Veterans share harrowing stories in Memory Project
Published Saturday November 28th, 2009
MIRAMICHI - Leslie Clark sits in silence.
Across from him is a microphone, and an interviewer. He was talking about sitting near his brother on a troop ship during the Second World War when his steady voice just trailed away.
"I didn't want to go ashore," he says after a moment. "I thought..."
He doesn't finish his sentence. When he turns his head, his cheek is wet.
"It's hard to talk. Sorry about that," he says. "I'll be all right in a minute."
The memory was one of dozens he was sharing with his interviewer, Shayla Howell, who was recording his story at at Legion Branch No. 3 in Chatham Wednesday for archiving as part of the Memory Project, an effort by the Toronto-based Historica-Dominion institute to gather and preserve stories from from Canada's dwindling number of Second World War Veterans. Clark had a lot to share. He turned 19 in the United Kingdom, part of the Canadian Army, like most of his generation.
"I turned (23) ... back in Halifax, an old man with the leg off," he recalled.
As part of the D-Day landings, he saw with his own eyes the things today's Canadians can only read about.
The chaos of the landings, with young men he said never swore or drank, picked off on the first day. "I buried a few in them body bags too. Pretty hard at a time, like, fellows you went to school with."
As he and his brother were serving together, he feared the pair might perish together, so he went into demolitions to keep separate.
He has stories about that, too.
Learning to put together mines and booby traps, and how to spot those left by the enemy.
Mining a road the Germans might use, then coming back the next day to find a small crater, four bloodied rifles, and no bodies.
Trying to decide which way to turn a pin on a booby trap discovered in a tree.
"I turn it this way, I might blow my head off. I turn it that way ... the beads of sweat coming out on me. Never forgot that," he said.
He recalls not having time to stop and deal with the latest deaths, which from his story, seemed to be all around him.
"You just had to keep going," he said. "You figure you're going to get it the next day yourself, or any time," he said. "So you weren't immune to being shot."
Gerald Connick, like all the other veterans there that day, had his own stories to tell.
His memories are vivid.
The creaking of a troop ship's hull to the tune of distant depth charges. Bullets rattling off riggings in the Mediterranean. Bren gun barrels melting, superheated after firing a million rounds at passing German dive bombers.
He shows his own interviewer the place on his hand where he pulled an inch-long piece of shrapnel from his flesh, and talks wryly about regretting not saving it as a souvenir.
"Nobody who went over really intended that they'd ever make it back," he says.
"They always figured, this may be my day. Then you lose another lad, and you think, I wonder if I'm up next."
He remembered the everyday things, too, like going out for a beer with fellow recruits at Basic Training in Ontario, or grumbling about how troops on the Atlantic crossing were given breakfast and supper, but no dinner, or how the Mediterranean seemed smooth as glass.
He said he was contacted by the Memory Project and asked to share his story, which he was more than happy to do.
"Gives us a chance to let it go, eh?" he said.
"There're some things that it's hard to tell, because people wouldn't believe you."
Upstairs, with the other veterans, he shows off his laminated demob orders and soldier's paybook, part of dozens of items of memorabilia the workers of the Memory Project take pictures of, or scan, also to be included on their website.
Jenna Misener, the project's manager who was present that day in Miramichi, said around 60 Miramichiers had shared their stories and memorabilia.
She said the turnout was higher than in Moncton, where between 15 and 30 veterans came out.
"There's a real sense here in Miramichi that it's important to record the history, the experiences of your veterans," she said.
For more information on the Memory Project, visit www. thememoryproject.com.
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