band played “Roll Out the Barrel,” several people linked arms and danced a lively polka.
I saw a hand fluttering from the upstairs window of the post office, kitty-corner from the railway station. Torn between seeing and being seen, June had decided to take up a vantage point where she wouldn’t miss anything. I waved back.
As the train pulled into the station, the crowd broke into a cheer. Every window was filled with a dozen blue-capped heads as the men strained to see their new surroundings.
The new air base commander came down the steps and posed in a frozen handshake with the mayor while I took their photograph. Chief Whitefish stepped forward and raised his right hand in greeting. “Crikey, a Red Indian,” I heard someone mutter from a window on the train.
The doors banged open and began to disgorge the airmen in a steady stream. Blue uniforms carrying kit bags overflowed the platform and swelled into the parking area, and still the doorways continued to empty and fill again.
The crowd of civilians, which had appeared so large a few minutes earlier, seemed to shrink before the flood. The townspeople were still smiling but they looked a little staggered. Touchwood’s population was only four thousand on a Saturday afternoon when the farmers were in town. Now twelve hundred strangers had swelled their ranks.
From my position on the packing crates, I surveyed the sea of blue caps, many of them bearing a strip of white fabric tucked into the brim that meant they were aircrew rather than ground crew. A few of the newcomers were eyeing my legs, while others stared down the main street with an expression of disbelief. But most of them were looking up, squinting into the sunshine. Surely they couldn’t ask for a better training field than this. Above their heads lay a blue dome so vast and empty that even the prairie dwindled in comparison.
But as I focused my camera on their faces, I couldn’t help feeling a little disconcerted. I had expected members of the Royal Air Force to look more like fighting men. These boys were pale and exhausted, their faces just as youthful and timid as all the others that had left from this very spot.
“Well, I hope you’re satisfied,” MacTavish shouted when I got back to the office. “Now we’ve got the cursed Brits in our own backyard!”
I was far from satisfied. Over the next few weeks I was gripped with feverish anxiety. The whole town went plane crazy. The skies were filled with the buzzing of bright yellow training airplanes and everyone for miles around knew the difference between a Harvard and an Oxford.
Much to MacTavish’s horror, the presence of the Royal Air Force caused local enlistment to skyrocket. “The air training plan, meant to substitute our land for our lifeblood, is nothing more than a thinly disguised recruiting scheme by the RAF!” he thundered in an editorial. “Canadians are outnumbering the British recruits two to one!”
I tried in vain to reason with him. “But Mr. MacTavish, everybody is on the same side at last. We haven’t heard a word about those idiot politicians or those arrogant Easterners lately. And our local boys want to do their part, too!”
“Bushwa! Nothing but a bunch of sheep following each other off a cliff!”
Sheep or not, I knew how they felt. I had hoped that the presence of the base would lessen my desire to go overseas, but the opposite was true. Boys hardly older than me were being trained under our very noses, then sent away to fight while I was forced to stand and wait. It was sheer torture.
The summer days lengthened. There was another flurry of excitement when Hitler declared war on Russia. Now Germany was facing a war on two fronts. Chortling, MacTavish sat down and banged out an editorial: “Hitler’s Ego Has Lost the War!”
Unfortunately Russia wasn’t making any progress. Instead, it was losing ground. However, the Russian people were fighting back furiously in what Stalin called his scorched earth policy, burning their own crops and villages rather than leaving them behind for the Germans.
“Even Russia allows women into the armed forces,” I told June one evening, returning to my favourite subject as I put the last knot in a pair of socks. “I saw a photograph today of a woman driving a tank.”
“You’re knitting beautifully now, Posy.”
“Well, you know what they say. You can take up either knitting or drinking, and so far I’ve stuck to knitting.”
I found the rhythmic clacking of the needles helped my jitters. Besides, I didn’t want to be the only woman in Canada who wasn’t knitting. Even female convicts and mental patients had learned to knit. Thousands of socks formed a blue mountain at the town’s collection depot. After June finished each pair, she tucked a good luck note into one toe. “Sort of like putting a message in a bottle,” she said.
The town launched a metals and rubber drive called Scrap Hitler with Scrap. I photographed a team of horses hauling away the souvenir cannon from the Great War Memorial. It would be melted down and used to fight the Germans again.
One morning Jack came downstairs with his beloved collection of lead soldiers and asked me to drop them at the depot. “Jack, surely not your soldiers,” Mother said sadly.
“I reckon I’m too big to be playing with toys now. I’d rather they were part of a tank than sitting in my bedroom.” After he left, Mother put the lead general in her apron pocket.
Touchwood
July 1, 1941
Dear Charlie,
I was thinking about you today and decided to drop you a line. Remember that Dominion Day when we lit the firecrackers and almost burned down Dad’s haystack? I hope you’re enjoying it, wherever you are.
Touchwood is the same — boring as ever. The last two boys in our class have joined up, all except for Jake Jacobs. I guess he has flat feet. Funny, isn’t it? He was always the big baseball star and now he has to stay home and milk the cows.
I was admiring your oat field yesterday on my way to work. It’s the best crop I’ve ever seen, about shoulder high, must be forty bushels to the acre. Your father says those two young cousins of yours are good workers, but of course they’re just itching to join up, too. Jack has a calendar in his bedroom and he’s crossing off the days with big red Xs until his eighteenth birthday. I think it’s giving Mother the heebie-jeebies!
I’m still working at the newspaper and saving up to go to university. My job is okay, but how I envy you! Are you doing any sightseeing? I would love to hear all about England.
Best of British luck, Charlie, and keep your head down.
As always, Rose
6
I sat at my dressing table, wishing I had something new to wear. The wartime motto was “Make it Do or Do Without,” but I was tired of doing both.
Oh well. At least my clothes were all new to the boys in blue. I stepped into the dark red taffeta circle skirt I had sewn myself and slipped a string of Mother’s garnet beads over my white rayon blouse. Pinning back the sides of my hair in a Victory Roll, I applied bright red lipstick, trying unsuccessfully to even out my crooked
