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www.oakvillebeaver.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Friday, April 23, 2010 · 12 Municipality of Halton www.halton.ca Special Waste Drop-off Days ERIC RIEHL / SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER ORAL HISTORY LESSON: Veteran Sam Garnet speaks to students and parents at Oakville Trafalgar High School about his Second World War experiences as a wireless radio operator on board a bomber hunting German submarines. OTHS students learn war is more than dates and statistics Date Location By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF ith an estimated 500 Second World War veterans dying in Canada every week, one Oakville school is struggling to bring their stories of sacrifice to students while they still can. Students, parents, teachers and the Minister Responsible for Seniors Gerry Phillips gathered in the library of Oakville Trafalgar High School Monday to listen to a presentation created by the HistoricaDominion Institute. The national charity organization has a mandate to build active and informed citizens through a greater knowledge and appreciation of the history, heritage and stories of Canada. To do this, the organization brings veterans and currently-serving members of the Canadian Forces to classrooms across the country. Second World War veteran Sam Garnet shared his experiences of being a wireless radio operator on board a B-24 Liberator that was tasked with hunting German U-boats (submarines) during the Battle of the Atlantic. Born in Toronto in 1923, Garnet joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942 at the age of 19 as a way of making sure he wasn't called to join the army. "I weighed all of 115 pounds and a rifle weighed a lot more than I did," he said. As his previous job had involved operating a linotype machine (a line casting machine used in printing newspapers and magazines), he was tasked with typing out Morse code on the wireless radio, much to his initial disappointment. "I didn't want to do that, I cheated and made all sorts of mistakes on their test," said Garnet. "They told me I was great at it and I think they were right because we had to do 20 words a minute and when we graduated I could do 33 without any mistakes." Once his training was complete, Garnet W Halton Regional Centre 1151 Bronte Road, Oakville Acceptable materials include: pesticides, paint, pool chemicals, pharmaceuticals, propane tanks, tubes and bulbs. Unacceptable materials include: needles, syringes and lancets, asbestos, commercial and industrial waste, PCBs, explosives, and ammunition. Electronics Acceptable items include: and computer monitors Unacceptable materials include: metal and appliances, microwaves, vacuums, and scrap metal not accepted at the Special www.dowhatyoucan.ca Please let us know as soon as possible if you will have an accessibility or accommodation need at a Halton Region hosted event or meeting. 1151 Bronte Road, Oakville, Onta was assigned to Coastal Command's 547 Squadron in the United Kingdom. These planes were charged with protecting allied convoys from German U-boats, which were attempting to blockade and starve Britain into submission. "I was very active in the Bay of Biscay, the Atlantic, the North Sea," said Garnet. "I flew in a B-24 Liberator, we had a crew of 10, five Canadians, five Brits and we could do 14 hours in the aircraft and that made all the difference because we could defend our convoys halfway across the Atlantic if we had to." In a youtube.com interview Garnet spoke about encountering two U-boats during his tour of duty, one of which his crew was able to attack and damage before it disappeared below the waves. Garnet said his crew never got credit for sinking that U-boat stating someone actually had to see it sink, not just submerge, for credit to be given. With the approach of D-Day Garnet's crew joined many others that were tasked with protecting the massive Allied armada as it made its way across the English Channel to liberate France and the rest of occupied Europe from Nazi rule. "From the air, it looked like you could walk across the channel because there was so much shipping in that little narrow area," said Garnet. "During that period, all of us in Coastal Command, we flew, we slept, we flew, we slept. In other words, we never did anything else except sorties and not one Allied ship in the channel was sunk by submarine torpedoes, but we sunk about 14 submarines in the first 10 days. That was really an event." Garnet's war experiences were not the only point of discussion held during the presentation with Oakville Trafalgar students also talking about their recent visit to France and Belgium where they visited a number of battlefields and war cemeteries. In Normandy, students visited the Benysur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery where they See Brothers page 13 230410