Protecting the ship

Seeing that I was on light anti-craft, light anti-aircraft guns that we took our training on and when we went over on the ship they put us on duty on the guns to protect them from the air. And the anti-aircraft, while we were trained in Halifax on the 40, 40 mm Bofors, (ack-ack guns), and on the ship they gave us, I think they were 20 calibers, the machine guns. They strap you in and that’s where you stayed until you got relieved. The only thing I remember is one night we had a sort of a raid with the German aircraft coming down on the ships, but they didn’t get to close to ours but mostly on the convoy they generally have those balloons up in the air. I forget what they call them. Barrage balloons, that’s what they are, yeah. And so the aircraft didn’t come too low, but they were up pretty high. But that would last maybe a couple hours and that was it.