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W.I.
Enns had done nearly a year of alternative service in a mental hospital
in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, when he found out that service
in the medical corps was available.
“I
had worked at the hospital for about eight months when I discovered
that the government had made provision for conscientious objectors
to serve in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps [RCAMC]. This
appealed to me and after much soul-searching, I made the decision
to join the army as a non-combatant. On June 10th, I left Portage
la Prairie and volunteered for service in the RCAMC. This was
followed by three weeks of orientation at the Fort Osborne Barracks,
after which we were transferred to Peterborough, Ontario, for
basic training. I was assigned to a platoon totally made up of
non-combatants."
Part
of the training was exercise involving live fire. For example, soldiers
would have to attack a position while real bullets were shot over
their head to simulate real battle. In total, five men died while
Enns was in training. For the army, this was expected. Finally,
Enns was ready to leave for the battlefields of Europe.
“After
the final part of our training, I received a short embarkation
leave. Following my leave, our unit went on to Halifax. We boarded
the 'Letitia,' a hospital ship, early one morning in December
and sailed for England. Because it was a hospital ship and carried
only Medical Corps personnel and a few Air Force officers who
were under medical care, we sailed with all lights on. We were
required to avoid Navy convoys but somewhere along the way we
found ourselves within sight of a convoy and promptly had to change
our course. The detour took us to the coast of Spain. We finally
docked at Southampton on December 23rd, after ten days at sea.
It turned out to be a very cold winter in Britain. Fuel was rationed
and we arrived to the cold and dismal barracks which was to be
our home. Needless to say this environment, especially during
the Christmas season, was very depressing for us all.”
“After
perhaps a month in early 1944, we received our orders to cross
the English Channel. We landed somewhere in Belgium …. Everything
went well as we moved closer to the front line. For me, the reality
of moving into a war zone did not hit me until I noticed that
we were passing artillery and still moving. Our purpose was to
set up a Field Dressing Station where the wounded would receive
their first medical attention. In the meantime, we found an old
two storey house, or what was left of it, after much shelling,
and waited till it was safe to cross the Rhine River into Germany.
Artillery fire continued for weeks and every night enemy reconnaissance
planes flew over the area in an effort to locate the allied artillery
positions strafing the road on the way back to their base. Eventually
we did cross the Rhine and proceeded north and back into Holland,
where we set up our first field dressing station a few miles south
of Assen.”
“The
German army was retreating and after some time we moved back to
Germany and set up our station in Oldenburg where we stayed till
the end of the war in Europe. It served as a stopover for wounded
personnel who were treated and on their way home or to proper
hospitals for further treatment.”
“Our
commanding officer was aware that I spoke some German and from
time to time called on me to be his interpreter. This was our
first opportunity to work side by side with German civilians and
it was a good feeling.”
“Back
home we might have complained about inconveniences caused by the
war and of course we were concerned about the lives being lost.
Our inconveniences seemed so trivial when you saw civilians going
through garbage cans looking for food or befriending solders so
they would bring food from their camp kitchens. I am convinced
that people in general, no matter in what part of the world, are
basically peaceful and suffer as a result of power struggles,
greed, [and] in some cases, long-standing animosity between nations.”
[ASM, 107-110]
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