Description
As Mr. Bembridge sights American planes over the camp dropping 45 gallon drums of supplies, he soon realizes the war is over and freedom is drawing near.
Howard Bembridge
Mr. Bembridge was born May 22, 1923 in Saskatchewan. His father was a sergeant major in the First World War and rarely spoke about his service. Being the third oldest child of four, Mr. Bembridge achieved a grade 8 education and at age 14, went to work with the Canadian National Railway. At age 17, he decided to join the military and enlisted with the South Saskatchewan Regiment and moved to Fort William, Ontario for six months. Having a rocky relationship with his sergeant, Mr. Bembridge made a quick decision to join the Winnipeg Grenadiers who were destined for Hong Kong. Having experienced harsh and brutal conditions during his captivity, Mr. Bembridge was hospitalized for a period of time and later returned to Saskatchewan with his family.
Transcript
There was a plane used to fly over, Hank the Yank they called him, we called him Hank the Yank, used to fly over top. He come around way low and I thought those bloody huts were going to collapse. He’d go “Vrooom!!” and he had a white scarf out the window eh, or some place, oh jeez that thing must have been 30 feet long. He dropped a wrench down with a note on it that said, “The war is over, the war has been over for 3 days!” And he dropped this wrench, the guys grabbed it and then he said I am going to make another pass and I’m going to drop some flags down and you get the officers to flag this out, you know, it said on there. Shit, those flags hit there, whoosh, they were flagged out before the officer knew what happened. And they put, right in the center across the flags like and that’s where they would drop and they’d come and by jeez, they dropped them right alongside and never broke them flags, like, sticks, eh lats or whatever it was there, never broke them off and they dropped three big forty-five gallon drums. What do you think was in them?
Interviewer: I have no idea.
Chewing gum. Boy if you ever heard the Americans get the works, you should have heard them there that night and listen to that. What the jeez is the matter with them guys, we’re starving to death and they throw us some chewing gum. That was to get your gastric juices working I guess, you know.
