Collection search - Marshall, Wallace A. -- Interview

Record information – Brief

1

Marshall, Wallace A. -- Interview

Item number (ISN):

379729

Series title:

[The Great War and Canadian Society]

Hierarchical level:

Item (Accession level)

Date:

1974-07-23

Item number (ISN):

379729

Type of material:

Sound recordings

Found in:

Archives / Film, Video and Sound

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Record information – Details

Fonds/collection:

THE GREAT WAR AND CANADIAN SOCIETY PROJECT

Accession:

1975-0098

Media:

Sound

Part:

2 of 2

Production date:

1974-07-23

Production company:

Opportunities for Youth

Production credit:

interviewer, Pauline Pytka

Description:

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Interview of Wallace A. Marshall, age 80, who was born in Woodstock, Ontario in 1894. He attended school there and during the summer holidays he worked in factories. He went to high school for two years and then attended business college. He studied book-keeping and stenography. The First World War delayed his education. He enlisted at the first opportunity, late in 1915, and his brother also enlisted. His father worked on the Grand Trunk Railway as a fireman. He also talks about: his parents; their education; the town of Woodstock; various factory jobs and his wages; doing piece work in a factory, working as a welder, working as a sander in a lumber mill, and delivering barrels to farms when he worked for a cooperage shop that packed apples; his being stationed in London, Ontario when he first enlisted; meeting his wife; training at Camp Borden in 1916; working the orderly room because of his book-keeping skills; the formation of the No. 2 Construction Unit, a battalion composed of African-Canadians except for the officers, who were white; organizing the orderly room; not being allow to transfer from the 168th Battalion to No. 2 Construction Unit and being denied a promotion to sergeant because he was black; working at Brigade Headquarters in England; the scarcity of qualified stenographers; his wanting to go and fight; eventually getting transferred to Bramshott for more training and then getting more training in France; working as a clerk in the orderly room when he was in France; his work as an orderly room clerk with the 28th Battalion; going into the line to fight after a year; Passchendaele; taking a machine gun course in 1917; getting wounded on 1 October 1918 and suffering from paralysis; going by an ambulance driven by two women to an operating tent; his being afraid to die; being operated on in a hospital in Boulogne; being taken to the V.A.D. Hospital in London; his brother getting leave from the 75th Battalion to go to England to see him; being about to get up and get around by Christmas 1918; going back to Canada on a hospital ship in the spring of 1919; in Westminster Hospital in London, Ontario until August 1919; getting financial help because he was a veteran; taking a course at McGann’s School of Telegraphy in Toronto; having to join the telegraphers’ union in order to get a job in Ottawa in 1920 but finding out the union only accepted white people; his refusal to take advice to try to pass as an Indian or a Spaniard because he had fair skin and straight hair; getting a job with the Toronto Transit Commission until he got laid off during the Depression; his marriage in November 1920; his 27-year career with the Department of National Revenue Customs Branch in Toronto; his later career as a security guard with the Commissionaires; discrimination against black Canadians in the army and in civilian life; the black community in Woodstock; discrimination in barber shops but not in restaurants or shows; his education; needing to drop out of school occasionally to earn money to help his family; no discrimination by white children at school; no inter-racial dating; dating black girls from Ingersoll and London, Ontario; visiting his cousins in Brantford; going to July 4th excursions to Detroit; his mother’s Mohawk ancestry; the loss of Indian status by Indian women when they married non-Indians; his father a free-born slave; his father’s family from Richmond, Virginia; going to picnics on the Indian reservation in Brantford when he was a teenager; Canadian Indians and black Canadians in the Canadian army during the First World War; more about his parents’ families; going to the local pool room when he was a teenager; working as a newspaper delivery boy and selling magazines; making money as a boy by trapping muskrat and mink; and working as a dishwasher and bus boy on tourist excursion boats travelling on Lake Huron.~He also talks about: the wartime work of the Home Comfort Club, an organization of black women, and the welfare organization called the Home Service Organization; parcels sent by the association to soldiers overseas; becoming secretary of the Home Service Association in 1927; postwar work by the association to give charitable service to black people; the history of the Home Service Association in Toronto; using black soldiers to work on construction rather than letting them fight; discrimination against black men who tried to enlist, particularly when they had darker skin; a doctor who said initially that he was not fit to serve, the excuse being that he was too young, but possibly because he was black; his fighting with a white battalion and not being discriminated against there; the advantage he had over soldiers with urban backgrounds because he had experience with outdoor life; army rations and the tendency of a lot of soldiers to throw away the bully beef they were supposed to carry with them at all times as reserve rations; soldiers coming to him because he always had a good supply of bully beef; being promoted to acting sergeant; his deciding to enlist for adventure rather than out of patriotism and his feeling that the war would be over quickly; not giving too much thought to the causes of the war; wishing the war would be over once he got overseas; no feelings of regret for enlisting; enlisting in World War Two: his pride in Canada; his opposition to present-day draft dodgers from the U.S.; his oldest brother’s work in munitions during the war; soldiers maiming themselves to get out of the army; fear experienced by soldiers; a scared soldier who had to tied behind the horse wagons to get him into the line, who continued to refused to fight, was in the klink and was court-martialled; the rum ration given to soldiers headed to the front lines; a soldier who got drunk on the rum ration before an attack and wanted to bayonet German soldiers; the attitude toward Germans; Chinese labourers building railroads and roads; the Chinese labourers kept in fenced-in compounds way back behind the lines and guarded all the time; similar work done by the Construction Battalion; hearing about Canadian soldiers trying to desert; learning to be a telegrapher after the war when he was in Toronto; working as an elevator operator; working as a book-keeper; having no trouble getting jobs after the war because he was well-qualified; and voting for conscription.

Language:

English

Notes:

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1. The interviews took place in 1974 and resulted in the publication of a book entitled "The Great War and Canadian Society" edited by Daphne Read - copyright 1978 - New Hogtown Press, Toronto.~2. Release forms, data sheets, and summary analysis/transcripts are available in binders labelled Opportunities for Youth - War and Canadian Society in VSA's audio-visual section.~3. Part of a series of recorded interviews with elderly citizens who lived in Canada during the period of World War I. The interview material consists of their opinions and observations about the war, the war years, and the effect on Canadian society during and after WWI.~4. The interviewee signed an agreement giving consent for a recording of this interview to be placed in the Public Archives of Canada for the purposes of historical research and also signed a publication agreement allowing any transcribed portions of the interview to be used in the book under the condition that no full names, addresses or phone numbers would be published.~5. Subject description is based on information found in the fact sheet, deposit agreement, publication agreement and summary analysis.

Detailed holdings information:

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Vault ISN:

437632

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

C01978

Vault code:

GAT

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

R/R

Technical description:

POLY

Made from:

FROM LOANED MATERIAL

Status:

MASTER

Vault ISN:

437633

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

C01979

Vault code:

GAT

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

R/R

Technical description:

POLY

Made from:

1975-0098/169
1975-0098/170
1975-0098/171

Status:

MASTER

Vault ISN:

737122

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

1975-0098/169

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

CASSETTE

Made from:

DEPOSIT

Status:

ORIG

Vault ISN:

737123

Format:

SOUND

Location number:

1975-0098/170

Number of items:

1

Kind of sound:

CASSETTE

Made from:

DEPOSIT

Status:

ORIG
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Open

Restrictions on consultation:

No Restrictions / Pas de restrictions

Reproduction access:

With written permission of Copyright Owner / Avec la permission écrite du détenteur des droits d'auteur

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