East York legionnaire recalls wartime as merchant mariner
In 1944, William O’Leary lied about his age and enlisted as a galley boy in the Merchant Marine. He was 15 years old. “I’ve sailed all over the world,” said O’Leary, who embarked from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, on a ship carrying food, ammunitions and coal to Allied forces at the end of the Second World War. En route to Odessa, Russia, his ship travelled through the North Atlantic, a playground, he said, for German U-boats that were notorious for picking off slow convoys of ships heading into and out of Canada.