Memoirs of Gordie Bannerman - World War II

• Now we are a regiment, and with it came not only your battery discipline and orders, but also regimental orders. These could be a bit much some times as everyone in authority was feeling his way, and getting his spot established on what he could or could not do. The warrant officers and sergeants seemed to get a lot of control, as the RSM had the Colonel's ear so to speak.

  Spring in Petawawa burst upon us with the snow going and the ice going out of the Ottawa and Petawawa Rivers. We welcomed the change in weather as it meant that we now did our training out doors.

  Discipline and pride in ourselves was hammering into us. Soon we were believers that we were second to none in smarteness and parade square soldiering. Soon the intensive training culminated in live ammunition shoots. We took to the ranges for this type of excercise, and the thrill of, (we new sergeants) the obeying of fire orders, and firing the first live round. This was using shrapnel shell left over in great abundance from WW1. These were fixed rounds and had a fuse called T&P 80, or time and percussion 80. Here our officers were trained in observing the fall of shot and correcting this observation by degrees and yardage to finally have the rounds hit the target. All quite a lot of practice to get good. Some officers had a natural talent in making spilt second corrections relayed back to the guns and the resuts were a target hit very quickly.

  In all the promotions, there was a down side. Our first sergeant, major Ken Cameron, a world war 1 veteran, was reduced in rank and spent some time drilling officer recruits at another camp. Ken did not get overseas with us. Then we were to lose Capt . Peters and Capt Jacobs, both great men and officers but classed as too old. Both were likely in their early forties. They had fought in WW1, and we all thought they deserved better. But it was a new game and youth was the key.

  Soon we were brought up to officer strength by a lot of young officers, either from the ranks of the Royal Miliary college, or out of the eastern university officer training corp. The older officers that were transfered to non-combat units were prairie men who in the Colonel's wisdom thought they would not be tough enough to push us into the mold the Colonel had in mind. We missed these officers, but life went on, and we then sort of trained the young officers .

  The order of the day was a half hour of Phsyical training before breakfast, The order was everyone had to do this excercise. Well the Colonel did not take part so Sgt George Hegan used to march fox troop down under the colonel's window and bellow out the commands. { George had a great roar of a voice ]. Well it got the desired effect of awakening the Colonel who opened his window and said: "SGT Hegan get the hell out from under my window right now ,"

  George said "Yes sir" and departed with his troop, never to wake the old man again.

  We were to get a lot of new recruits in to bring the regiment up to the rquired number, so all of we sergeants spent hours doing parade square drill, so much we used to dream of this at night and some of the sergeants hollered out the drill orders in their sleep causing the rest of us thinking of putting a sock in their mouths.

  Again the spring and early summer of 41 was very busy and I shall go into that next installment ,