Team Work
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- Medium: Video
- Owner: Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration: 3:46
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Team Work
It takes a lot of people to fight a war and the positions filled by men and women are interdependent. A very special camaraderie develops in the service. Mr. Jobin shares his thoughts about this topic with us.
Guy Jobin
Mr. Jobin’s father was a chemist for a mill in Chandler, in the Gaspé. During the Depression, his father left to go work in Masson, in the Outaouais Region, and the family joined him 18 months later. They settled in Buckingham and when war was declared young Guy Jobin, a lover of ships, wanted to enlist in the Navy. He did his basic training in Québec and then went to Halifax to learn to fire guns before being sent to British Columbia. His group of Canadians left on the British aircraft carrier HMS Nabob. The ship went down the Pacific coast, crossed the Panama Canal and stopped in Virginia before arriving in England, at Liverpool. There they found the remains of a city damaged by 9 days German bombings. The Nabob was active in the British Isles throughout the war. During a mission to Scapa Flow in northern Scotland, the boat was hit by a torpedo. Upon his return to Canada, Mr. Jobin was hospitalized for awhile.
Transcription
Team Work
It takes two sailors on land to keep a sailor on the ocean in a ship. It takes a paymaster, it takes military camps and it takes those who enlist you and all the doctors and all. Y’know, it takes two on land to keep a man at sea. In the air force, I don’t know. To keep a pilot, how many mechanics do you think it takes and whatever, in the garages and the trucks and . . . Y’know, there are guys who have driven trucks their whole lives. I knew a guy who was a captain in the army who really wanted to go. He finally went overseas, he managed to win. He was in England. He was paymaster, y’know, paymaster. He’s dead now. And he was in London for the Canadian Forces. He was the one who did the pay, and a bunch of clerks there who . . . well. And when the landing took place, they transferred him to Paris. He was well received in Paris. He had a good war, between you and me. They sent him here, beautiful offices. He arrived in London, beautiful offices. He arrived in Paris, beautiful offices, y’know? He didn’t see the front. But it takes guys like him behind the lines. For him, it took stenographers, and everything.
Camaraderie and After the War
Camaraderie. It’s not the same thing in the colleges or schools where you meet [inaudible] and all. It’s not the same kind of camaraderie. I don’t know why. It’s because if he isn’t there, you won’t be there, y’know? You’ve got to have him beside you and it’s the same for him with me, y’know? Because all alone, he won’t get anywhere. But if his buddies are with him . . . you can make it. A classmate . . . Mention them ten years later, or five years later, anything from that time and it’s surprising how if you run into them, you don’t feel anything for these guys. Same for them, too. It isn’t because they aren’t great guys, or anything . . . It’s because you have nothing more to say to each other. You haven’t experienced anything special, except going to school and knowing the same teacher. But when you go through hard times . . .When you enlist in the service, you’re not at the front but it’s rough anyway. You understand? When they say, the Plains of Abraham – you have to climb l’Anse-au-Foulon. By yourself. It takes a buddy with you. That’s where camaraderie comes from. When you go home, like I came back to Buckingham [inaudible]a time, well, you’ve been away three, four years, y’know? Your pals are all married, they don’t remember you, y’know . . . Life is like that, eh? You get to be 80, 83 like me, the people I worked with are all gone, there’s not a one of them left. I’ve made it to 83, I’m lucky. My buddies [inaudible] the same. Life changes, eh? Don’t try . . . . Take advantage of your age, at 83, the best you can.
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