No Errors Allowed

Transcription

No errors allowed

We were encoding a message . . . well the team before us was encoding a message for a whole convoy. Each ship had a certain position, all the time, and the positions and all that were decided by the admiralty and headquarters in Ottawa. The information came from Ottawa, but it was the admiralty that covered all that. The air force bombers and planes escorted the convoys for a while to make sure everything was alright. We picked up where the first team left off. I was working with another French Canadian girl, Marie-Thérèse. She was the one who looked in the dictionary. All I did was copy down what she told me. I don’t know what happened, but we missed two lines. Because the same work was done twice, in two different places, and by the time it got to the admiralty there were two extra lines with the names of ships that weren’t on the other message. Do you know what Marie-Thérèse’s punishment was? Because she was the one reading it, she wasn’t my superior but she was in charge at that moment. They sent her to Vancouver. She couldn’t keep working in encryption. She’d made a mistake and it could have been serious. That’s how they saw it. But with Marie-Thérèse . . . There was a chaplain who was in Halifax for the Royal Navy, for all the Canadians in Halifax. There were 2,000 of us women and I don’t know how many sailors, living in a convent. The nuns rented it out. He was a major, or the equivalent of a major. His best friend was a Franciscan, my cousin, who was a Franciscan in Ottawa. Henri had told the chaplain to take care of me and make sure I wasn’t too lonely. For Christmas, he invited me and Thérèse to the Christmas dinner that the nuns made: turkey and all the fixings. We had to work at noon, and we told him we had to go back to work at noon, so we couldn’t come, we couldn’t accept the invitation. Come anyway, come anyway, he said. Well, we were in the parlour talking, and the turkey wasn’t coming. It was 11:30 and we said, “Henri, we have to leave!” We didn’t . . . so we left, in a snow storm. There were no trams or taxis. We ran like crazy for over two kilometres to get there because you know, in the navy, like anywhere, but in the navy in particular, it’s not one minute past nine, it’s nine on the nose. And if the ship leaves and you’re not there, you’re a deserter. When we got back, there was a vestibule inside—you went in the main door and then there were two more doors, like this. Thérèse turned left for her office, and I worked on the right, but because I’m tall, the day officer, she saw me. She saw me through the glass, and I didn’t have time to take off my coat. She called me, “Duchener, go see the officer. Duchener, you’re late.” “Yes ma’am,” I answered, “but it’s not our fault.” “You can have all the excuses in the world, I don’t care. Report to the officer tomorrow morning.” So I reported the next morning. That was our first Christmas in Halifax. Well, it’s like being in court, they treat you like a criminal. She told me that my punishment was three days doing 31, which meant washing the floors, peeling potatoes or onions in the kitchen or doing whatever the head cook told you to do. Well, let me tell you, I didn’t take that very well. Thérèse was with me, so I said, “Listen, there weren’t any taxis or trams.” And she said, “You can’t take it?” Well, what was I going to do? So the first day, I had a sack of onions this big. When I got back to the barracks, the girls told me I stank of onions. So we all laughed and went to the showers with cologne. The next day, I don’t remember. The third day I washed the floors and chairs. And whether your name was Duchener or the Princess of Wales, everyone got treated the same. There were no excuses. There were no excuses and I understand that. If there isn’t any discipline . . . that was pretty special.