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Douglas McDougall holds a photograph of himself that he submitted to be part of the archives of The Memory Project - Stories of the Second World War. (Photo Joe Fries)
After spending just a few minutes chatting with Second World War veterans like Frankie Turner and Douglas McDougall, it’s easy to see the value of a new project designed to preserve their stories for generations of Canadians to come.
The two were among the few dozen vets who turned out Saturday at the Okanagan Military Museum to make their contributions to The Memory Project – Stories of the Second World War. It’s hoped the $2.6-million venture, funded by Heritage Canada, will eventually see the stories of 3,000 Canadian veterans posted online in print, video and audio files.
Some of the project’s staff members are travelling across the country collecting stories through interviews with vets, while others are doing the same over the phone from headquarters in Toronto.
“Our goal is to preserve the stories as told by the veterans themselves,” explained communications co-ordinator Erin Whittaker. “Overall, (the online archive) is meant to be there for Canadians for years to come.”
Turner, 87, likes that.
“It brings back an interest in what some of us did in the Second World War,” she said. “I think it’s good to bring it to the attention of the public and the younger people.”
The Montreal native enlisted in 1942 after some of her friends joined the Royal Canadian Air Force.
“My parents were, of course, dead against my joining up, but it was something I had to do,” she explained.
As a female, she wasn’t allowed to sign on to a flight crew, and instead became a teletype operator. Stationed in Linton-On-Ouse in England for nearly two years, Turner’s primary job was to record the names, ranks, ages and other identifying information for members of the seven-man crews who flew the 30 bombers in the two squadrons she looked after.
“And when they came back, my job was to send the casualty list to headquarters, which I never got used to,” she said. “Otherwise, I was working with everybody, being bombed, the regular things you do overseas.”
After the war, she had five kids and worked as a secretary, then taught at a business college before retiring and finally moving to Kelowna 22 years ago.
McDougall, on the other hand, was born and raised here. The 86-year-old also enlisted at 19, and also because his friends did. He went to Vancouver looking to join the air force as a pilot but found there were no jobs available. He eventually settled for the army and commanded an artillery unit.
His 3.5 years overseas began with an unlikely 10-month assignment as the postmaster on a base in England.
“I just about flipped,” he recalled, adding the most interesting part of the job was trying to track down a shipment of cigarettes that fell off a truck somewhere; the smokes were never recovered.
After that, he was shipped over to Italy in 1944 just weeks before Mount Vesuvius erupted.
“That was great,” he said. “That stopped our operation for awhile.”
Next came Holland, the country he was in when the war ended.
“Well that was a night I’ll never forget. Everything broke loose,” McDougall recalled.
With the war over, his final assignment was to help disarm the Germans and recover supplies. To do that, he needed an interpreter, whom he was assigned to collect in a Dutch village. He was on his way there when he accidentally liberated a whole other town.
Riding a bicycle with nothing on but a pair of shorts and a gun slung over his shoulder, McDougall rode into the small village of Achtung only to be greeted by an excited crowd.
“I guess they figured I was their liberator, and here they’d been expecting a whole regiment!” he said with a laugh.
When his service ended, McDougall came back to Canada and worked a variety of jobs across the country before settling once again in Kelowna.
“It was kind of an exciting life,” he concluded.
There are approximately 150,000 Canadian Second World War veterans still alive, the average age of whom is 87. To sign up yourself or a family member for the Memory Project, visit the website.
Joe Fries
250-575-4303
