Benoît Duval

At just 16 years of age, Benoît Duval already had a taste for adventure. He successfully enlisted with the Royal 22^e Régiment in Valcartier by lying about his age in order to meet the requirements for enlistment and contribute to the war effort.

He served with the army for about six months before leaving to serve in the Royal Canadian Navy as a first-class engineer on board HMCS Gatineau.

“Every time we got a signal detecting a submarine, we had to go after them. But the submarines were as sharp as we were.”

During the Second World War, the Royal Canadian Navy protected Allied convoys threatened by the German fleet. The convoys carried commercial goods such as food, oil and weapons across the Atlantic Ocean.

“Every time we got a signal detecting a submarine, we had to go after them. But the submarines were as sharp as we were. They had ways of protecting themselves against us. And they had the means to attack us as well,” he explains.

This submarine threat aptly describes the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest battle of the Second World War, in which Canada played a fundamental role. For the Allies, it was about ensuring the uninterrupted movement of troops and maintaining the supply chain of goods between North America and Europe, while the Germans tried to cut off those pipelines. German submarines called U-boats and other warships patrolled the Atlantic Ocean in an attempt to sink Allied ships.

“It could be day or night, any time, because the submarines would infiltrate the convoy of merchant ships, then get between the boats and wait for dark. Then, when it was dark, they were free to launch torpedoes left and right and sink as many ships as they wanted.”

German U-boat attacks caused many casualties during the Battle of the Atlantic. Benoît Duval remembers seeing tankers burning after submarine attacks. From their ship, he and his shipmates could see the men trying to escape death, jumping from the tanker, only to be consumed by flames that covered the water.

“We took most of the crew prisoner on our ship and we put someone on the submarine to bring it back to Newfoundland.”

Working as a seaman was certainly dangerous, but not without its benefits. Unlike many soldiers deployed in Europe who went for long periods without seeing family or friends, Benoît Duval could go home for a few days between crossings.

While on his last crossing in May 1945, his assigned ship, HMCS Victoriaville, was ordered to leave the convoy to intercept and board German submarine U-190.

“U-190 was heading toward Europe to sink us, but after the Admiral gave the order to cease fire, there was nothing more they could do, so they surrendered to us. We took most of the crew prisoner on our ship and we put someone on the submarine to bring it back to Newfoundland.”

Shortly before, U-190 had sunk the minesweeper HMCS Esquimalt, the last Canadian warship sunk during the Second World War.

“They had sunk one last Canadian ship near Halifax, off Sable Island, and we had lost about 40 men that time, but we didn’t know about it and that’s why we agreed to the rendezvous.”

This now famous encounter between HMCS Esquimalt and U-190 signalled the end of the Battle of the Atlantic and the Second World War.

In that same spirit of adventure, Mr. Duval, accompanied by his daughter, returned to France in 2019 for the first time since the end of the Second World War, to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy as part of the Government of Canada delegation.

In honour of the 75^th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Benoît Duval is our Face of Freedom. You can also hear his story first hand by listening to his episode of our Faces of Freedom podcast (in French only).

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