Metz
At first we lived in Metz, near Paris, for a few months. I have vague memories of a small class room with diminutive desks and few students. I could never get enough of the intoxicating scent of the large pink roses that traipsed over the walls and gates everywhere. The impressive Globe Hotel sticks in my mind. Maybe I passed it every day on the way to the small classroom through a sea of roses. Mom says we ate there often. Maybe that’s why I remember it yet.
Grotenquin, 2Wing
My dad was actually supposed to be at RCAF Base 2 Wing in Grotenquin. The only trouble was, the airforce didn’t have accommodation ready. So Metz was a holding tank till they had some place for us to live.
They finally engineered accommodation for the fledging families who were first to arrive at 2 Wing. They installed trailers for us, which were positioned on the airport tarmac, on what they called ‘buttons’. These buttons were circular and had been used to park aircraft. Each button had a number and the trailers were placed along the edge, forming an incomplete circle in each button.
It was summer. It was hot. There were no trees. We were all crammed inside the small space for sleeping and eating. My mother was pregnant with Susan. ‘Butch’, the bratty kid next door, would chase his mother around their trailer with a stick while his mother cried out, ‘Oh Butch, put that down Butchy’. Even at that tender age of 7, I could figure out, what do you expect calling a kid ‘Butch’?
My father emptied the ‘honey bucket’ each evening. He would go to the toilet in the trailer, haul out this pail and walk out of the trailer into oblivion. I never knew where he went, but he always came back with a clean bucket for a fresh start the next day. I thought it was a job only for fathers. I was glad I wasn’t a father.
The trailer period didn’t last long, as my mother was still pregnant when we moved to the PMQ’S [Permanent Married Quarters]. These were a gaggle of several, maybe ten, four story apartment buildings, each with their own letter. I think ours was ‘C’ block. They were located 17 kilometres from the Base at Grotenquin.
The military supplied large kaki green buses to transport us back and forth to the Base for movies, skating, swimming. I have indelible memories of the fun we kids had on that bus I just loved singing the old camp fire songs.
The Base even had a grocery store, hospital, church, and bowling lanes. It seemed they built all this for us in a farmers field. There were few trees. I recall the merciless heat of the hot sun pounding down on me as I went from one activity to another between the buildings.
The Base even had a grocery store, hospital, church, and bowling lanes. It seemed they built all this for us in a farmers field. There were few trees. I recall the merciless heat of the hot sun pounding down on me as I went from one activity to another between the buildings.
I also remember well the huge blue sign outside the guardhouse at the entrance to the Base. It was a fresh sign RCAF BASE 2 WING GROTENQUIN with a jet painted on it, probably a CF 100. This sign had historical significance and led us to an adventure, a coup, about 35 years later.
It was 1955. Television had not arrived here yet. No one had a phone at the PMQ’s. There was one phone in the office which was located in one of the buildings and it was only open some of the time. No iPhones, no electronic games, no computers, no TV. What did we do? Well, we were brought up by the out method… “OUT!”
