Charles Gordon Perry

It was so farfetched. The war was so far away, it didn’t affect us much. We were sort of excited about it. We [HMCS Skeena] left Halifax and after that, about 200 miles out to sea, the captain cleared the lower deck and told us we were headed for the war zone. When we arrived over in France, there was four of us, two at a time we used to sail into France, and helped escort the French and the British across the [English] Channel. In one case, the HMCS Fraser was in a collision with HMS Calcutta, a British cruiser [armed anti-aircraft vessel], and it cut a great hole in her, and she sunk, with quite a few lives lost. Right away after the Fraser was sunk, they bought another destroyer [large armed escort vessel] from Great Britain, refitted it and started back to Canada. We went with them as an escort and she was returning to Canada; and it was a fast escort, and we were accompanied by heavy crew ships, supply ships. And one bad night, the [HMCS] Margaree was trailing the escort. One of the crew ships [MV Port Fairy] run into her and cut a great gash in her; and she sank before she could get ashore. Most of the crew on her was from the Fraser that was originally sunk in the English Channel.