Alexandre Doucette (Primary Source)

Transcript

Before 1943, I went to school. Another thing I did was to work and help my father on the land because my father was a farmer. He really wanted me to take over the farm. But that didn’t work for me, because I had other things in mind: I wanted to enlist and go join my friends. A lot of young people I had gone to school with had gone to the war. I was 15 the first time that I enlisted. I enlisted in Bathurst, New Brunswick. I spent about a month there and then my father came to get me. He didn’t want me to enlist in the forces; he wanted to keep me with him to work the land because he couldn’t find anyone else to help him. I was the only son left at home and the only one who knew the land and who could help him and contribute a little. All of my brothers had left because we had a big family. There was no other work but farm work in that area of New Brunswick. So once they came of age, they left for Ontario, Quebec and other areas in New Brunswick to find work. I enlisted and that’s what saved my life because we slept in beds, we were clothed and we were fed three square meals a day. It was already a lot more than I’d ever had. We earned $1.30 a day, something that I had never known before.

They transferred me to Camp Borden; it was the winter of 1943-1944. They had me take driving classes for all of the trucks the army used at that time. After the training, which I passed with flying colours, since I was - or they thought I was - a pretty serious guy, they sent me on a non-commissioned officer’s course. That went well and so I became an instructor for recruits that were arriving at Camp Borden. I was there until fall 1944. And then in 1944, I went to see a doctor because at Camp Borden, the Army Service Corps as they were called at the time, weren’t sending people to Europe anymore. I was transferred to Valcartier because I absolutely wanted to go to England to be sent to the battlefield, because the invasion [of Normandy] had already taken place in 1944, as you know. I wanted to be a part of the team that was there to fight, to help fight. In the end though, we didn’t go over. I was at the beginning of 1945 and as you know, all of that was over in June and so I missed my chance.But in the meantime, I was also volunteered at Valcartier for the Pacific forces that were being formed in Aldershot, Nova Scotia. So I ended up there but then the atomic bomb was dropped, I mean the nuclear bomb, on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, so that ended that. That fell through as well.

Once the war against Korea was declared, I was still in New Brunswick working as an instructor for the Cadet corps. So they transferred me to Valcartier with the 2nd battalion that was being formed for Korea; the 2nd battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment. At that time, there was only one battalion, the 1st battalion and it was during those years that the 2nd and 3rd battalions were raised, specifically for Korea. Afterwards, I continued my service. I went to Germany with the 2nd battalion twice. I spent four years at the military college as an instructor here, in Saint-Jean. I spent a period in Cyprus with the battalion in 1959. Finally, in 1973, I retired as a chief warrant officer. We had a lot of veterans from the Second World War with us, especially with the 2nd battalion. There were maybe a good 30%. I returned to Korea in 2003 and it did me a lot of good to see that. I thought to myself, "We didn’t come here to fight for nothing." We did some good. But then I look at what’s going on today - take Afghanistan for example - and I wonder if, in two or three years, will those youth be able to say, "We didn’t go there for nothing"?