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Sgt. Cam Doiron

Another from Maine was Camille Doiron. His father a French-speaking lumber jack from New Brunswick, he had likewise come from Canada in pursuit of the jobs Maine was offering. He and his wife initially settling in the small and close-knit town of Jay, his fiddle playing helped the couple quickly integrate into the community, where they began to raise their family. They initially started out in a small farm, but after taking a job at the local paper mill, the family was able to move into a six-unit apartment house, with a rent was $3.00 a week. A newer build that boasted three bedrooms, the accommodations soon became cramped as the family eventually grew to eight children, Cam the third of five boys. With no alternative, the boys took one room the girls another. “I don’t know how we did it,” his youngest brother George recalled, “but we made it work.”

Cam had the typical upbringing of a kid growing up in the rural woods of Maine. With fewer open areas to choose from, the area kids played their various games along the roadsides, but “there wasn’t much traffic” to worry about, George remembered. Other favorites of theirs included kicking the can, hide and seek or, once they got a little older, hitchhiking out to favorite swimming holes for a swim. Simple, but it was a great childhood.

By high school Cam was five foot ten, well-built, and was considered within his family to be the smartest, best-looking and bravest of the entire bunch. He was a natural born leader and a skilled athlete, excelling in football, basketball, and baseball. A running back in football he earned himself the nickname “Bennie the Bullet,” and was one of the best players to have ever come out of Little Jay High School. The local paper often mentioned him by name in their coverage, highlighting in one particular game how a pass he received from his quarterback cousin Norm Doiron set the team up to score first and ultimately secure the win. The paper ended its column by mentioning that the two “were outstanding,” the stars of the game.

Cam was just as skilled on the baseball diamond as well, where he played the “hot corner” of third base. On one particularly hard-hit ball, grade-school age George watched in awe from the stands as his older brother lunged instantaneously out for it, diving through the air completely parallel to the ground, to make such a spectacular catch that the sibling never forgot it. Not surprisingly, Cam’s good looks and skill on the field directly translated to him having no troubles at all with the opposite sex, with him and his brother Steve even dating a local pair of sisters while he finished out high school.

Graduating in the summer of 1941, Cam was fortunate to land a job in the mill working a paper machine, employment that was considered “a fantastic job” by his family. He also became involved in the community, joining the Knights of Columbus in the immediate months following school. This endeavor however did not start out well, as someone overdid the furnace on the night of his initiation, and poor Cam completely sweated through his suit and barely made it to the end of the ceremony.

A night of dehydration aside, things were looking promising for the young man as he started out. Then, one Sunday afternoon that December, their radio broadcast was interrupted with some shocking news. “Things were quiet,” his George remembered of the moment, his family all silently huddled around its speaker. “We just took it all in.”