april 08, 2009 12:26am
July 31, 2008 Ex Service Members Lunch
Thursday. July 31, 2008.
Maxwell Walker and Merrill Rumson and lunch with the Ex Service Members Lunch Crew.
This day started with a call from CBC Toronto. The producer had heard about our tour and wanted to do a story on our tour, I thought that would be great. We Talked on the phone for an hour. I think she will put the Friends of Veterans. Canada , on air, we will see.
The story came out today in the Chronicle Herald. The reporter did a great job. He had a good picture and a well written article. The story was out and all the people seen it at the Legion, a good ice breaker in a new target city. We target larger cities because they are usually the media centres of the area.
I had an appointment with a 95 year old navy man named Merrill Rumson. Merrill was in the navy most of his life including WW2. When I sat down with him he was all dressed up, I was flattered that he would get cleaned up for me. He set me straight when I complemented the way he looked and he said, in a matter a fact way, “ I always dress like this” I felt like an idiot. Not the first time and more that likely not the last.
The interview was two hours long but he kept asking me to turn of the camera. You see, this is a proud man and if he had to go around a petty officer to get a job done in 1943, he didn't want it to come out know and besmirch his spotless record. I ended up with about eight minutes of tape in a two hour video. But I learned a lot about the Canadian Navy. It was getting close to lunch time and the Veterans Luncheon. It turned out that Merrill is a member. So we headed down to the Pub for lunch. There was a bunch of veterans there and I lined up some interviews.
When the luncheon was over we met back at the legion. I talked to Maxwell Walker and Will Sonners about sitting down with me for an interview. Maxwell was in the army in WW 2 and Will was in Korea. Max's interview was very good , he has great recall. We talk about his long career in the army, you see after the war he made a career out of the army. He started in 1942 and ended his military career in 1968, from Naples to Holland in WW2 to working on the Alaska Highway, Max has been around in the Canadian Army.
Will Sonners is quite a man, he signed up in July of 1948. He was in the 1st battalion in the PPCLI. He went to Pouson Korea in March of 1952. He seen lots of action and he talked about all the battles he was in. He talked about Hill 355 he said that the Korean army would blow bugles and scream as they charged. I asked him if he was intimidated by that, he said “of course I was” he looked at me as if I should have known that. He told me that he had been wounded in the left arm and the left forearm after a battle that lasted from 11 PM the night to before 6am the next morning. He woke up on the hood of a jeep on a stretcher. I talked about being in the Special forces and training in the U,S, with the Rangers. He told me that the Canadians made a great account of themselves during the training. While training with the Yanks he told me that they were surprised about how good shape the Canadians were. Will has a great sense of humor and seems like a good family man.
After the interviews were over the manager of the Legion named Wayne Carlton took me on a tour of Saint John. We drove around for a couple of hours checking out the city. He showed me the Veterans unit at the hospital called Ridge wood, that I had set up three interviews for the next day. By the time the tour was over I was ready to head back to the RV to make my log entries and turn in.
