MOOSE JAW — The Times-Herald newspaper’s special supplement on May 8, 1945, celebrating the end of the Second World War in Europe provided an in-depth look at Canada’s efforts at home and abroad.
“Our army shares in great victory,” read one headline, noting that “Canadians played (a) leading part in (the) toughest battles of (the) European war.” These battles occurred in the hot, blistering sun of Sicily and Italy and the rain, cold and mud of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.
Some major battles included Dieppe in August 1942, Sicily in July 1943, the Italian campaign from September 1943 to January 1945, Ortona, Italy in December 1943, the D-Day invasion in June 1944, the Battle of Normandy from June to August 1944, campaigns in the Netherlands from late 1944 to early 1945, and northern Germany in spring 1945.
The supplement also had a full page describing how pilots “found their wings over the rolling Prairie” while training with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan from December 1939 to early 1945.
This program turned out more than 131,000 airmen from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, 麻豆视频 Africa, Poland and elsewhere, while it led U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to dub Canada the “aerodrome of democracy.”
There were hundreds of training sites across Western Canada, with Moose Jaw hosting No. 32 Elementary Flying Training School, a Royal Air Force school, from 1940 to 1944.
The front lines
The newspaper supplement had an article featuring comments that were “informal, homey and, at times, ‘straight from the shoulder’” from Maj. Ed Hudson, 1st Battalion, Black Watch, who spoke to the Rotary Club at the Grant Hall Hotel a day before V-E Day.
Hudson — wounded twice in Italy and once in Belgium — discussed a letter he sent to the next-of-kin of his company, and while reading extracts from the letter, he interspersed many stories of incidents from the front that, “alternately, gave place to a solemn hush or nearly ‘raised the rafters’ because of their delightful humour.”
The letter discussed the soldiers’ celebrations of Christmas Day 1944, although they only had Christmas supper on Jan. 7, 1945, since “such is life at the front within gun range of your friend, the enemy,” as Hudson put it.
Yet, the Canucks wouldn’t let “Jerry” stop them from celebrating in the traditional Canadian way, he said. They created a banquet room in a battered house that used to be three storeys but had been “so well ventilated” by shells and bullets that it was now one storey.
The cook sent word at 2:30 p.m. that dinner was ready, while the padre was present to say grace after he “sneaked up the back way to see us” since it took him more than an hour to reach the building.
Then, despite being in a war zone, for over three hours, the men grabbed their food in groups and ate turkey, pork chops, potatoes, peas, stuffing, brown gravy, Christmas pudding, rum sauce, tea, cake, cigarettes, chocolate bars, chewing gum and “a real orange.
The officers and senior NCOs washed dishes and served the men, while the padre served the potatoes and peas since the soldiers felt they “couldn’t trust him with the rum sauce.”
“If you could only have seen the eyes of those men, it would have repaid you a million times over for the parcels, as it paid us for our efforts,” said Hudson.
Despite the “thunder of guns and death walking almost within hand’s reach,” Santa Claus did not overlook “the jolly little party” because every man received a bag with an apple, 115 Canadian cigarettes, chocolate bars, nuts, chewing gum and candy.
The event concluded with a Highland dance, beer, a movie and a group picture.
The home front
Meanwhile, on the home front, the war showed how Canada’s “vast natural wealth” was vital to the world’s peace since the Dominion’s supply of food, minerals and laboratory production “greatly expanded” during the conflict.
The article indicated that Canada had the world’s third-largest forest land, which provided the raw materials for products such as Mosquito bombers and fuel wood. This yield of pulpwood increased by over 200 million cubic feet during the war.
Furthermore, Canadian mining reached new highs as the Dominion led the world in producing asbestos, nickel, radium and platinum and was second in aluminum, gold, mercury and molybdenum.
Moreover, Great Britain’s wartime demands for food kept Canadian cattlemen busy providing that market with beef, bacon and other meats, while new agreements assured the producers that they would have access to that market for a long time.
Britain’s biggest needs were for meat, dairy products, eggs and poultry. These requirements increased Canadian cattle production by 32 per cent and hog production by 123 per cent.
Meanwhile, data from 1944 showed Canadian city-dwellers produced 60,500 tons of vegetables from their 226,000 Victory Gardens, farms produced 458,240,000 bushels of wheat, an increase of 60 per cent from the previous year, and Canada produced 40 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, with one-twentieth of that going to the United States.
Part 2 of 4 in a series.
