James Eldridge Densmore

Basic training was in [No. 60 Canadian Army (Basic) Training Centre] Yarmouth, that’s in Nova Scotia too. We spent a good deal of time there, a lot of training. Good training too. Met a lot of good guys, good officers. Then when we completed our training there, we were transferred to [Camp] Aldershot [A14 Canadian Infantry Training Centre] where we took our advance training. And that’s where we did all our heavy training and training with firearms, and all of that. Pretty rugged, but good. We completed our training in Aldershot. [We were] just ready to move overseas when it was declared over, V Day [Victory in Europe Day]. So we didn’t get there. And during my training, I always enjoyed sports. I played ball, played baseball. I was chosen for one of the senior players on the baseball team, do nothing but play baseball. But I had been married just a few months and it meant every weekend playing ball somewhere, you didn’t know where you’d be, so I turned that down. I wasn’t working at mechanical work at the advanced training. We were doing exercises and climbing walls and barbed wire fences, and you name it ̶ firing mortars, Sten [submachine] guns. And, of course, we had our gas chamber tests; and we had all of these different things, preparing for overseas.