Women in War Part 3: Catherine Wilkes Thomson
Posted Nov 9, 2015 12:23:24 PM.
Last Updated Nov 9, 2015 01:09:28 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Grace Schmidt Room at the Central Branch of the Kitchener public library is filled
with photos,stories and audio of Waterloo Regions past.
The library is in the process of digitizing cassette interviews of some heritage members of the community.
That includes 50 interviews with the men and women who served, contributed and witnessed the first and
second world war.
570’s Joe Pavia has produced a 5 part series on the stories of the local women who served. In this segment
he tells the story of Catherine Wilkes Thomson of Cambridge.
“And then the war started up and I decided, I’m not going to sit behind a desk.
So I joined the Red Cross.”
Catherine Wilkes Thomson took a motor mechanics course to achieve her goal of driving an ambulance.
“In order to be driving an ambulance or with an officer in his car you needed to know how to repair
that car if it broke down you also had to know where you were because all road signs had been removed.”
Despite that training her time in the war would be spent leading 16 other women in the Red Cross food corp.
Working in the canteen didn’t bother her as she would be stationed in England with her husband of 3 years.
The two would be in the southern part of the country in early June 1944. The area would be cordoned off to only military personnel in uniform.
“And on the morning before DDay I looked out the window of the hotel and said look at all these military things.
All the assault vessels trucks you know were coming down full of men.”
While she wasn’t privy to any information about what was about to happen and be recounted in the history books as a turning point for the allies,she would never forget what she witnessed.
“And I went out to a field. I heard this noise and I will never forget seeing wave upon wave upon wave of aircraft.
The sky was black with them. American, English, French Polish aircraft all flying in formation.
I still get the shivers thinking about it.”
In the next edition of women in war. “if it’s going to happen it’s going to happen but you didn’t think anything of it.”
The story of Canadian WREN Ann Screiber of Cambridge.
