MIDDLETON, N.S. — In 1940 Frank Moore was going to school in Truro and playing defense for the local junior hockey team. The Bearcats won the Nova Scotia Junior Championships that year.
Next thing you know, Moore, from Kentville, was in the army.
“I joined up for the war -- I was in Truro going to Business College -- the (Royal Canadian) Army Service Corps,” he says. “I’m not sure of the date. I was called to join the Army Service Corps and I worked at Supply Depot and I was there for quite a while – in Aldershot. I moved from there to Halifax and took my training in Halifax. I don’t remember too much about it.”
At 98, Moore can be excused for not remembering the details of events that took place almost 80 years ago. He now stays at the veterans’ wing at Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital in Middleton surrounded by photos of his four children, grand-children, and great-grand-children.
His job was to keep supplies moving.
“I was overseas about 13 months,” he says. “I worked at office work most of the time. I was in England for a short while and this was just before D-Day. Then I came back here and I got out.”
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Later he explains that he was in Aldershot, England for a while and then transferred to Holland to join the troops there.
He remembers Aldershot as a busy place by times. “Sometimes things were going a breeze,” he says. “Parties of course.”
He thinks he was three months in Holland and that would have been right at the end of the war.
“I’m not sure how long I was there. I took somebody’s turn,” he says. “We were right in the lines, so called. We joined the Cape Bretoners, the Cape Breton Highlanders. We were posted there the day of the armistice or whatever. Then we came back to Aldershot (England) and from Aldershot back to here.”
Moore says he didn’t see any action.
“Nothing happened,” he says. “We were posted, ready for it. Groeningen I think was the name of the town.”
He described the Dutch as very friendly and they liked Canadians.
He was usually stuck in an office doing clerical work.
“The RCASC provided support to Canadian soldiers wherever they went,” a Wikipedia entry says, “training in Canada and Great Britain, the campaign in north-west Europe, and in the campaign in Italy. The Army Service Corps moved supplies from the rear areas to the front-lines.
“They delivered all rations, ammunition, petroleum products, and all other essentials,” it says. “They did so with a variety of vehicles ranging from three- to 10-ton trucks, and 40-ton tank transporters.”
Groeningen was the site of a major battle late in the war.
When he got back home, Moore remembers working at Rockwells Hardware Store in Kentville, and he was a member of the fire department, and even became chief.
“When Bev (Wade) went out, I went in,” he says. “I resigned about that time because I couldn’t handle the work (as chief) and work too.”
And he worked with his father for a while. He had a trucking business.
He remembers Kentville as a busy place after the war. “I think it grew some,” he says.
He retired in 1985
He and wife Marion brought up two boys and two girls and he has about 90 grandchildren and great grandchildren. He gets lots of visits.
He may be 98, but he still keeps up on things. His advice? “Just enjoy life,” he says.
“I get the paper,” he says. “I like to see what’s going on.”
