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You want my Dutch war story eh
Interview with Mr. John Hatt - (21st March 2005)
You want my Dutch war story eh?
Well then you must know I'm married to a Dutch girl
named Willie Klein, eh?
Yes, it's all still fresh in my mind, you never forget.
I had signed up in Fredericton with the Canadian army
and in 1941 we went to Colchester, an army town in
England. The 7th anti-tank regiment of the First
Canadian Army Corps was formed that same year. My
rank was sergeant and I was sent to Sicily in Italy with
the 104th anti-tank battery. Well, we had gone through
two lines and after one and a half years in Italy we
went by troop-ship from Naples to Marseille and then up
through France, Belgium, and parts of Holland that had
been liberated already. We were an anti-tank unit and
had been using self-propelled weapons, much like a
Sherman tank, only it had an open turret as opposed to a
closed turret. When we left Italy they didn't come with
us. As far as the fighting goes, it was much easier,
because we were actually artillery troops, we weren't
infantry troops, but we were used as infantry troops in
Holland. Really, if you want somebody to talk about the
Holland-push, the big push started in France, in
Northwest Europe, through Belgium and up through
Holland, we weren't there for that, we were fighting in
Italy, where we had our own problems at the Monastery
(of Monte Cassino). There are many men that did a lot
more than I did in Holland... We reached the static line
at Arnhem, and I spent time on the dykes near the famous
bridge in Arnhem, "a bridge too far...." I remember one
night they asked us to count the fires in the city that
had been caused by the shells and one night I could see
more than one hundred fires...that was in April. We took
Arnhem and then continued through the country, until the
war was over on May 5th, 1945. I hope I got my dates
right, my memory is not all that it used to be.
I'm almost 89 years old
John Hatt, Fredericton, Ontario |
