Harry Ward Macdonald

I was a Seaforth [Highlanders of Canada] cadet, so I was in the officer training centre, scheduled to go to the Seaforths. But the commanding officer of the training centre was a Seaforth, and he knew me. He told me that I should not go to the Seaforths because the lineup to get into the regiment was a mile long; and I’d never get there, the regiment had to be wiped out a couple of times before I’d get in. So he said, go tanks; they’re going to win the war anyway. So I went tanks. I started in the officer training centre as a tank reinforcement officer, and went to the Ontario Regiment [11^th Armoured Regiment] when I graduated. I joined the Ontario Regiment when they were in Italy. The Germans had a tank that would penetrate our tanks at almost any distance. Their gun had more muzzle velocity than ours; and we didn’t have the armour in front that they had. So the only way we could get a German tank was to get it from the side or the back. We couldn’t penetrate them from the front. Our guns didn’t have the muzzle velocity; and they had heavy protection. So we had to get them from the side. Now, for every tank the Germans had, we had about 10, so that made the battle a little more even. [laughs] As I said, we had about 10 tanks for every one they had. So that leveled the score a bit. And all we had to do was have some tanks at the front shooting at them, and the rest went around the side.