Liberating the French

I guess the most vivid memory really is the fact that we were continually liberating towns, one after the other, small towns, small villages, and so on you know, and the, we'd get into a village and we'd be told the Germans had left half an hour before, or something in that nature, or they might tell us that the Germans are holed up in a barn on the outskirts the town, that sort of thing was, that was happening all the time. And of course we kept hitting strong points, which we were, which was part of our training to either take them out or contain them until we could get stronger forces up.

Ecstatic, especially units like the Maisonneuves and Chaudières who could speak French, and especially the Chaudières cause we were in Normandy and basically the origins of the French Canadians were from Normandy so they spoke then almost the same patois. Oh yeah, they were delirious to see us, they always wanted us to, well they didn't see any reason why we should keep going, we'd stay there and have meal with them, something of that nature, and the Cognac bottles would come out.

Interviewer: This is Calvados, is it?

Calvados, is a, that's a very powerful liqueur. It's a super distilled apple cider really, from the, Normandy is apple country and it's a very powerful, when you knock back a couple of Calvados, if you look down at your feet you're going to see a hole in the floor.