Mr. Bill Booth visited schools to talk with young people about WWII.  After his visit, Brita, a schoolgirl from Surrey, said ; Bill Booth is a Veteran from World War II. He came to our class and shared his experiences and views on everything that was going on around him.  Mr. Booth did not take part in the front lines or kill a hundred German soldiers but without him there would be one less hero fighting for the freedom that we have today. He was a technician who fixed radios and other electronics. He told us though that back then there wasn’t a lot to work with. “The key word was improvise. We had to fix things when there wasn’t the equipment to do so.”  He shared with us this one near death experience that he had. A bomb had gone off near him, but luckily another man had told him to dig a rabbit hole just before it went off. He jumped in the hole and managed to survive. Another incident happened during the night. He was sitting in the passenger seat of a truck when the driver said that he was tired. Bill was to take the wheel and drive though he had never driven in his life. He took the wheel and tried to follow the vehicle in front of him but ended up losing sight of the truck in front. So he had to navigate while learning how to drive. His truck passed another group of trucks heading another way. He just prayed it wasn’t the Germans and if it was that they didn’t see him. They managed to get to the new camp and found out later that the other trucks were Germans.  It was nice to have Bill Booth come and tell us about the war, because he was there. He saw the deaths, he smelt the trenches, and he heard the sounds of guns. He knows so much more then any textbook I could read. The sad fact is that these veterans are getting old and soon won’t be here to share with us the war stories of the past. So, we as the future must listen, and pass their stories on.

So he had to navigate
while learning how to drive

Bill Booth - WWII Veteran

Courtesy of the Dominion Institute, Toronto ON, 
www.thememoryproject.com