John Blake Evans

I came down from Woodstock [New Brunswick] and enlisted here in Fredericton at No. 7 Depot. That was the headquarters for the whole province was in Fredericton, No. 7 was the headquarters and we came down here. We were told by letter that we were supposed to report to that point when we come down, which we did. We all got accepted into the military. I had spent three and a half years in the 89^th Battery in 5^th Field [Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery]. They said at the time that if you had been in the militia, you would continue with your particular type of artifice. But I didn’t continue with the artillery at all. I went to the infantry. They needed the infantry more than artillery, so I went to infantry, reinforcements. And I think I was scheduled to go to the Carleton and York [Regiment]. They found out I had a commercial course in vocational school so they needed somebody to do work on a regiment going overseas and they took me and put me in Sussex, New Brunswick. And I was down there in Sussex for months. I don’t know how many but it seemed like a long time with my unit. My unit went over. When I was in Sussex, I was a clerk. I looked after typing and keeping records and looking after the individual pay books for each soldier. I felt I should be - I was supposed to be in the reinforcement stream - I felt I should be fighting somewhere. I had signed up as a GS [general service] soldier and I signed for the Pacific. That’s when I ended up in Edmundston. It was the day I got out, I had to go into Halifax, we didn’t have anybody left up there in the headquarters; they had all taken their discharge. So I had to go to Halifax for it. That was quite a sight. To see Bedford Basin full, all the ships that had been used for going overseas, both navy and merchant navy.