My father-in-law had trained at Shilo MB for Pacific Force, but when the war ended, instead of being De-mobbed, they upped his points requirement and sent him to RCAF Station MacDonald, which by then had been turned into a War Assets Storage and Disposal site. Train loads of equipment arrived every week and they used FWD Tractors to haul items from the nearby rail siding to the base. He commented it all seemed to arrive in organized batches and for a while it was nothing but light and heavy artillery. Boxed Polsten, Orlikon and Bofors guns had to be stored in the hangers, but the trailer ready units were all lined up outside. There were quite a lot of 40mm Bofors, 17 and 25 pounders and dozens of 3.7" AA pieces. Quite a bit of the smaller stuff was later returned to longterm military storage somewhere else in Canada, but every one of the 3.7" guns were sold to a Selkirk, Manitoba Steel Mill for scrap and they always went with a military escort to the mill to ensure they were properly disposed of on site. Though he did admit that by the end, the escort typically went off for lunch etc. in Selkirk and left the mill to their own tasks. A lot of Mk ! Carriers ended up there days at the mill as well.
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