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Arthur Donald McKellar served in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. Read and listen to his testimony below.
Please be advised that Memory Project primary sources may deal with personal testimony that reflect the speaker’s recollections and interpretations of events. Individual testimony does not necessarily reflect the views of the Memory Project and Historica Canada.
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Transcript
All we did was from Londonderry, then we went to patrol and down between Ireland and England, down through the channel there and go down as far as Southampton and along the south coast of England. Well of course, the German submarines were in that area. Well, I suppose their, the submarine was damaged by some anti-submarine equipment that was, would be on the bottom of the ocean there. And so the crew members, they were in life rafts you see, so we took them onboard and took them prisoner back to Southampton. I suppose it would be in the Irish Sea that the ship, the frigate, it had been torpedoed. Like if you got the ship and the front half of the ship was gone and the crew - a lot of the surviving crew - were still there on deck, wanting to be transferred off. And our captain wanted to go in and pick them up but we were advised to stay clear because we might get hit by a submarine. So that’s, I can just see these men standing right just as I can look at you right now. So that’s the most graphic experience we had there.
