Every night for 55 years, Bert Oliver has been reliving–through nightmares–the events that took him from his home here to the battlefields of Europe during the Second World War.
“The war may have ended in 1945 but it didn’t end for me on that day,” Oliver said last week. “Almost every night I have a nightmare about the war.
“I think about all the things I saw. I think about things a lot.”
In 1940, Oliver, along with 45 other men from Rainy River District, became part of the 17th Field Regiment of the Royal Canadian Artillery.
“I had heard about the things that had been happening in the war,” he remarked. “I enlisted because I thought it was the right thing to do.”
The 17th Field Regiment was full of men from all walks of life who were knitted together by army life, hardships, and danger to produce a successful fighting team.
For the men and officers, the regiment was a living entity that became their family and home away from home.
“We were sent to Aldershot, England in November, 1941 to get our training,” Oliver recalled. “We learned a number of military schemes, and also did some shooting. It was pretty tough.”
While in England, Oliver’s regiment was quickly initiated into British Army life. Spring beds that would leave six-inch bruises on the bodies of the soldiers for weeks, Brussels sprouts and sausages 10 times a week, as well as poor heating and plumbing made the almost two years they spent in England unbearable.
Still, there were some brighter sides to life in Aldershot for the 17th Regiment.
“We were the number-one regiment in artillery,” Oliver said. “We were very ‘spit and polish’ they called it. So we were given the honour of being inspected by the King [George VI] and Queen [Elizabeth] of England.”
Then in October, 1943, Oliver and his regiment boarded a military convoy and made their way down the Atlantic and across the Mediterranean Sea to Naples, Italy, where they landed on Nov. 8.
While passing through the Straits of Gibraltar on their way to Naples, Oliver got his first taste of what the war was going to be like.
“On the sixth of November, our convoy was attacked by German torpedo bombers,” he remembered. “I was up on deck because it helped with sea sickness. At sunset, I saw a bunch of planes on the horizon. They were German, and they started dropping torpedoes into the water.
“When they hit the water, our ship’s alarms went off and the doors on the ship automatically locked. I was stuck up on the top deck.
“As I stood there, I saw one plane headed right for me. I would have been dead if it wasn’t for the barrage balloon we had flying above our ship. It was attached with a steel cable, and the plane swerved around it and missed our ship.
“At the end of the attack, they had sunk one ship and damaged two others,” he added.
From Naples, the regiment began a 14-mile march to the camping area near the town of Afragola. Though the men had been told of the beauty of the Italian countryside, what they were greeted with was less than picturesque.
“It was cold, snowing, and very muddy in Italy,” recalled Oliver. “Things were not very good at all.”
In addition to poor weather, the troops also were faced with the threat of both malaria and jaundice. Mosquito nets were issued and the soldiers were given mepacrine pills once a day.
“We were short on men and ammunition,” Oliver said. “Normally there are six-men gun crews but we only had three-men gun crews.”
Oliver and his fellow soldiers, on numerous occasions, had their ingenuity tested in trying to find ways to keep dry and warm while still protecting themselves from German shells .
“A shell landed about eight feet in front of my gun pit,” he remarked. “Some gun pits had direct hits. One time, a sergeant was killed and two men were injured next to me. A lot of men were hurt.”
A young man thrust into the throes of war, Oliver experienced many things that he was not prepared for as a young man from Rainy River District.
“I remember this one time we were being shelled,” he said. “I was in a slit trench and while I was in it, a buddy of mine dove onto me. As he landed on me, I heard him praying to himself.
“I remember hearing a saying once that you will never find an atheist in a slit trench. That’s really true.”
With war comes death, and Oliver was one of so many soldiers who witnessed the brutality and gruesome side of war.
“We were at this one gun position,” he remembered. “It was on this secondary road, near a farm. All night I had heard machine guns. The next morning, some jeeps came by full of dead bodies.
“They asked some of us to help dig graves for the bodies, and I was one of the ones who did it. We would wrap the bodies in blankets and then bury six of them at a time.
“The minister would come around before they were buried, and remove one of their dog tags and put it in a bag with the other things that had been taken from the dead soldiers’ bodies. Some of them were a real mess–really shot up.
“You would go to bed thinking that was the end of that, and then the next morning there would be another jeep full of bodies to be buried. All I could keep thinking was who these kids belonged to,” Oliver said.
When word finally came that the war was over on May 9, 1945 (V.E. Day), Oliver and his regiment were in the pretty Dutch town of Winschoten.
The cease fire was received at 08:00 hours by a regiment that could not believe that the war was finally over.
“There was a big sigh of relief when we heard the news,” Oliver remembered. “We had nothing to drink and we were really thirsty. So we decided to make ourselves a cup of tea.
“That is what I remember.”
When the war ended, the men of the 17th Field Regiment returned to their homes changed by their experiences. Though the war was over, it stilled lived on in the memories and the lives of the men who were a part of it, who suffered through it, and laughed with it.
Since the end of the war, Oliver has made a few trips back to Europe to pay tribute to his fellow soldiers who did not make it home in 1945.
“I have gone back to Italy and to Holland,” he said. “We took 12 wreaths and laid seven of them in Italy and four of them in Holland.”
Though the years have dulled the intensity of some of his memories, Oliver cannot forget the haunting images that he has been left with.
And as another Remembrance Day approaches, Oliver is thrust back onto the battlefields to remember the faces of the men he served with.
“I think about the guys I served with, and not just the local boys but all of them,” he recalled. “So many of them were killed–some so young.
“All of the guys I served with were great men. They were brave soldiers.”
Lest we forget.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
