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When we arrived at #4 Repair Depot we thought we were in the wrong place. All we could see was one completed building, which turned out to be the mess hall. There was one hanger under construction and several other buildings with the outer framework in place. We were ushered into the mess hall and told that we would get our meals in one half of the building and sleep in the other half. New airbases were springing up all across the country under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and these kinds of temporary arrangement were not uncommon. In actual fact the BCATP did a remarkable job starting from scratch only the year before. The combined mess hall/barracks facility lasted for about three weeks until our permanent quarters were ready. Some of the guys didn't want to move. They could roll out of the sack in the morning and he wolfing down the wonderful breakfast (which it was) in nothing flat. Of course everybody moved when the time came.

When completed, the Repair Depot had four fully-equipped hangers to service aircraft from all the airbases in the Maritimes. A large landing field of concrete runways was already constructed at the Scoudouc base. It was used for aircraft testing and also served as an auxiliary landing field for #8 Service Flying School at Moncton. There was not much to guard at first, each of us was assigned duty every third night and some weekends. This was increased to every other night as the hangers were completed. The shift was two hours on and four hours off, so we learned to catnap. We were armed with an unloaded 303 Lee Enfield rifle with a clip of five cartridges in our pocket. As far as I know there were no live rounds fired when I was at the Repair Depot. I heard of a stray cow being shot at another nearby base when, in the darkness, the black and white quadruped failed to respond to the challenge "Halt who goes there?" and suffered the consequences.

We had spare time at Scoudouc and Harry Yedor, a former telegrapher, from St. Louis taught us the Morse Code as a prelude to wireless training. We also had classes in algebra for the benefit of some of the Americans who hadn't studied math at school. Best of all we have time to play softball and touch football. We laid out the playing field at the intersection of two runways and except for interference from the occasional aircraft from Moncton SFTS cutting across home plate, it was great. I had played a bit of high school football and was never really built for the sport, but I could usually hang onto the ball. I played on Bob Gildersleeve's team and he had been a quarterback at college. He could thread a needle with his passes, and since there was no tackling, I have nothing to fear. Bob threw a lot of passes in my direction and I must've caught most of them. On our Scoudouc group photograph he signed his name with the notation "to my star end". I still have the photo and the prized signature. Bob lost his life over Europe after transferring to the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Another American, John Godfrey from Rhode Island was on my shift on guard duty and I got to know him well. I recall the day that he received a telegram informing him that an older brother had been killed when the ship, on which he was a passenger, was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in the North Atlantic. This occurred when the US was still officially neutral, and it was an unprovoked attack on an unarmed passenger ship. John's brother was on his way to Britain to serve in the US diplomatic service when his ship went down. John was visibly shaken by the news and I can still hear him saying, "I'll get the bastards!" - and he did. After graduation he proceeded overseas and flew Spitfires for a time on an RAF squadron. He later transferred to the US Army Air Corps and became one of their leading fighter aces. John Godfrey was shot down but survived the war. He married and New England millionairess and a string of race horses. In 1965, on our way home from Cape Cod, I phoned the Godfrey residence and learned that John had died sometime previously. I didn't know the circumstances at the time (I later learned that John had died of Lou Gehrig's disease in 1958 at the age of 36) and with the car full of kids we passed up the invitation to visit the family in Woonsocket,R.I.

During my time at Scoudouc, I met a nice family in Moncton-at church, where else? Their name was Austen and the husband Bill was a department head at Eatons. They were kind and generous people, and were typical of the thousands of families across Canada who welcomed service people into their homes. The Austens had already hosted several Australian and other Commonwealth airmen when they were training at Moncton, and continued to do so throughout the war. Mrs. Austen wrote to me regularly when I was overseas. Bill Austen died in the fifties but I kept in touch with his widow for another 20 years. I saw her occasionally in Pointe Claire when she was visiting her son, who also worked at Bell Headquarters in Montréal when I was there.

We had another character at Scoudouc who deserves mention. He was a Jewish lad from the Bronx who answered to the name of Ned Velger. He had such an atrocious accent that even the other Americans have difficulty understanding him. He was a happy-go-lucky guy and, although something of a braggart, was well-liked. He claimed that the girls wouldn't leave him alone. He went home on leave to New York one weekend and spun us some tall tales on his return. The girls were crazy about Ned in his blue uniform and he told them he was in the Royal Air Force which fascinated the Americans no end. They could relate to the Battle of Britain and all that. He also told them he was a pilot and had the wings to prove it. He showed his lady admirers the albatross insignia on his shoulder which was standard on all RCAF airmen's uniforms. It looks something like a wing to the uninitiated and according to Ned the girls fell for it.

There's more about Ned. One dark and rainy night, while on patrol, he had the misfortune to stumble into an open sewer trench that was under construction. It was at least five feet deep partially filled with water and the sides were slippery clay slime. There was no way he could climb out and his rifle was submerged in the gray muck. In the early dawn someone heard his shouts and pulled him out. His parka, his uniform and his rifle such an unholy mess that he spent the better part of the week cleaning up. I'm sure he wasn't injured and shortly afterward went into sick they in turn. The medical officer said he was run down and it was later thought to be |TB. He was still in hospital when we left Scoudouc I never saw or heard of Ned Velger again.

I've talked about some of the Americans up until now. There were Canadians to, one of whom was Ed Vincent from Toronto who was my bunkmate. We were both just out of high school and had a lot in common. Then there was a Jerry Millard him from Tatamagouche,NS and Jim Dobie from Clifford, Ontario. I mention them here because they would both train as Air Observers with me and be my flying partners at navigation school. They in turn would serve in the same bomber crew on my squadron in England. A word about Jerry MIllard - quite a wild guy. It seems that he was discharged from the RCAF in 1940 for a reason that I never learned, but it wasn't for good behavior. After a lapse of several months he reapplied using his own name and was accepted back into the service. Obviously the RCA and F didn't have a very good cross reference system in those days. I still hear from Jerry at Christmas from the Annapolis Valley. A heart attack and a him and him him and bout with cancer have slowed him down a little.

After Six Weeks of guard duty we were ready to move- by now it was rather boring stuff and we wanted to get on with some real training. A few of the Americans talked about "going over the hill" which was the term used in the State's for any soldier who takes off permanently. It would be desertion of course and the yanks might have got away with it, but not so the Canadians who Were on their home turf. The problem was that all training schools across the country were filled to capacity and we had to cool our heels. It didn't reach the crisis stage, and on November 9, 1941 we left for #3 Initial Training School (ITS) at Victoriaville, Québec, arriving there the next Day.