At Gordon Head we were interviewed, given a cursory medical examination, and
declared fit to travel. I was amused a few years ago, when I received a copy of
my documents from Ottawa, to learn that one of the interviewers had scribbled a
note to the effect that I would not likely amount to anything.I would like to
compare notes with him now!
Five days after arriving in Victoria, we were loaded aboard a special train and
sent off east. Someone had painted the words, "Hong Kong Special" on the side
of the cars.
After stopping to let ex-POWs off along the way, the Hong Kong Special   
terminated at Park Extension Station in Montreal
Montreal
Park Extension Station was crowded with people who came to welcome us. On
the platform I immediately spotted two friends who had been in the war in Europe
and who had recently arrived back home.
The first night after I arrived, a group of us went to the Diana Grill on the corner of
Peel and Ste. Catherine streets and raised a rumpus.
What the war had done to us! Here we were, five young men from the New
Richmond-Grand Cascapedia area, three who had served in England and Europe,
who had seen the terror and devastation of the war on the continent, and the
bombing and destruction of cities in England, one who had been in the Merchant
Marine, ferrying supplies and men to England, while dodging German torpedoes,
and myself, just back from Japanese prison camps,
It has caused me to wonder what may have happened to us five and other
thousands of young men and women, if the war had not come along.
For myself, I think that I may not had the inspiration to go back to school and
earn something of a formal education. I may not have had the opportunity to lead
a full and satisfying life as an educator, instead of pursuing some mundane and
dead-end job, a destiny I was otherwise headed for.
So, did the war help me? In that sense it did. In spite of the horrors and
deprivation, the endless days of languishing behind barbed wire, the hunger, the
disease, the insurmountable hopelessness, the waiting and longing;  the outcome
for me was a change of direction in my life and a chance to do something better.
For that I am grateful.
Carousing in Montreal while waiting on bureaucracy was enough to make me
anxious to see the folks at home, the ones I had left so abruptly just before
Christmas in 1940 after my sick leave.
Arnold Ross and I had overstayed our time in Montreal, and thus had missed the
free ride home. We somehow got to Quebec City with all our gear.
I had my "liberated" Samurai sword strapped to my belt and what was left of a
sixty-carton case of Camel cigarettes, purchased on the Hugh Rodney, slung over
my shoulder.
Not knowing that the Quebec Army Headquarters had been moved from the
Citadel in Quebec City, we headed up the hill to get a railway pass for the trip
home.
By that time it was evening, and not much was stirring at the Citadel. We found an
officer, God bless him, who scurried around, telephoned, and searched, and
finally got authorization to write passes for us to board the train at Levis at
midnight. Arnold offered him a drink from a bottle of rye that he was carrying
under his tunic!
Arnold, John St.Onge, and I got off the train in Campbellton the next morning to
be met by my father and my brother, and an old friend from boyhood days.
Home at last!
When we arrived at our house, Mother was standing in the doorway, sixty years
old, looking pink and healthy. A tearful reunion!. Strangely, I don't remember very
much about it.
On reflection, I don't think I exhibited much emotion of any kind. Had I become
hard and unfeeling? What had prison camp done to me?
At any rate, I had come home. It was October 16, 1945, four years less four
days since I had been home on embarkation leave.
Now what to do? There were parties a-plenty, almost every night, everyone
celebrating the end of the war, and each day welcoming late home comers from
Europe and elsewhere. The rest of the 1945 autumn passed in a haze.