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Description
At 11 o’clock in the morning, the Royal Navy ship, from which Mr. Grand was observing the carnage on the beach, lay three miles off-shore. Orders were received to proceed to the beach with instructions to “use everything”. Mr. Grand tells of the events that followed and the remarkable courage of three British Navy men who saved the lives of those on board.
John Grand
M. Grand est né en 1909, comme il le décrit, dans « un petit village perdu dans la nature du Sud du Manitoba ». Son père a exploité une terre au Manitoba, puis en Saskatchewan. John Grand a décrit sa jeunesse pendant la grande dépression comme étant pauvre et dure. <br><br> À l’adolescence, M. Grand était très intéressé par l’électronique et il possédait un certificat de radioamateur. Il a essayé de s’enrôler dans le Signal Corps dans les années 1930, mais il a été rejeté parce qu’il n’était pas assez musclé. Il se souvient d’avoir été si pauvre qu’il a souvent pris la file pour obtenir de la nourriture à une soupe populaire. Son premier emploi consistait à travailler dans une chaîne de montage chez Canadian Marconi au salaire de 11 cents de l’heure. <br><br> Il s’est enrôlé dans le Corps royal canadien des transmissions quand la guerre a été déclarée en 1939. On lui a d’abord attribué la fonction d’opérateur de radio, mais lorsque ses superviseurs se sont rendu compte de ses compétences mécaniques, il a rapidement été fait radiotechnicien. Son service outre-mer comprend le débarquement à Dieppe, la participation à la campagne de Normandie et la libération de la Hollande.
Transcription
One German shell hit the hold, the back part of the ship. HMS Calpe. And it set the magazine on fire. Now the magazine was storing cordite. Now, if you know anything about cordite it’s very explosive and it looks like spaghetti. It’s flexible like putty. But it’s very explosive. The HMS Calpe was hit. It has three turbines. Each section of the ship is isolated. That is it has safety doors, which are water-tight doors. The crew that are in those compartments, in the ship, have no escape. And when the sound of alert goes, that whoop, whoop, whoop - three times, the doors shut down tight. Now we only had three turbines. But when a magazine caught fire, it blocked all exits for any escape. Three navy men. Now you wanted to know, what the navy, the courage of the British navy. Three men, naval ratings, jumped into the magazine, on fire. They opened the hatches, and they start throwing out burning cordite, out of the magazine. Three men. Yes. They were right there into an inferno, into a hell. Well, they got the fire out, and they saved the ship. But they didn’t save their lives, because two of them died when they pulled them up from the magazine. A third one, he had no clothes on, the skin, just ribbons of skin hanging down from his body. I went, I was one of those that were still in fairly good condition. I went down. I brought up a white hospital sheet to wrap him up in. Well, sort of a blanket. So, he was wrapped up into this blanket, and so, then I went and I got a pail of water. Now it had to be distilled water because I opened up the valves from the steam and I let the steam into the bucket, and I got half a pail of hot water. Which is distilled water. And we threw in twenty-five or thirty tea bags in there and I got hold of a ladle and I went up above and I went straight to him. And I said “You deserve one.” And so, I handed him a ladle of tea. He drank it. “Well,” he says, “this is my last one.” I said “Why? ” He says “I’ll never live. I lost too much skin, and I know it.” So, he says “I’m going to end it. Now don’t tell the captain and don’t say anything to anybody until tomorrow, but I’m going overboard.” And he put his two hands on the, on the cable and he flipped backwards. I saw his body go down, and the blanket, and toward the end of the ship I saw the white blanket floating away in the darkness. Well, I says “That’s courage.”