Being in my 84^th year, and recently receiving notification from Veterans Affairs that I am suffering from post-traumatic stress, I decided to write this story to exorcise some of my demons by just thinking about a few of the things that may or may not have affected me. 

To say Jimmy was a friend of mine would be a bit of a stretch. To describe the relationship, I would say he was a responsibility of mine, as he was a little fellow who did not fit in with the normal idea of an Infantry soldier.

When I was a young lad growing up on a little island off the east coast of Newfoundland, I was subjected to a lot of cruel taunting from other children. My father was stricken with polio at the age of five and I can only guess how much he went through as a child. I had years of hearing from my father – “you must never let the weak or small be picked on, and you get in there and help even if you have to take a beating doing so.” Oh, I look a lot of beating when trying to help others. I never told my parents about it and I made up stories so they wouldn’t know I had been fighting.

The year was 1961, July 5^th, around midnight. We were formed up by a railroad track at a place called Camp Gagetown. The night was as black as the inside of a crow, it was so dark that we couldn’t see the person that was standing beside us. At the time I never knew that a train ran through the base. The reason we were there was that we were to be loaded onto the train and transported to Montreal to board a ship to sail to Holland, at a port there called Rotterdam, and then take a train into Germany. Our mission was to get to Weil, Germany, and augment the First Battalion Black Watch, which needed to be reinforced. That was necessary as the Berlin Wall was only months away from being completed. Intelligence had ascertained that the Soviet Union could roll over Germany when the wall was completed. So all of NATO was on high alert.

About ten minutes before the train arrived, out of nowhere, came the singing voice of someone in the group of about fifty Infantry troops. The song that the soldier was trying to sing was ‘I’m Nobody’s Child’ by Hank Snow. The NCO in charged hollered out, “Whoever is singing, shut the **** up!” When we finally boarded the train, we found out who the singer was, it was little Jimmy B. There and then he got his named changed to ‘Singing Jimmy B’.  All the way to Montreal, Jimmy would try to sing a song and everyone would shout, “Shut the **** up!”

We boarded a ship called the Iona. It was a Greek sort of holiday ship. Each soldier was given ten dollars, and that was to give to the stewards of the ship. Now, none of those poor fellows saw a nickel of that money. It was an eight-day trip and our first stop was at Cole, Ireland, where they had a small boat come out to pick up people going into that port. Then we sailed up the English Channel to Rotterdam. Yes, you got it, we were on a luxury liner with a bunch of wealthy travellers, and not one of us had a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out, except the ten dollars we were given for gratuities. Now, you know they were not getting that. So, we were out for a few days and they invited us to the ship bar and entertainment lounge. I know they must have felt sorry for us, or they were feeling it would be un-Canadian to leave us in our rooms. Well, lo and behold, up we go, and there’s a band and the guest singer was Jimmy B! With a professional band and good coaching, sure Jimmy made us proud. There was not one of us who shouted the password, “STFU!” No, now we were in trouble, we were going to have to listen to him howl at the moon for the next four years.

On to the train and into Germany. We arrive at our destination at Fort St. Louis in the dead of night and are lined up on the parade square. A NCO calling the roll and the Company that we would be attached to. I heard Pte. Bennett and then was marched away to my barracks. At the time, I did not know that I had made a mistake and the name called was R. Barnet, so when they called Bennett the poor fellow didn’t answer. Jimmy B and Barnet were assigned to D Company. We started putting our gear in our footlockers and settling in for the night. The next morning, Barnet was AWOL. We were given a briefing after breakfast on the situation and then taken to the sports field for physical training. When we got to the rope climb, we heard a scream from Jimmy B. He was the first to see Barnet, he was hanging from the climbing rope. He had hung himself during the night while we were sleeping.

Jimmy B had to be hospitalized for several weeks because of the trauma of finding him. He was not the same after. It took months before he started singing again. We worked together for a year or so and I tried to look after him as much as I could, but I moved on to HQ Company to train for the upcoming sports meet, as I was a distance runner. It was about that time I met my wife-to-be and moved out on the economy. Jimmy visited us quite often and when our first child was born, he became our babysitter and good friend. Jimmy was back to singing, with some improvement, maybe.

We came back to Canada in the summer of ’65 and I was assigned to the gym as my company representative and never ran into Jimmy B until we were deployed to the island of Cyprus with the United Nations peacekeeping force. Jimmy went off to the trenches between the Greeks and the Turks, and I looked after the physical training of the troops in the company I served with, and taught SCUBA diving to the Battalion. I lost contact after Cyprus when I was sent to the Airborne Regiment in Alberta. I think Jimmy became a bartender at some unit in Halifax. The only contact was whenever I was on lengthy courses, a telephone call would come in for me and it would be Jimmy, and he would say, “Hi Bob, just checking to see if you’re ok.”

I retired in 1981 after spending four years as a PL Warrant at CFB Cornwallis recruit school. Four years passed and I got a call from Ian Frazer, an old commander that I served with in Germany. He was running the Nova Scotia Tattoo in Halifax and wanted me to run the repelling teams in the show. I was there a few days when he called and informed me that Jimmy was in the hospital and was very sick with stomach cancer. Col. Frazer told me that he sent a bagpiper up to the hospital to play outside Jimmy’s window. Jimmy loved the bagpipes, as all his army career he served with the Black Watch. The piper played the marching song Black Bear. I went to see him but they would not let me in, as I was not a relative. I asked the nurse to wish him well for me.

I finished my time with the Nova Scotia Tattoo and it was around November, 1984. Things were looking good and I had a nice retirement job with security at Base Cornwallis when I got a call from Jimmy. He said that he drove up from Halifax to see Renate and me but he didn’t have much time. He went out to his car and came back with a Gibson guitar, and sat down and played ‘Bubbles in my Beer.’ He turned to us and said he had to go. He seemed to be in some pain. He left and ten minutes later I got a call from the RCMP. Jimmy was killed on the highway not far from me. The RCMP told me that he died in a head-on collision with an eighteen-wheeler. They asked if it was suicide. I told them no, not Jimmy.

Wherever you are, Jimmy, play on.

Robert Bennett
Waldeck West, NS