Private Cfn Donald F. Smith, WWII 1919-1995
Information provided by Lee Ann Eckhardt Smith, Don’s daughter-in-law
Don Smith volunteered for overseas duty in November 1941. He had just turned 22 and had been working as a shipping clerk at the Cyanamid Company, a fertilizer factory in Niagara Falls.
A month after enlisting, he was sent to the Training Centre in Barriefield (near Kingston), where he began training to be a motor mechanic. He finished the program in Hamilton the following August.
Don Smith (second row from top, centre) in No. 3 Platoon, 2nd Company, Canadian Army Trades School, Hamilton, 1942
Don (right) and his brother Bill (who was in the Air Force) in the fall of 1942, just before shipping out to Europe.
The job of a motor mechanic was to repair vehicles and machinery on the battlefield. Imagine how creative those mechanics had to be, to keep trucks, jeeps and tanks working, and repairing them at the front, during and after an enemy attack. During his time in Italy, and North Africa especially, Don would see some very heavy fighting, up close.
Two months after his 23rd birthday, on November 5, 1942, Don arrived in England as part of the Canadian Ordinance Reinforcement Unit. There, he underwent some testing, qualified to English standards and got a raise in pay. His training continued into January 1943, when he was assigned to the 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade, B Company. Something happened during this training period and he was hospitalized for eight days. This may have been when he got phosphorus burns on his legs; the scars he carried for the rest of his days.
After more training between August and October 1943, he become a Motor Vehicle Fitter – a more specialized mechanic. A month later, just after turning 24, he was sent to North Africa as part of the Central Mediterranean Force, fighting the famous German General Rommel, known as “The Desert Fox.” While there, Don kept a scorpion in a cigar box as a kind of pet. He used to poke it with a pencil so its tail would come up in attack; he thought that was very interesting.
His war records tell us that between May and October 1944, he was with the Allied Armies in Italy. They landed in Sicily and crossed over to southern Italy. At that time, the Canadian Army had nearly 76,000 soldiers throughout the country. We know that Don stayed with fighting units in the area south of Rome.
The "haversack" Don carried
In January 1945, he upgraded his qualifications to Vehicle Mechanic “A”. Following this, he was sent to France and, sometime after that, to Holland. We know he was in Holland at the end of the war in Europe (May 1945) because he talked about helping a Dutch man dig his car out of the back yard where the man had buried it so the Nazis couldn’t get it.
When the war ended, there were so many men to bring home from Europe, it took a long time for everyone to leave. It took almost six months (until November 1945) for Don to get to England, where he boarded a ship for home. He’d been in active duty for three full years and was 26 years old.
Don’s rank during the war was Private Cfn (Craftsman). He was part of what became known as the Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RCEME). He attended a couple of reunions of this group, the last one in Kingston in the early 1990s.
Overall, Don didn’t talk about his war experiences, except to name the countries he was in and to tell a few stories like those above; none of which are about the fighting at all.
He was once an avid hunter, but told his son Geoffrey that after the war, he never picked up a gun again.
Don Smith’s war medals