Ira Haight

R.C.A 1942-1945 ~ Service/Regimental #M105501/Algonquin Regiment

I suppose I should start at the beginning. Before I turned 18, I was working in the coal mines in Edmonton, and I got in a cave-in and spent 3½ months in hospital. When I got out, I decided to change careers and maybe make a safer career so I joined the army at 18. At that time ... you hear so much about patriotism and all.. I think when you're 18 years old, and there's not that much work around, all your friends have gone to war and joined the services for one reason or another. . . most of them excitement at that age . . . ah, and to see other countries and this type of thing . . . So, in '42, I joined the Canadian Army Infantry Corps. That was where they needed men the most at that time. I joined up in Edmonton at Mewata Barracks and I was immediately moved to Calgary Currie Barracks where I did my basic training. Basic training is where they start to try and make a soldier out of a civilian. After doing two months of basic in Currie Barracks, then Advance Training... you learn to use a rifle, different types of weapons, unarmed combat, hand-to-hand fighting, also take different courses and …you have the officers and what-not that give you a screening, to see what part of the army you are most suited for. Coming off the farm, I think, working with machinery, they decided that maybe I would be good as a driver-mechanic. That's a driver that can fix his own vehicle. I went to London, Ontario and took a course in driver-mechanics in Bren gun carriers. Bren gun carriers are ... the flat, small track machines. We handled 3-inch mortars, and we had 3 Bren guns mounted on the carrier…5 men to a crew. From London, I got shipped into Debert, Nova Scotia where we ... practised with live ammunition…after that, I was shipped overseas. We went over ... on the Ile de France...a medium-sized ship... it took 32 days to get there for the simple reason that we were on our own. We didn't go in a convoy. And you did what you call a zig-zag course. You go this way, then that way to avoid the submarines...and keep out of the way of the German ships. We landed in Liverpool, England, and were immediately shipped off to Aldershot one of the oldest Army barracks there is in England, and now to try to get used to English customs….UH, on the left-hand side of the road, so it was a little difficult to learn to drive. England was quite foggy and, on top of that, the blackout. We had little pinpoint holes -probably the size of the end of your finger - in our lights and that's all you had to see by at night, so it was some getting used to. I spent a little time in Aldershot, and then from there I went to Brighton on another mechanics course where we learned machine work and everything else. I remember coming back from Brighton. Of course, we were ... you had to have your rifle with you and all your belongings at all times and, of course, a few of us got a little too drunk and I lost my rifle out of the train window. Of course, that was $17.00. Well, we were making $1.30 a day and when you went overseas you had to defer half of that pay to your next-of-kin …and on top of that I got fifty cents trades pay for being a mechanic, so it was $1.80 a day and you knock that down to ninety cents ... $17.00 for a rifle took a few days to pay. We did live training up in the Midlands - up around Nottingham and Manchester.. Then, I was finally assigned to the Algonquin Regiment, the 3-inch Mortar Platoon - a support company. The Fourth Div was, an armoured division... we were attached to this SAR, the South Alberta Tank Regiment…in a support company. We had mostly armourized Bren gun carriers: 50 motors, or 50-inch machine guns, this type of 3-inch mortars. Well, I happened to be in the 3-inch mortar platoon so we had in the carrier ... we carried 20 cases of 3-inch mortars. Now, to each case there was 6 bombs, six 3-inch bombs. They were like a little satchel, 3 on one side and 3 on the other. You know, I can remember all these comical, funny things, nice things that happened, but the mind hides the things it doesn't want you to remember. . . . being in an armoured division, we …went over on D plus 1.. and we landed on Juno Beach. And, when we went in, they were about 1 ½ km into a little town called Beny-Sur-Mer and there wasn't much left of that town, mind you. I think you know, during the second World War, any major offensive, any obstacle, and the Canadians were always spearheading. I don't care whether it was the Hitler Line, or it was the Maginot Line, the Hochwald Forest or the . . . any major offensive, the Canadians always spearheaded. We didn't have enough usually to be the whole army, we didn't have that amount of men….the Canadian Army has been instrumental in bearing the brunt of every major offensive there was, and it's not through ... ah, I don't think it's through superior training or equipment – we didn't have superior equipment, but you had the enthusiasm and they always said 10 Canadians could do the same job as 100 Americans. Now, I don't tell my brother that --he was in the American army, so . .. From the Falais Gap, we went through Ghent and Belgium and up through Antwerp and into Holland. In Holland there was a lot of tough fighting. They seemed to put up more resistance there. Before that, in France and Belgium, it was a matter of catching them, surrounding a pocket and leaving them, and going on further. They were retreating that fast. So, once we got to Holland there was a lot more resistance ... probably a lot more to lose there. …we got into a little town called Walwech, and we stayed there. I think we were billeted there for about a month…in a holding position. It was about that time that Hitler decided he had to have the port of Antwerp again… the Battle of the Bulge. The Canadians were sent again around through the estuary - all swampland, all low land - we had all the hardest and I don't care if the Americans hear it or not, all you see on TV is the version of the superior American . . .We were fighting in canal after canal and then swamps and bogs, and you were up to your knees and your motors konked out because they were in water, and this type of thing, you know, day after day. Finally, we got through that and we got up into northern Holland, and we were ready to cross the line into Germany I can remember our Commanding Officer telling us, "Up to this time, gentlemen, you are liberators. From now on, you are conquerors, so if you walk down the street, it's your street." ..into Germany. I suppose our next big offensive was the Hochwald Forest. We had 12,000 guns, artillery guns, firing for 24 hours. You couldn't make toothpicks out of that forest after that. And still, there was resistance. Liberation ... I was in Oldenburg, Germany at the time of liberation. My appendix ruptured in the front lines, and so …I spent thirty days in the hospital … They operated on me at 6 o'clock in the evening. Next morning, I had to get up and make my own bed. The doctor said "Well, people die in bed. We don't want you dead. Get up and get at it." But liberation . . . when we got word that the Armistice, the war was over, of course, we went to all these towns . . . or wherever you were ... Every town over there has a town square, and there was a pile of weapons, swords, you name it, in the town square probably 30 feet high, 25 feet wide ... just everybody had a weapon of some kind. They were destroyed. They were run over with tanks, whatever. What was it like coming home? ..it took 32 days to go over there…but ..when the war ..was over . . . they moved us back to Holland, and had what they called the Army of Occupation. And I was in a little town called Norg in Holland…and they converted an army truck into a school bus, and that was my job. I hauled kids to school. I would pick up one load in the morning. They had to be at school at 7 o'clock in Groningen, which was some 38 kms away, and I would pick up another bunch at 11 o'clock, and have them in there for 1 o'clock and bring the first bunch home, then go back at 6 o'clock and pick up the second one. And…then I came home on Feb 24, 1946, when I landed in Calgary. It was four days coming back on the Queen Lizzie. There were 32,000 soldiers, 5,000 seamen on that ship. I slept in the swimming pool. The swimming pool had bunks built, just room enough for a soldier to walk between them…coming back we landed in New York and, once we reached Canada from New York, pretty near every major city, of course, you stopped and there was a band playing, you know. You got cigarettes, you got chocolate bars. It was fun, but it took us three days to come back across Canada on the train. We landed outside of Calgary ... I don't know just where ... at night and it was Saturday night, they wouldn't take us into the city. They stopped the train and left it there on a siding on a Saturday night. And just like that, Ira was home.