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Ron Peddler served in the Merchant Navy during the Second World War.
Please be advised that Memory Project primary sources may deal with personal testimony that reflect the speaker’s recollections and interpretations of events. Individual testimony does not necessarily reflect the views of the Memory Project and Historica Canada.
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Transcript
I think I was the only Canadian on it [a Norwegian merchant ship] but I got talking, just we went to shore and so on with the third mate and we got on pretty well together. He’d take you up there and knew English pretty well. It was in ships, went across the Atlantic pretty well. But the Park ships were mostly delivering in Italy itself, tanks and so on, what they needed over there in Italy. I think it was ‘43, Italy had surrendered to the Allied services. Quite dangerous at that time, ‘43. I don’t think there was a day went by or a ship went by that wasn’t picking up some kind of a distress call from another ship. They were coming in every ship, it wouldn’t be, there would be one distress call at least. We couldn’t respond too much. We didn’t have someone to fight the ship. The object was to get the materiel over to the war zones. I think it had, some of Canadian military navy ships out there to do that. No, we wouldn’t, we’d keep going and getting the material over would be the objective, alright. I think we made most of equipments from St. John’s, Newfoundland, I guess around the coast there, although it wasn’t anywhere dangerous. Generally, I think most equipment got up there, alright. I had no problem eating any of the meals that I can remember (laughs). Yeah, they had a reasonable cook on there. Probably wouldn’t be the top one in the local hotel. But you could eat it, I know I adjusted to it mostly.
