I, Peter Sawatzky, was born in New Bothwell, Manitoba on July 2, 1921.  I was the youngest in a family of nine, the only boy and eight girls.  When I was five years old, the family moved to Saskatchewan where my dad bought a $10.00 homestead.  Some of my older sisters stayed in Manitoba.   It turned out to be very poor soil, lots of swampland.  We had to build our own roads and buildings.  A tough job and at age 14, I had to quit school.  My dad took ill and taxes had to be paid.  I worked for the municipality and also I had to take over at home, cutting wood, etc.

Around 1939-1940 we moved back to Manitoba.  My dad's health did not improve and he passed away in 1942.  I had a job with a farmer, Mr. Harold Knelson, in Carberry.  Wages were better than in Saskatchewan.  As the farmer had ten quarters of land he was allowed to keep on a hired hand during the war.  The permission letter came too late.  I and some friends went into town on a Saturday night and after talking to some new recruits, I and a few others signed up.  Mr. Knelson told me the good news the following week but it was too late.  Mr. Knelson understood.   We both felt bad but even if I could I did not change my mind.

I went first to Osborne for health checks.   On Feb 10, 1943, I was in training in Portage La Prairie, advance training in Shilo and then on my way to England.  For a prairie boy the ships in Halifax Harbor looked very big.  We left on the Queen Mary.  I was with the Lake Superior Regiment.  The trip went good.   We had some more training in England and around October, I was off to Sicily in a large convoy of a variety of ships.  I was on the Santa Elena, which was part hospital (Red Cross) and part troop ship.  All went ok till the convoy was past the Straight of Gibraltar.  It was dark then.  First there was a torpedo plane.  It hit a Dutch ammunition ship close by the convoy, it blew up and nobody on it had a chance to survive that.  Next it hit the Santa Elena.  Lucky we had a lot of training on our way on what to do?  You always had to have your May West (life jacket), water bottle filled and chocolate ration with you.

The nurses got the boats,this was understandable.  There never were enough boats for every one.  We had to jump, always making sure to hold on to your May West with both hands under your chin, otherwise the force from that high jump might knock you out or even break your neck.  The Santa Elena was hit real bad and going down.  Once I hit the water I tried to get away from the ship.  There seemed to be a lot of people around me, but as the waves were high I drifted farther away.  I don't know how long I was in the water.   I was so lonely.  Then I heard a motorboat, voices and saw a light.  Someone threw a rope.  I think my fingerprints are still on it.  One ship, the Monterey stayed back to pick up survivors.  I never found out how many went down with the Santa Elena.

On board of the Monterey they gave us cigarettes.  When a Corporal wanted to light mine, he said, I better light just one, keep this one for later.   I realized I had two cigarettes in my mouth.  We did not go to Sicily but straight to Italy.  I got placed with a different outfit, the Princess Louise Fusiliers from Halifax.  My welcome was "Hey guys we have a stubble jumper in the crowd".   Looking back it was an especially good outfit and I was glad to have served with them.  I got new training for first aid and also with the 4.2 mortars.  I guess that cost me my hearing, having no earplugs.  After many hours of shooting you couldn’t hear at all for a long time.  When someone got wounded I had to come to their aid.  It wasn't easy and you never got used to it.  You quite often had to tell the fellow “you'll be ok“.  It was not so bad to tell that as sometimes it helped to give them hope.

I have been in heavy fighting and once was shellshocked, around Casino Salerno October 1943, Gustav Line, Anzio close to Rome.  Most of the time one can't remember all the places.  Finally after the Germans gave up in Italy we moved to Belgium.

I stayed in the town of Popperinge which was heavily damaged.   It was sad to see all the people on the roads that had fled from the Germans, nowhere to go, no food or places to sleep.  We did some more fighting around Arnhem and Nijmegen etc. in Holland then up Northern Holland.   We had a fight against a pocket of SS, the worst, but it turned out ok for us and the Dutch underground.                                   

After peace was declared and signed on the 8^th day of May 1945, we became guards in a German prison camp for a short while.  Two German officers who could speak perfect English thought they could make good use of it when they got to England.  Most of them were happy the war was over.  On June 13, 1945 we moved to the village of Akkrum, in Northern Holland, to wait for the day we could go back to England and then home.  We got to stay with civilians in their homes and treated like royalty.  People were so happy and thankful after being under German tyranny for five years.   Many suffered a lot, loss of family etc.  In the bigger cities, hunger was the worst of all.  I and a pal got to stay with the caretaker of the town hall and his wife.

There I met Marie, my future wife to be.  She was the secretary at the town hall.  After a few days I met her family.  They had been evacuated there from the South of Holland in October 1943.   They lived on the Island of Walcheren, the entrance of the river Scmelde to Antwerp.  The island became a fjord, very important big walls on the coast, heavily guarded, big guns, etc.  Marie’s mother was a widow.  Marie had one brother, 17 years old, one older sister and two younger sisters.  No use to the Germans so far off the island.  There was heavy fighting in October 1944.  It was liberated for a heavy price of lives and floods.  The Germans bombed the dikes and the city where Marie lived.   In 1940 just after the Germans bombed the city and harbor of Rotterdam, I visited Marie's home often when in Akkrum.   After a while I asked her mom if I could marry Marie.  Her mom just smiled, and thought that will blow over.  To her surprise the army padre came to visit and it got serious.  Papers got signed after much hesitation by her mom, still thinking it will go away, especially when I left for England in November 1945.  There were lots of letters in the mail from me to Marie.   Her brother had joined the Dutch army to fight the Japanese in the Dutch Indies.  It was hard on her mom.  Then in December, diphtheria broke out in Akkrum.  Her youngest sister Willy got very ill with it.  She was 15; luckily nobody else in her family got it.  There was no inoculation during the war years.  Several people passed away in the village.

A fellow working at the town hall had a sister, age 21, who passed away.  She was engaged to a Canadian who got sent home.   She was so pretty and very nice; her brother had a nervous breakdown.  His family was killed during bombing and they were evacuated.

Late one evening in January, the caretaker went to tell Marie and her family that I was in Holland and should be here in one hour.  Marie’s paper came through and she couldn't believe it.  But there I was, ten days leave and travel time.   We got married in the evening of January 11.  It wasn’t easy for her mom but we had her permission.  No white dress or wedding dance etc, but the staff at the town hall with the caretaker and his wife served coffee and cake etc.  I left January 20 for England.  Marie was the talk of the village as being an outsider.  That is so in small villages.   Her papers came in August and she had to say goodbye to her family.  It wasn’t easy.  Her English was poor and she found that out on the boat to Canada, all the different dialects, especially the real Londoners.  But one can learn.   She had a good teacher and a new family, eight sister in laws, full of love.