Page 70 - Billy James MacNamara of Evanston

ISSUE : Issue 49

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1988/8/1

We went up on the Argonne--they took over that section up there. The Argonne, along the Marne, up along the Verdun sector, along through there. (Was it a lot of time in the trenches, or was it more marching?) Mostly digging. Digging trenches, communi? cation trenches, and digging along the front, along there, was the biggest part. And all--front-line work. It was a short time, but a lot went in it. A lot went up there into it that thought it was a glory, but at the last of it, the glory was dying out. There were some of them in those trenches for 4 years. Four years into it. (Canadians.) Canadians. They were in it a long time. (The Americans came in just near the end there.) At the last. They were one year into it. Just one year. I went to New York after the war. We were discharged in Springhill, Massachusetts. I had an aunt living up in Brooklyn. I went up there and I worked there--the first job I got up there after that was stevedoring. There was good money in stevedoring then, all kinds of it. Couldn't get enough men to unload ships. And then I went to work at a shipyard, the drydocks there. There was lots of work there that time. I worked with a fellow plumbing--not plumbing, but steam- fitting, most of the time I was there. (You were still single, I guess.) Yeah. I only stayed there a couple of years, two years and a half. Then I went back down to Boston fishing again. All kinds of it. Had? dock and codfish and mackerel seining and halibuting. Halibut was pretty deepsea fishing. You set trawls, long lines of trawls on the bottom. Probably some of them would go a BOOKS ARE A GREAT GIFT ANY TIME OF THE YEAR Cape Breton Books • A Good Selection of First-Rate literature • A Wide Range of Bool

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