John Morrow was my grandfather and he died in 1907. His wife was Margaret Anderson and she died in 1908. My father, Livingston Morrow, passed away in 1923. When my father died, we were all sick with the flu, and never even got to the funeral - no penicillin or anything then. My mother was sick too - one of the worst years of snow we ever had. We had Dr. Gus and Dr. MacLean in Souris - you'd have to go after him and sometimes he'd stay all night.

My family had a farm and I was only eight when my father died. In 1924 my mother went to the States and my grandfather and grandmother came up to live with us. I had one brother and one sister. I went to school a little bit until I was 12 or 13 and then I had to stay home to thrash - stay home to do this, stay home to do that. About 1935 I moved in here to my grandfather's old home with them, bought some land, farmed for a few years; then I joined the army.

We went skating a few times when I was a kid. at night - there was a pond below our school. We were going to school up at Russell Dingwell's - up quite a fair lane. We'd gobble down a dinner and would have to go out to feed the cows at suppertime. Usually when we got back they were through skating. Now and then we'd go to dances.

I went overseas in April of 1941 with the infantry - I went from Elmira. We went to Beach Grove in Charlottetown. We stayed there until September and then we went to Camp Borden for training. The training was good - march and do rifle drill and everything else, drive trucks - practising everything. In September of 1941 we come home. We were going overseas and you'd get a week's vacation. The first night I was home I took spinal meningitis and then they took me to Charlottetown Hospital. I was there for a week or so. I guess. I didn't know anything for quite a few days. They weren't going to give me a month's sick leave. The doctor called them and said. "No, he's staying in the hospital". I come home for a month, then I went back to Beach Grove.

They put me down firing the furnace underneath the officers quarters at night. I'd come up in the morning all black. There were a lot that wanted me to stay and I said, "No sir this is enough for me". When I was in Charlottetown, there was an Inman in there interning. Of course, I was supposed to be discharged but he had me down in category D. In the meantime he was transferred to Halifax. So I got clear of Beach Grove and they sent me over to Camp Hill on light duty. The first couple of days I was there I met the same fellow, Inman. He said. "You were here for discharge. " I said "I'm not. I'm trying to get overseas." which I did.

We landed in Glasgow, Scotland, and then left for Italy. As we were going in beside Gibraltar, the German planes bombed the convoy and we lost two boats and none of the boats were supposed to stop. The boat we were on stopped. Daniel Dan MacDonald was on the same boat. All our outfit wasn't on the same boat, you see. The Captain stopped and picked up the survivors. We all had a second issue of clothing, you know, and we had to dig them out and, as they came aboard, we had to give them our dry clothes. I was put in mind of a big stack of hay when we were done. One nurse broke her back coming up the ladder. Of course, the other boats carried on, you see, and we weren't with them so they said, "Well they're down too". In a day or so we arrived. We landed in Italy in an old field. There were five or six trucks all bombed and an old barn with four or five cows in it, and they were swelled up this big.

We were in Italy in 1942 and left early in 1945 in kind of a secret mission. The Fifth division all came up and went through France to fight in Holland. We were warned not to talk to any of the French, not that we could - it was kind of a secret move. We went right up through Holland. We fought our way right from the toe of Italy. You see, the Germans came down through Italy and they knew every nook and corner and hill and where our outfit would be. They knew everything and we had one hell of a time. We were headquarters for the Fifth Division, Irish Regiment and the C.B.H. (Cape Breton Highlanders). Our outfit wasn't as near but we lost some men. It was all over in France, you see, we just drove up through and up through Belgium and Holland. I was on the outskirts but not in Germany. I was discharged in March 1946.

Mildred and I went to the States to visit my mother. She married twice more in the States. We stayed in the Waldorf, in New York, together with my sister Elva and her husband. That was in 1947 and we were married in 1948: we had known each other about 20 years or so - a long time before I went overseas.

We built a bungalow on the property - my grandfather and grandmother were living here then. The house is over a hundred years old. My grandfather died in 1951 at 84. My grandmother died in 1961 and she was 92. I had 12 1/2 acres and bought a piece over here, 40 acres just north of us and then I was foolish enough to sign my share of the big farm over to my brother. After he went back to England, after the war, I bought the place from him so I was buying my own back. Then I bought scattered land. I bought another piece of land out here from Rhoda Mahar and then, Frank Mahar's, and Frank Murphy's. I think I had about eight deeds. My grandfather was a butcher and there was a factory in Chartottetown, Canada Packer's, that was formerly my grandfather's brother's - Davis and Fraser. Then he worked for them in the fall. He'd go around buying lambs and hogs and shipping them in there to them.

I farmed with four horses and I started in with seven or eight cows and an old barn and built another one. We sold cream then. I built that new barn in 1966 and it burnt in 1983. Then I thought I was too old to rebuild. I turned everything over to my son, Douglas, all the land but close to an acre here. He grows grain and rents some of it for growing potatoes.

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Waldron H. Leard