Bill Ford (Primary Source)

Transcript

My name is Bill Ford. I was born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan and I was in high school when the war broke out [in September 1939]. I got up as usual and picked up my little lunch bag and books and I headed off for school. I kept on walking until I got to the armouries and enlisted in the army and it didn’t take no time at all. If you could walk and breathe, well, you were in. When I told them [my age], well, you had to be 19 to go on active service, they always lifted their eyebrows and said, "oh yeah." So I was in when I was 17. And I was 19 when I came out. I was always interested in equipment, like most kids, I guess. In those days, there wasn’t too much automotive stuff around, so to ride in a car or a truck was something to do. When I went into the army, I could already drive, so that’s what I was stuck at doing. But I was in an accident and wound up in the hospital again. Then I got better and I was shipped to Toronto [Barrie, Ontario], Camp Borden, and there was further training there with different equipment. The same thing happened again, I was down and sent back into a military hospital where I spent quite a bit of time and I got healed there. And then I wound up in Fort William [Ontario], attached to The Lake Superior Regiment. I was there for five months or something like that and then I was discharged for a disability and that was it. But it was a good life, actually. You got good training and you met a lot of first class men and women. But you were always busy doing something or on the move. So I covered a lot of territory actually, but it was all in Canada.