Nfld. Overseas Forestry Unit 1939-1945/46
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What was its purpose? What did you do there? What was the urgency of it?
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What most people did not know was that all British factories, such as ammunition factories or, as the British would say, "munition factories", and the like operated on coal. In order to take coal from the mines, pit-props were essential.
Britain used to import most of the wood from countries like Sweden and Norway, but these countries were taken over by the Germans, and all western Europe was now in the hands of Hitler.
Britain now had to rely on her own wood stands to supply her coal mines, and that's where the Newfoundland lumberjacks came in. We could cut more timber in one day than most other people, that I saw over there anyway, could cut in a week. That may be bragging, but that's ok. Without a rich supply of coal, factories could not operate at full capacityy, which would cause a serious blow to the war effort. By January 1940, a request had been made for 2000 men. 2150 men were recruited and the recruiting operations were concluded, but by June a request was made for another thousand men, and by early 1941 we were close to four thousand strong. We built roads to timber stands, built bridges, removed wood from very steep terrain, trucked it to railway stations and loaded it on railway cars for destinations. We also shipped wood by water from a town called Ullapool to different English ports.
During the winter and spring of 1945 the unit also sent several ship loads of timber to the authorities responsible for supplying the British and Canadian forces in the low countries.
We also played a double role of home guard duty. We spent endless hours training with machine guns, stenguns, grenades, rifle drill, bayonet practice, map reading, commando training. Most of this was done in free time, week-ends, several nights a week, special leave was granted on week-ends for training like mock invasions, or another word for it was "sham battle", obstacle courses, crawling through tunnels, you name it... rifle shooting, testing accuracy skill to score. We made ourselves ready to defend the Mother Country. If Hitler had invaded we would have been in the height of it.
At the end of the war we were not recognized. The commission of Government, at that time, said that they were only a care-taking government. Joseph R. Smallwood, fighting for confederation, said he did not have information enough on the foresters to take it to Ottawa. Lt.Col.Jack Turner went to Ottawa to negotiate with the Canadian Government, but he died in his hotel room from a heart attack. It was the end of all things. Some time later we did come under the Veteran's Independence Programme.
Both the Commission of Government and the British knew where to find us when they needed us.
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That's me for now.
Josh Goobie NOFU 2308
FROM JOSH GOOBIE