3 - England

Summary

On his return to Toronto, Harry had a few weeks' leisure before he enlisted in the army on 27 July 1944. With his COTC experience, he could have taken his chances as an officer cadet, but he chose to enter as a private, as he had said he would do the previous September. He did his basic training at Cornwall in eastern Ontario and his advanced infantry (machine gun) training at Camp Borden, which sprawled across sandy hills fifty miles north of Toronto. After training he was shipped overseas from Halifax by fast liner and arrived in England on 18 March 1945. En route to England, he developed sinusitis with the result that he spent almost a month in hospital and was then declared unfit for overseas service as an infantryman on 18 April. He thus remained at the Canadian centre at Aldershot to be a clerk in the orderly room of the Chaudières Regiment. There, he reported to Innis, he was “having a fair time … living with men who have been in the army for five or six years, so that I hear many interesting stories of black market activities and rackets by which soldiers are able to live beyond their income (it being virtually impossible to live within it)” [University of Toronto Archives, Innis Papers, B72-0025/003(03), 29 April 1945]. After almost a month in the orderly room, he was transferred to the 13th Canadian Education Section at Canadian Military Headquarters (CMHQ) in London.