Memory Project

Sadie Watts (Primary Source)

Published Online March 27, 2023

Last Edited June 3, 2024

This testimony is part of the Memory Project Archive

Sadie Watts served in the Canadian Women's Army Corps 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.

(Left to Right): The Canadian Volunteer Service Medal and the War Medal 1939-45
Sadie Jodrey Watts tries to attend gatherings of the CWACs like the 58th reunion in 1999 (left) and the opening of the CWAC Memorial in Kitchener on May 5, 2001 (right).
This poem about the CWACs was handed out at one of their reunions. Mrs. Watts has it framed in the front of her photo album.
As an orderly room clerk at Pier 21 in Halifax, she helped process the soldiers, hospital ships and war brides that came through the port of Halifax
Sadie Jodrey Watts in 1943. She served with the Canadian Women's Army Corps at Pier 21 in Halifax
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Hospital ships, war brides, prisoners of war, troops coming back from overseas – those were the different ships that came into that unit where we were.

Transcript

I'm Sadie Watts. My maiden name was Jodrey. I joined the CWAC [Canadian Women's Army Corps] in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the 26th of February 1943. Basic training: March the 11th 1943, Kitchener, Ontario. Took a four month-stenographer course, one month recruiting precision squad. Twenty-seven months orderly room clerk, Embarkation Transit Unit Halifax, Pier 21, was where I worked. Hospital ships, war brides, prisoners of war, troops coming back from overseas – those were the different ships that came into that unit where we were. My husband was on the troop ships, as he was military police, and that's how we met. I received the [Canadian] Volunteer [Service Medal] and the War Medal [1939-45], and have attended six reunions – two Peterborough, Ontario, one London Ontario, one in Newfoundland, fiftieth in Ottawa, one in Windsor. Attended the CWAC memorial in Kitchener in 2001, where a CWAC statue was unveiled. The Lieutenant-Governor Hillary Weston and Brigadier General Robin Daniel attended that. Approximately twelve hundred attended. I retired in March 1946, when the unity closed out and the CWAC were disbanded.