Lest We Forget - Thanks to the shared stories of members of the 11th, 12th, and 14th Canadian Armoured Regiments who were deployed together under command of 1 Canadian Corps, in the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade, I have compiled this diary of the stories our father may have told.

WAR! As friends, we gathered regularly for a beer and talked about work, sports, girls, you know the average chatter, but that day in September 1939 was different. The news had been buzzing about this Germany business for weeks. Since the invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 Britain and France had warned Germany to not attack Poland. Now that Hitler marched into Poland against Britain's wishes it only took two days for Britain and France to declare War on Germany. September 3rd was the beginning. Now when we meet our chatter has turned to focus on the buzz of war in Europe. Though all our speculation of what might happen next we all knew... Now "We" are at War! And among us over our beer, there is a lot of bravado declaring what we would do in battle. So much so that one day we all decided to go down to the new Recruitment Office just to see what's involved in signing up. All of us, had shared our opinions, all of us had said we were going to go to War. I don't know how it turned out that I was the only one who actually got accepted and signed up that day. But now I was sitting with a whole different group of guys, strangers really, all waiting to be told what to do next. Now, the truth of war was really settling into my thoughts, I am going to War!

Preparing for War We were sent to Camp. That's where they took boys and made men out of them with military training. They taught how to walk, how to live, and you had to live in the camp barracks, which none of us were used to. Family had mixed opinion, but my wife, well was really angry. "How dare I leave her with two children without even talking about it?" My wife moved from Toronto to a one room flat in Oshawa to be closer to barracks.

In the beginning we theoretically didn't have anything, except titles. This was all new to the country and we had nothing to train with. We were lucky we had uniforms. Rifles? sometimes there was a rifle and sometimes not. If we had a rifle it was an old Ross rifle, the 303. Tanks? We were a tank regiment; we had to have tanks didn't we? Apparently not. By the grace of God, they made this a priority. General Worthington, commander of the armoured brigade, went to the States and he bought about thirty Renault Mark IV used tanks for training. Now these are tanks from the 1914 war so of course they were falling apart! All you had to do was bang the door, or one of the side panels and it'll fall apart. So he turned around and says, "Well that's all right!" Because he says he got three of the tanks loaded with equipment. We were training alright, training as mechanics. The tracks used to loosen up on them so frequently in training that it was more like a Keystone Cops pantomime. Let's put it this way. We improvised. The only operational tanks, the first real tanks we ever had in training, were the British Matilda, which we didn't get until arriving in England. So we all had to be retrained in England for the Matilda tank. There was nothing we could do about that, because at that time, what we were really learning was discipline, we learned to take orders, and we learned to accept what was coming regardless of how it seemed. Well, we all learned well and our regiment became known as a fighting unit. And we were honoured for that.

We went into camp and then training as strangers but through it all we became friends. We became, very close, we became a family unit within ourselves. Five men, who lived together, slept together, ate together, and we acted together, watching each others back. Out of the people that were with us from the beginning when we joined the war, we lost a few of our buddies, but these were replaced with recruits. Although, this was different, once in the war, it was harder to get too friendly... especially when guys were dying.