These stories are as told to me at various times by my Father, Louis
Joseph Saint-Laurent. They are not in any particular order or
sequence, some are humorous, some are graphic in their
description of the horrors that a young man in his early twenties had
to experience during the greatest conflict mankind has ever known.
I've tried to put them down word for word just as dad told me, so
that you might understand in some small way the things these ordinary
young men had to go through and they way it changed them. Although
dad was from Canada, by the time he told me these stories he'd picked
up quite a cockney accent from living in 'Blighty' for so long.
Never having had to fight in any conflict myself I tried to
imagine what it must have been like, I often asked Dad "how did
you feel, what did you think day to day" trying to get some idea
of what these young men had gone through, facing death everyday,
seeing friends die or get horribly maimed. I hope that by reading
these tales you may get some notion of the things that affected or
influenced the average young man that went to war, and let us pray
that future generations never forget what all the young men and women
involved in WWII sacrificed so that we may never have to lose the
innocence of youth the same way they had to.
"Our crew got this new Lieutenant when our Captain was promoted, he was a ponce straight out of officer school. The Colonel, who was a good old boy, told this young arse, "you listen to these lads, they've been doing this a long time and know what they're doing", Anyway, as soon as we were away from the camp he started on his high horse. We were on a mission behind enemy lines and we stopped by this field with all these haystacks in it, He ordered me to drive across this field but I had a funny feeling about these haystacks. I told him that I thought something didn't feel right but he started yelling about disobeying orders, The rest of the crew thought he was a pratt as well, so I told him to 'stuff himself' and turned around to get the hell out of there. As we started to drive away some of these haystack fronts went down and there were German bloody machine gun nests in them. I stuck me foot to the floor just as they opened up! We could hear they bullets hitting the back of the Carrier as I hightailed it out of there. All the way back to camp this poncey Lieutenant was telling me about court martials, disobeying orders, etc. I drove straight up to the Colonels tent and walked in to see the Colonel, "What's up Lou" the Colonel said (my Dad was the Colonels personal driver in England and always called him 'Lou') "He's what's bloody up" I told him, "just look at the back of the Carrier" The old Colonel walked 'round the back of the Carrier and saw that all our stuff that we tied there was shot to hell (they used to tie sleeping bags, water containers, etc., on the back of the Carrier) He was madder than hell, "didn't I tell you to listen to them" he told this Lieutenant, "I want to see you in my tent right now" he said. This Lieutenant followed the Colonel into the tent and we never saw him again, I guess he got transferred. Our old Captain was back the next day, he'd turned down the promotion so that he could be back with us, we were a good crew and we all made it through the war without a scratch"
A Bren Gun Carrier joins a parade in Canada after the war
(photo courtesy of Ron Tee)
"We were driving down this road and there was this 'dead' German laying in the road, I went to drive around him when all of a sudden he rolls over and points his gun at me. The bugger was playing dead and was going to shoot me so I ran him over. As we were going along we heard this constant banging sound, we thought something was damaged so we stopped to look. We found the arm of the German still holding his rifle, caught in the tracks going round and round banging against the side of the carrier."
"I picked up a brand new carrier from supply, as we were driving back to our camp there was this knocked out Tiger or Panther tank at the side of the road with a column of Shermans going the other way. I thought I could get through the gap so I kept up speed and tried to slip through between the Tanks. I guess I misjudged it 'cos we got bloody wedged between 'em! The carrier was bloody squashed. None of us was hurt so we walked back to the supply depot, they couldn't believe it! We'd only been gone for a few minutes and we'd wrecked the bloody thing! They gave us another new one and told us that was it, if we wrecked this one we could bloody well walk for the rest of the war."
"When we were at Cassino, we were with the Gurkhas, tough little buggers they were. If you befriended one he'd be your guardian for life! They loved it if we gave 'em cigarettes. You'd be on guard duty at night and you'd hardly feel a knife pricking your ribs and this little 'and going round your neck to feel what you dog tags were like, the Germans 'ad different ones to us you see. After he'd made sure they were allied dogs tags the hand would go and you'd turn around and the bugger was gone!! They were like ghosts and they scared the shit out of the Germans! They 'ad these bleeding great knives that could take someone's head off. I guess if they found German dog tags, that was their lot, they'd get stuck in the gizzard with that knife! I'm glad they were on our side."
"We sent a patrol out once and they didn't come back when they should 'ave, So we went looking for 'em. We found 'em hung by their feet from a tree, dead. The bloody 'Eyeties' had strung 'em up and used 'em for bayonet practice. Well, after seeing that, every 'Eyetie' we caught we just shot 'em on the spot. (didn't that bother you dad, I mean they were guys just like you) I know son, but when you've seen your mates hung up and used for bayonet practice it kind of hardens you and you don't even think about what you're doing. You just want to get even with the buggers."
"We had the Guns set up behind some trees in this field in Italy. The 'Eyetie' farmer was in another field cutting down wheat and plowing every day. Very well camouflaged they were, but every day the bloody Germans would shell the heck out of them. We moved 'em a little ways, the Germans shelled them again, we lost a lot of men. We sent out patrols to try to find their observer who had to be spotting for their artillery, but we could never find anyone, we couldn't figure out how the Germans knew where they were. One day a liaison plane landed and the pilot said to us 'Do you guys know there's big arrows cut in the wheat field over there, pointing right at your positions?' We couldn't believe it, the bloody farmer had been going out every day cutting arrows in the corn to show the Germans where we were! Well, we moved from that position but before we hooked up the guns, we turned 'em around and shelled the shit out of the farmhouse and the village,. I guess he wouldn't be helping the Germans again after that."
A Daimler armored car on recon patrol , my dad said it was a "beautiful machine" to operate.
(photo courtesy of Ron Tee)
"I'll tell you about the time I was 'killed in action' I was ordered to drive this Sherman (tank) so that we could go with the tanks on one of their attacks and give 'em artillery support. An officer from our unit would go along to act as observer for the guns. A few minutes before we were going to leave, I got sent on some other job and another driver took my place. nobody but me and one or two other people knew that it wasn't me driving the tank. So, anyway, during the attack this Sherman gets hit by an '88' (German anti-tank gun) the two guys in front were both killed (the driver and co-driver) and the other guys got out. 'Course, everyone thinks it's me that bought it 'cos as far as everyone knows, I was driving. I was away from camp for a day or two and when I drove back everybody nearly fainted! 'what the 'ell are you doing 'ere, you're bloody dead' a couple of blokes shouted, I wondered what the heck they were talking about. The old Colonel was right happy to see me back and told me the story. I had to write 'ome a bit sharpish and tell 'em that if they got a letter telling them that I'd snuffed it, not to believe it, I was still alive and kicking".
"When we were out on patrol one day we came across this abandoned Italian Chateau so we parked the Carrier and went up to the top floor of the Chateau to 'ave a look around and see if we could use the top floor as an observation point. Anyway, we heard this big bang so we ran downstairs back to the Carrier. Well when we saw the Carrier it had been blown to bloody bits! All our gear was scattered all over the place! We never did find out if it was an artillery shell or if I'd parked on a delayed action mine, all we knew was we were lucky not to have been in it at the time, although we did have a bloody long walk back!"