George Clark Meggison

I joined before Canada went to war. When Canada went to war, the unit had joined in entered into the fray. We arrived in England about the first part of January. We were unlucky enough to be present for the great raids that they had then. I stayed with the same outfit – the [61st Field Battery, 14th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian] Artillery – for the next six years, because I didn't get my discharge until sometime just before Christmas… November, I think. Those pictures were taken by… every unit has an officer attached to it to keep a war diary. A young chap, who was my immediate boss at the time... the pictures he took, he always gave me a copy, because naturally at that time we weren't allowed to carry cameras or anything. The top picture, that's myself and a friend… I think he was Sergeant Major at the time. And that was in a Non-Commissioned Officer's post. That was just past Ortona. That would be in the winter of '43. We were trying to make it up the coastline to Rimini. The second picture is in the south of Italy, and it's a little boy who was right in the middle of a battlefield at the time. You can see him… he's leading a little mule with a load of cornstalks on it. He was about ten years old. And off to one side you can see the tail end of our advance truck going ahead. The reason that I kept those two pictures was the contrast. All mud and muck on the top picture, and beautiful bushy forest and brushland. That's when we finally got down to the malaria country.