The Nelson Twins of Mount Forest: Brothers in Arms

While it may not seem unusual for brothers to have the occasional scuffle, this pair instead chose to fight for freedom during World War II.

Twin brothers Earl and Irwin Nelson, both now of Mount Forest, were just 18 when they enlisted to serve overseas. They grew up on the family farm near Orchardville north of Mount Forest, and the boys were two of seven children.

Irwin said all their friends were joining the Armed Forces at the time, and they were no strangers to the war’s effect on families. Their uncle, Earl Vollett, had died during World War I at Vimy.

“I was named after him,” Earl added.

Irwin explained that they had gone to Toronto to the horse palace at the exhibition grounds. “We signed up on the 25th of March, and we had three weeks to get our affairs in order before reporting back,” Earl said. “We’d received our uniforms and everything else.”

Earl said, “When we signed up, Mother said, ‘I don’t want you to go,  but if you go, I’d like you to stay together.’ So we had that motto.”

The pair headed to Orillia for two months of basic training. “They were just opening up the camp. We were more or less the workhorses to clean up.”

Earl described much of basic training as simply learning “to do what you’re told. You learned the ropes and how to take orders, to march and everything else.”

Then, Irwin continued, they headed to Camp Borden for advanced training.

Earl said that was where they had the chance to use their weapons.

It was also where they learned about gas warfare used in the previous war.

“It wasn’t very nice; we just sniffed it. There was a room with a stove, and they’d drop a capsule with their gas masks on.”

They were instructed to put two fingers under the mask and take two whiffs.

“By goll, I was sick as a dog and my nose was bleeding, but you couldn’t take the mask off. You’d have to go out and lay on the grass. But it gave you an idea if you ever smelled it. That was the idea – to warn you” Earl said.

He later added that no one used gas in the Second World War because “It was outlawed after the first one.”

After basic training, the twins were on an overseas draft and headed to Aldershot, Nova Scotia, waiting for a ship.

“We were very unhappy; we’d been waylayed there for a month, waiting for a ship. There was 600 of us, waiting. They called us outlaws, when the group was acting up a bit.”

On Oct. 14, they boarded the Queen Elizabeth ship in Halifax, setting sail on Oct. 20 heading to Grenock, Scotland.

Earl said those big ships were too fast for the convoys.

“A convoy only moves as fast as the slowest ship. They said there was 20,000 men on board,” Earl said.

As a result, “We were told we headed up the Canadian coast for air protection, then cut across to Grenock, just outside of Glasgow.”

Then they headed to Eng­land and were there for two or three weeks before heading off on another vessel, in Plymouth, to join a convoy heading to Africa.

Earl estimated they were on the water for two weeks. He remembered heading through the Straight of Gibraltar. They were in Africa, just outside of Algiers, where troops were reassembled before heading out.

“We were just infantry … reinforcements,” Earl said. “We were there for about three weeks, in tents in a bush. We had orange orchards and everything else. The natives got very upset with us taking their oranges, so we put a guard on. So, then, we didn’t have to  raid them anymore; the guards just brought the oranges back with them.”

Then the Nelsons boarded a ship to Naples, Italy and travelled by truck up through the boot.

Earl said there was fighting in Ortona on the Adriatic coast.

“We were allotted to the Brig­ade of the Seaforth High­landers which was involved in the fighting at Ortona.”

“That’s how we got into the Seaforth Highlanders; they’re from Vancouver.”

Earl said later on they were offered the opportunity to transfer into an eastern unit, “but by that time, we felt we knew these guys; we stayed with them then.”

It was also meant a Christmas meal on the road as the trucks continued up the countryside. Earl said that on the way, they had their Christmas dinner off the truck, with mud and rain – and everything else.

“I think we went down into Ortona on Dec. 27, around 5:30pm and they put us into houses. During the night there was shelling, and a shell landed and blew the door open.”

Irwin thought the German army was coming in. Earl said someone grabbed Irwin’s foot and said, “It’s your turn out.”

But they had the wrong person, and Irwin was pleased about that.

Earl said the Germans pulled out of Ortona around Dec. 28. “We said it was because they knew we were coming in.”

As the Nelsons headed to the area north of Ortona, they took up residence in a winter holding position in January 1944.

“Of course, they’d keep us busy and we’d go out on pat­rols in no man’s land … just to annoy the enemy … and they’d do the same.”

Each side would attempt to take prisoners to determine the quality of people they were fighting against.

Earl said the Fifth Division finally arrived; the Nelsons were in the First Division. “They relieved us, where we were north of Ortona. We were only out two weeks and they pulled us back in line again.”

Earl explained that the officers felt they had taken their objective, but could not hold it, so they withdrew into the valley and were massacred, “so they pulled us into line again.”

They then headed to a community called Pescara.

“We were in a house right on a dike for a few weeks. We were on one side and the Germans on the other.”

It was a three storey stone house, with great big windows.

“We’d billeted just below the dike.”

They had brought grenades with them and threw them across to annoy the enemy. The trick, Earl said, is the grenades had four second fuses.

“If you just threw them, they land in the water before exploding. We had to get nerve enough to hold them and watch them smoke in our hands be­fore we’d throw them. It took a little while to get the nerve to do that.

“You’d throw it, and then you’d have to duck … because the 36 grenade has a round piece of steel which would come back screaming over our heads. We were playing games – deadly games.”

Earl said they would make periscopes about the size of a quarter, and when they pulled them back down they would have a hole right through them from sniper fire.

“You’d like to see what was going on, but you daren’t put your head up. A couple of guys did and they ended up with a bullet between the eyes.

Irwin said they made up bombs to launch as well. He explained soldiers filled a steel barrel with anything they could find and rolled it over the dike.

Earl said they figured they had a bridge down there and had dug a portion away be­cause it ended up blowing up part of the dike.

“We annoyed them to the point where one night we were sitting down for supper. We were all in the house, when all of a sudden it came under heavy shellfire and the roof started coming down.

“We all got out into the back yard. But there was chainlink fence all around.

“I remember coming out the door and there were three or four guys all around. They were like groundhogs, trying to dig to get underneath. I cleared the fence and all I had was a three-corner rip on my jacket. I don’t know how I got over the fence, but I got over it. With the bullets screaming around, that gives you the incentive.”

What they were supposed to do in a situation like that, Earl said, was to withdraw to a defensive position, but we went forward.

“That’s what save our necks.”

He explained the enemy could not shell them from the front of the house because they were too close to their own lines. A few men ended up going back into the house to gather up their guns and am­munition.

A few minutes later, there was a line of Germans demanding that they give up.

“Some of the boys were telling the Germans in no un­certain terms what they could do.”

The result was the the patrol had thought they would be buried under the house, “but we’d moved forward instead, which save our skins.”

Earl added that the enemy kept saying “You Canadians don’t play fair, you don’t go along by rules. Under military rules, you are supposed to do this or that, but they couldn’t tell the Canadians to do that.”

By May 23, 1944, the pair were along the Hitler Line, a strong defensive position on the east coast. He said there were 80% casualties there.

On the experience Earl said, “I know what a worm feels like. I laid through it all and shrapnel hit me – but spent pieces.

He noted one Irish regiment that went in with 58 tanks and came out with three.

“You’ve never seen such a mess afterwards … They ran into a mine field. It pretty near wiped them out. I survived and never got a scratch on me. Most of the guys were killed.”

At the time, Irwin was in the hospital and word came in that the regiment was wiped out.

“But we survived. I remember the next day, on guard duty it was the 24th of May and thinking, you have to give us a holiday or we’ll all run away. It’s funny what goes through your mind.”

His group then headed on the road to Rome when they came under shellfire.

Irwin had returned to duty, but was in a platoon behind Earl. A shell landed beside Earl and he was wounded in the thigh. Three or four other guys were wounded in the arms.

He said the sergeant suggested that Earl be carried out, but he refused.

Earl believed getting carried out would get others killed because the shelling was still going on.

“I was able to walk out,” and on the way, he was able to contact Irwin to let him know his condition was not that bad.

During the night, he was operated on in a field hospital.

He later ended up in the 14th General Hospital.

During that time, Irwin was serving in Casino when gunfire opened up to soften up the enemy as they went in to support the Polish division.

“It was raining, cold, and the bridges were washed out,” Irwin said.

Earl said it was such a horrible night, that even though the Germans were on guard and the bridges washed out, “our boys went right through the German lines and they didn’t even know it. They got into their house, and the next morning the Germans came home for breakfast, and our boys were they.

Earl said that Irwin noted that they could not retreat because the water was that high.

That’s where Smokey Smith got his VC, he was in the anti-tank brigade then. Smith was the last recipient of the Victoria Cross.

They then headed to France and Belgium to Ramsell, where they billeted with a family while the division reorganized as it moved from Italy into Holland.

They then headed to an area outside of Amsterdam.

The main forces had al­ready gone through and it was the Canadians’ job to clean up the ports along the North Sea.

That’s where they were in May 1945, when they knew things were coming to a head.

“There was either going to be a big fight … or peace.”

The pair had a seven-day leave to England.

“When we headed back, peace was already signed. We were in London, England when VE Day arrived.”

But there was still more to be done. When they got back to Holl­and, they were billeted in the Navy Barracks in Am­sterdam.

“We supported the local authorities as police. We were the muscle.”

Our job was be there to support them, because there were still Germans around.

Irwin was sent to Germany to deal with the reoccupation.

When it was time to come back to Canada, Earl wrote his commanding officer requesting that he join Irwin, and Irwin wrote the same letter to his commanding officer.

“A week before, Irwin joined me and we came home together on Oct. 1, 1945.”

Earl said they were put in with the 48th Highlanders to Toronto.

Earl had been hoping to ride with the Seaforth Highlanders right across Canada, “but they wouldn’t go for that kind of goings on. They sent the infantry home first, we march­ed up Front Street in Toronto where our parents met us.”

“The funny little  thing was that neither of us smoked, but Dad was saying that people back home were saying they probably were [smoking], but not saying.”

He remembered his Dad offering him a cigarette. “He just tried to catch me, I guess.”

The brothers stayed together even after the war, purchasing a 200 acre farm in Egremont Township – now Southgate, now where they raised their respective families.

Later on, they served on the colour party for the Royal Canadian Legion. When the farm was sold, they moved to Mount Forest.

“We’ve had people confused all our lives,” Earl said. “People would call us Mr. Nelson. We knew when they said that, we knew they knew who we were, just not which was which. In the army, the called us Mark One and Mark Two.

When Earl was asked if the experience changed them, he was unsure.

“When we lived on the farm, we never went no place, we were kind of isolated, with horse and buggy and all that stuff. [The war] just opened up the whole world to us. I joined up for adventure, and I got adventure, I tell you.

He said that once overseas, “There were times I wondered, what am I doing here? I don’t regret it one bit. We were 18 when we went in, and 21 when we came out. We did a lot of growing up. We lost our youth years.”

For Earl, there was only one night later on when he woke up having dreamt he was under shellfire.

“After that there was nothing. It didn’t stay with me.”

Earl believed it was his youth that helped. He said he’s heard a lot of people, where the experience stayed with them for the rest of their lives.

For Irwin it was much the same; there were only a few nights where he would dream of places he had been to.

At the same time, Earl said there are reminiscences “and you think, how did I ever make it? Out on the front lines, you gotta go with your conscience, maybe that’s what bothers some people. I looked at them thinking they thought they were doing what was right, and I was doing what I thought was right.

“I had no hatred for the enemy, I just thought they were doing their job and I was trying to do my job.”

 

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