Here, at the war’s start, is an English woman emigrating to Canada, being chucked into a small lifeboat from the torpedoed Athenia on top of seventy other civilians heaped and vomiting on each other (except for one already dead).
Here is a Vancouver naval volunteer merely watching in dumb excitement and frustration, from his corvette in the Channel (as I did from a nearby shore), the aerial armada of D-Day roaring overhead to France. And there is the lone survivor from a bomber, blasted from the skies into three years of prison camps, enduring serious but untreatred injuries, Gestapo interrogations, starvation fare, forced marches and the daily expectation of being shot. That was a McGill student who endured to finish his courses and practice his profession.
An 18-year-old from New Brunswick signed up with the Royal Rifles just in time to fight and be captured in Hong Kong. He suffered four years of lethal slavery in Japanese hands, and then returned to Canada.
And there is a wonderfully lively Nursing Sister here from Montreal who served in Casualty Clearing Stations in many dangerous scenes. She is perhaps my favorite because among her many patients in the V-2 days around Nijmegen (when I was there) was a cheerful screwball who had been nicked in the butt. He could well have been my young friend of those vanished days, Pte. Thos. L. (Topsy) Turvey.
Earle Birney
Preface
Four decades have passed, and yet for many who were present on the massive revolving stage of an all-out world war, memories of that time remain vivid and compelling.
These stories have been gathered together to illustrate how a varied cross-section of Canadians met the main challenge of their youth. Most of those featured were volunteers who enlisted in Canada; others were caught up in the struggle against Fascism elsewhere and chose to become Canadians shortly after hostilities ceased.
Death and its grim retinue of terror, suffering, and imprisonment lurked in all theatres of conflict and took their inestimable toll. Although not always centre stage in these brief sketches, the ugly and brutal face of war is glimpsed time and again among the routine and romance, the humour and hard times, and that special comradeship which flourished through interdependence.
I believe that these survivors have related their reminiscences with honesty, memories in many cases being reinforced by publications and documents of the day. Thus, I hope that contemporaries will read these accounts and think. “Yes, that was how it was.” Also I wish that other generations of Canadians may learn and understand more about their compatriots, young people who were the flesh and blood associated with place names and cold statistics of 1939-1945.
Joyce Hibbert, Drummondville, 1985
SEA
WRENS personnel on the signal mast, HMCS St. Hyacinthe, at St. Hyacinthe, Quebec in September, 1944.
1
Athenia Survivor
I’m not afraid of submarines or anything like that and I’ll come back when I’m well.”
Thirty-four-year-old Barbara Bailey was trying to reassure her parents as she bade them a tearful farewell in London, England. The date was 31 August 1939.
As her private world had been shattered in the preceding weeks, she knew she had to get away. Now she was off to Canada where she would help care for her brother’s baby girl in Calgary.
By this move she would avoid a complete breakdown while trying to forget the man who had been the cause of her anguish: Reg, who had ended their fourteen-year-long ’understanding’ when he had announced his engagement to a young girl. As though to purge him from her life Barbara wrote him that final letter.
The Adelphi Hotel,
Liverpool, England
1 September 1939
... And this Reg, is probably my last night in England – not for good – I am coming back when I am fit again. Tomorrow, who knows – we shall probably be at war but for the first time in many months I am calm, nothing is real.
... And now to forget – forget every second of happiness I had with you and to forget how many times and how deeply I have paid for it....
Because of her highly nervous state in the weeks before her departure, there had been frequent tears and turmoil at home. From the Adelphi Hotel on that first of September she also wrote a letter to her mother.
... Several hotels seem to be closed down so was almost compelled to come here. It’s dearer than I wanted but overwhelming attention.
... I feel much better already and am now off to enquire about the Athenia. Someone behind me is saying “I haven’t said goodbye to my mother or anything – I’ve never done that before.” That’s just how I feel, terribly casual about leaving now.
I ought to have brought my gas mask with me, everyone has a brown square parcel I see.
I’ll write again before sailing if possible....
The 15,000 ton Donaldson Atlantic Line steamship had embarked passengers at Glasgow and Belfast. With this final group boarding at Liverpool her passengers and crew would total 1400 persons. The Athenia was bound for Montreal carrying British, Canadian, and American citizens, as well as about sixty European emigrants and refugees fleeing Nazi oppression.
Barbara Bailey’s valuables went down with the ship’s safe.
As she boarded the already blacked-out liner, Barbara Bailey had the immediate and disquieting impression that the Athenia was over-crowded. (According to 4 September 1939 edition of the The Evening News, the Athenia had the largest number of passengers on board for many years.) She was annoyed at having to share a cabin with the three other women already in it. Some husbands and wives had been separated for the voyage in order to permit four women or four men to a cabin.
Late in the afternoon of Saturday, 2 September the ship sailed out of Liverpool.
Next morning, free of seasickness, Barbara Bailey attended shipboard church service and afterwards joined the soberfaced passengers clustered around a notice board. In shocked silence they were reading a bulletin announcing Britain’s declaration of war against Germany.
As if sleepwalking, she continued on her way to the dining room where the atmosphere was heavy with gloom. Her personal control broke and she burst into tears. One of the stewards urged her to pull herself together and quietly encouraged her to begin her lunch. To help, he even fed her a few spoonfuls of soup. War, she was wondering, what would it mean? An exchange on deck that afternoon had topical significance. “We will bomb Croydon” a German woman boasted, to which Barbara started to retort “When we bomb Berlin ...” Whereupon the woman had interrupted “I don’t think we’ve considered that.” The Englishwoman had the last word. “If you can get to Croydon, we can get to Berlin!”.
Thus the ship buzzed with talk of war and Barbara Bailey sensed that people were greatly relieved to be on their way to North America, and away from it all. Indeed, she felt that she might be the only passenger feeling guilty and distressed about leaving Britain behind at such a perilous time.
While the First Sitting group were at dinner that evening Barbara lined up for a previously reserved bath. But the Second Sitting gong sounded and she had to miss it. Hurriedly she put on her bright reddish-mauve dinner dress, brown leather shoes