Henry Gallant

I wound up in Halifax after I had my basic training on [Prince Edward] island. Then I went to Halifax and I boarded a ship there. We were seven days getting across from Halifax to England. Those ships weren’t very fast. Coming back, it only took us four days. I came back on the Queen Elizabeth, I forget if it was the [RMS] Queen Elizabeth or the [RMS] Queen Mary, it was a great big troopship. There was 500 men onboard, coming across. It was hard to believe, with so many people there. We were stationed in Dover, England and that’s where I started to drive a colonel. And then we took off from there, we landed in Normandy, France a month and two or three days. We had to stay there and wait for the Americans and the British to get all their heavy equipment landed. And other heavy stuff. We just stayed there and waited. And finally, we got going again and I went from Normandy, I went all through France and into Ghent in Belgium. And we stayed in Ghent for over a month, around two months I guess. Belgium. We finally left there and wound up in Nijmegen, Holland. We were pretty well at the front, the front lines. The army headquarters was behind the line, quite a ways. I was with the corps headquarters, 2nd Canadian Corps headquarters. And there was probably a dozen colonels there. I drove one of them. I was his private driver. I didn’t drive anyone else; just for him, just one colonel. He’d call up and ask for me to go and pick him up and I’d just jump in the car. I had a 1942 Ford during the war, a 1942 Ford car. And I had a Jeep besides that. We went to the front lines, in amongst the enemies and everything. And I would drive him wherever he wanted to go.