any where else. But I remember on our way over we left Hopestone and got off at Le Havre, but there was a lot of them sick. I remember Walter Eddie, he was right close to me and he says, “Norm, Norm, don’t do that, I got a bean in my ear.” He told me Norm had puked on him. At Le Havre we got up, we climbed those steps up there, I believe it’s only 190 steps but they’re all up and walking up there is the biggest job, because after getting off especially the fellas that was sick. I remember helping somebody and I was feeling pretty good myself. It might have been Temple his name was. He was pretty rolly you know and we had our full marching kit on then, all our equipment was carried. I think we was there, might have had two days, not any more than that before they was due up the line and back in at Ypres Salient. We started out from Running Hurst (sp) and went up through the centre, started out via train, French train, and they took us up the lines. It was before dark. We had quite a little ways to go from where we was billeted. And the Germans started throwing over a bunch of shells at us so the train had to quit. One thing I noticed though, there was a lot of duds in those shells.