When I walk in now, they like to say:  “Hi Jack.”

Interview– April 2005
Mr. Jack Price  - WWI Veteran
Sergeant, first corps troops, Royal Canadian Engineers
Liberator of the Netherlands

We went there from Italy, I forgot what the date was, I got my service record and everything there. We were in Italy for 18 months, we were 1st division troops, we were in Italy then we come up on the boat to end the war. I could give you the date, if I went to pick up the papers I got over there.….just a moment…here it is, I got what I was looking for…, I got a record on my service, from Ottawa. A while ago they were advertising it…what the devil?….we went to Italy in ’43… what the hell of days is that…?  These guys they weren’t fussy how they wrote it…. February of ’45. Here it says February of  ‘45 we went to Holland. We were what they call corps-troop engineers, and we just did the clean-up, we spent most of our time destroying the road-blocks that the Gerries had put on the main highways. I’ll tell you one story about one truck, we were just out of Utrecht, they had a beautiful sergeants’ club there.  We were in a place called the Bilt.  I’ll tell you something, this is just between you and I, I met one girl, I even remember her name, she was well, a pleasure to be with, because she spoke perfect English. I’m telling you…she was absolutely beautiful, we’d be out there, stopped that bloody truck and …”Tell that guy to get his ass out of the way for a visit!” and all that hollering… it was nice to find somebody who spoke with you without swearing. One night one of the boys went to the sergeant’s mess and they got them feeling pretty good, so wondered out and they picked a wall of empty cigarette cases, and they set them up on the stage like a teepee, and they set fire to it. They come home laughing like hell.  It didn’t do any damage….that was in the sergeant’s mess, the sergeants’ club in Utrecht. We didn’t do any clean-up action there…we left there shortly after I have the co-ordinates here. I was a sergeant in the first corps troops, I was in the Engineers,  Royal Canadian Engineers. We were cleaning’em off, so they could try using the highways. There was always somebody wanting to go, (…)  so we had to go blow something up. The clearing of mines I didn’t like. We were in Italy for 18 months, so…..Holland was a hell of a nice country, that’s why I went there for the 50th anniversary in 1995, and we were on the other side of Holland, in Bodegraven, we stayed at some place there. I thought it was a very clean country, specially if you’d just come up there from Italy.  I tell you something, I was pretty young too, because I joined the army when I was 16 and I lied. I had my eighteenth birthday, going overseas.

 I was overseas ‘till the end of the war, anyways….something like ’45. I was married, but I broke that off in a hurry and got back here when she said she’d got married, and I said “Have fun,” and I went to work on the drilling rigs. The people were very good to us in Holland I felt, that’s why I went back in 95.   I’d like to go back next year, but when you’re 82, 83…, I’m now on pension, and you can’t afford to do too much travelling around. I rather enjoyed being in the engineers, other than the mine-clearing, we had a couple of guys loose their feet that way. The engineer-work we were doing, we also built a lot of bridges too.  As a matter of fact, the last….we were waiting for the old man, as we called the guy in charge, him and I were going out to make a reconnaissance trip to build a bridge he wanted to put up, we were getting ready to leave and this guy came up to us and says “No, cancel it,” the war was over, that was the best words we ever heard!  We were stationed in Utrecht. They cancelled it, they didn’t need it anymore, the war was over. That was the last assignment. The funny coincidence of that was that we were putting up on a dance that night, they were going to come, but none of them would dance, because of the situation, the way the Germans treated the Dutch.  The war was over, then they took part in the celebrations, and we had a hell of a good time. The Dutch were not fat and obese. 
I got some pictures I took in 1995, got them in my album, I’d like to show you.  I haven’t got  any pictures of the war, you don’t walk around  the war with a camera in your hand.
They were inactive by the time we got there…I can’t think of his name, a civilian took us all into their room, into their houses, he showed me a little hideout he had in the basement which they had used, so he was working with the underground. He showed me this after the war. They didn’t have any underground in Italy I don’t think.
East of Utrecht, on the main highway, there, big cement blocks on the road, they were staggered, so you had to slow down and go around them.  They wanted them out. We got them moved out of there, but we had to blow them up, because they were all steel reinforced.  Some of these guys were a little impatient “Oh, I got to go, I got to get somewhere.” The only way you could do’em, was to blow them and to cut the iron and the reinforcements.  The Germans were gone, and the war was over.  The war was completed and finished by the time we got over there. We’ve come up from Italy according to this piece of paper I got in my hand here.   I can’t see the date here right now.  We’d come back to Calgary in September ’45, it would be the spring of  ’45. We went in there the 8th of November 1943 (Italy).  We struck off France and Italy the 22nd of February 1945. We weren’t in Holland too long, they had us doing that to keep us out of mischief, it was a nice little town, de Bilt.

photo June 16th, 2005 - Camrose, AB
 

I sure enjoyed that in 1995. Another thing, we were probably too lazy to learn the language, everybody spoke English, you didn’t have to stand there waving your hands trying to say something. After the war I went to work on a drilling rig, on an oilfield in Northern Alberta for Imperial Oil.  I did that for 34 years, till my pension. I didn’t enjoy it too much, you were away from home for a long time, 4 weeks at a time.  You had to fly in and it was bloody cold some nights. I spent 72 months in the army.  I was away from home for a long time.  My brother got a little “p’d” off, he had to lie a little about his, there weren’t too many months between us….
In Calgary I was in the militia, sergeant reserve, in Saskatchewan, when I was 16. Sergeant’s reserve, it was army, it wasn’t a regular force, you only met once a week, and summer camp.  In 1939 I joined up for sergeant, and got my rank right away.  I often tell the kids I joined the army so that I didn’t have to go back to school.  I was just a little asshole of a guy, I hung around, they were from the militia, my brother and cousin were in the same outfit for a while.  This was in Calgary. Engineer camp was in Dundirn in Saskatchewan in ’39 and ‘40.  We left from there, by train to Halifax and up to Glasgow, and then by train down to Aldershot in England.  We were there during the battle of Britain, when all the bombing of London was going on and all that.  We were over there then.  We didn’t go to Italy till 43.  Spent about 3 years in England.  You can call me Jack, everybody else does, like the girls in the bank they call me that.  When I walk in now, they like to say:  “Hi Jack.”