Old soldiers reunite with armoured half track.

[Al Nickolson]

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Original Article in Edmonton Journal

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjourna...d236c8&k=85812

Old soldiers reunite with armoured half track
Bill Mah, edmontonjournal.com
Published: Tuesday, September 11

EDMONTON - After 62 years, two Second World War soldiers and an armoured half track reunited Tuesday.
While the young fighting men aged into their 80s, the half track looked like it did when the two served as part of its crew - the beneficiary of 9,000 hours worth of refurbishing by military volunteers.

"The thing that strikes me the most is that it seems smaller now than when we were in it," said Hank Carroll, 85, a former intelligence captain with the South Alberta Regiment, which invaded France as part of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division.

"It looked bigger back then for some reason."
He served with Ken Armstrong, 84, a sergeant, on board the M3 half track - a vehicle with the front tires of a truck and the rear tracks of a tank.

It was the command vehicle for Lt. Col. Gordon Wotherspoon who led the South Alberta Regiment across Europe after the Allies landed in Normandy. The half track took its crew through fierce fighting in the Battle of the Falaise Gap when nearly encircled German troops tried pushing their way out past Allied troops. The half track and its crew saw out the end of hostilities in Holland.

Unlike other half tracks in the war which were open-topped personnel carriers often carrying a machine gun, this vehicle was one of a kind.

Fitted with a tin roof and radios, the 1942 half track was a mobile command post which allowed the commander to co-ordinate troops while away from headquarters.

The crew of about six or seven deciphered codes and prepared maps inside the cramped quarters. At night, they slept underneath taking shelter from shelling and the elements.

After six decades, the two soldiers clambered aboard the half track Tuesday for a rumbling drive around a parking lot at the Jefferson Armoury.

It was a chance reunion. Armstrong is a retired optometrist who lives in Edmonton and is preparing to attend a reunion celebration this weekend. The South Alberta Regiment Veterans Association is holding its 67th anniversary and reunion starting Friday where the restored half track will be shown off. Carroll lives in New York state and happened to be visiting the West Coast when he was informed by family of the reunion and detoured to be here to meet his old crewmate and see the vehicle that took him across Europe.

The half track was there because of Sgt. Rob McCue, a reserve soldier with the Edmonton-based South Alberta Light Horse - a descendant regiment of Carroll's and Armstrong's old unit.

McCue found the half track rusting in a Calgary military barracks in 1990. He and a handful of other reservist volunteers began a massive project to restore the half track to its original shape with the advice of Reg Hodgson, a St. Albert-based military vehicle collector.

Using old photos, the volunteers tried getting everything just right from the camoflauge paint to its markings on their own time.

"This has been a project of love and pain for the four years we've been working on it," McCue said.
The half track will be featured in parades and for recruiting at public events. Another possible destination is the Royal Alberta Museum.

bmah@thejournal.canwest.com

© Edmonton Journal 2007