I never met my father’s brother, Leonard. His story is only known from the many long letters he wrote back home during the war. These letters give insights into the minor details of life in the forces at the time, but because of censorship, there is almost nothing written about the major events we now know about.
My grandmother kept all these letters and those from my father. This precious box ended up in my mother’s loft. I had no idea they existed. I took ownership of them and I then discovered Leonard’s story.
John (left) and Leonard Green with their father
Two brothers in wartime
My father joined the army in 1941 at the age of 19 and became a lieutenant in a Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, serving in North Africa and Italy. Leonard was just 17 when, in 1942, he reported for training as a Telegraphic Air Gunner (TAG) for the Fleet Air Arm, an operating arm of the Royal Navy, later known as the Air Division of the Royal Navy. His first letter home gives us an idea of his first training course.
24th Jan 1942
Dear Mother and Father
Thank you for the books you sent, we don’t get much time for reading but they might be useful for odd moments. I am finding no difficulty with the course but it is just as well to spend a bit of spare time “swotting”. We had our first proper Morse test paper on Friday.
At HMS Royal Arthur, in Skegness, the cadets had their photos taken. Their youth is striking – Leonard is on the left. Life in the training camp seemed comfortable.
24 Jan 1942
Yesterday we were paid 10/- in advance and told that pay per week would be 24/- [24 shillings = £1.20 today]. Let me know how much I ought to allot to you and I’ll let know how much you’re going to get.
Things are done on a huge scale here; there are about 5,000 trainees in camp. We mess in Gloucester House with about a thousand others. The place is completely self-contained, there is a Post Office, canteens, tuck shops and a cinema theatre. Most of the messes have stages as well. ENSA gives us a show every Saturday night.
It wasn’t idyllic:
“If you can ever spare any jam, or something like that, it would come in very useful, as we usually only get bread and butter at tea, with some cake.”
A taste of the New World
In March 1943, we find Leonard sailing across the Atlantic to continue his training in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.
Sunday 21st March
This is our second day at sea, and so far I am enjoying life very much. Before we sailed, we were given visions of a dirty old tramp steamer with terrible food and everybody being sick on everybody else. However, we came prepared for the worst and got the best. The food on board is of pre-war quality and there’s lashings of the stuff. We get three meals a day and I make a proper pig of myself at each sitting. It is American food prepared by American cooks and it really is the best I’ve ever tasted in the Navy.
28th March 1943
Yarmouth is quite a small town and the Navy rather overruns it. However, this certainly is a land of plenty with food and chocolate in abundance. I had 3 eggs for breakfast yesterday.
The camp here is set in marvellous surroundings, I hope to get about a bit before leaving here.
21st April 1943
I have not told you much about Yarmouth yet, so here goes. It has a population of about 6,000 people so as you see it is not oversized. When you have seen the Main Street, you’ve seen Yarmouth. It is built almost entirely of timber, the school being about the only brick building. I am afraid it is not quite what we hoped for, but then we’re out here to become T.A.Gs, that seems the best attitude to take.
A trip to Toronto
Leonard and his friends made a trip to Toronto in July 1943 via a ferry between Digby, Nova Scotia and St. John, New Brunswick, then a train to Montreal and onto Toronto.
10th July 1943
I’m writing this on the boat between St. John and Digby, going (unfortunately) in the opposite direction. The train journey between St. John and Montreal is the longest stretch we travelled without a break. We had about four hours in Montreal, looking at the city and its people. Having “just come up from the country”, so to speak, it took us quite some time to drink it all in. The wide streets and tall buildings, not to mention the well-stocked shops and well-dressed men and women. The war seem to have stopped suddenly.
We arrived in Toronto at about 10.30 pm on the Sunday night. Toronto is noted throughout Canada as being ‘dead’ on a Sunday. As far as we can see, Toronto goes to bed at about 5 o’clock on a Sunday evening and gets up at about 12 o’clock, goes out and enjoys itself until it’s time to go to work and then settles down to another week. It’s a good way of losing that Monday morning feeling.
When the clock struck 12, people seemed to appear from nowhere and the city started to look like Birmingham was in peace time at six o’clock on a Friday night. We took a stroll together and landed up on the end of a queue for a midnight show. It turned out to be a very entertaining variety.
Next day, we were invited to go to the Canadian Bank of Commerce so that we could get a bird’s eye view of Toronto. It’s the tallest building in the British Empire with about forty storeys to its credit. It’s a marvellous looking city, tram tracks and trees, side roads and stretches of greenery mixed with all the commonplace things of a town.
Niagara Falls
We devoted the whole of Tuesday to Niagara Falls. On board the ship we met four ladies who live in Toronto, all of them were born in England and had come out here about thirty years ago. One of them invited us all to her apartment for the following Wednesday night.
Niagara is a marvellous sight. We saw it from every possible angle, photographed it too. We had a trip on “The Maid of the Mist”, a rickety old steamer which visited the American side before taking us right up to the falls. We were issued with oilskins and needed them too. The spray lashed right over the little ship. The voyage back to Toronto started at about 9 o’clock and there was a smashing band on board and hordes of girls who didn’t appear to have seen any British matelots before. They almost taught us how to “jive” and “jitterbug”, but not quite.
On Wednesday afternoon, we went to see the people we met on the Niagara boat. The apartment turned out to be an ultra-modern one and the lady’s father, a Yorkshire man, took great pride in showing us how everything worked. He seemed to think that vacuum cleaners, electric stoves and refrigerators weren’t known in England. We didn’t disillusion him and even managed an open-mouthed gape now and again. They certainly knew how to dish up the eats and among other things we downed a fruit salad that included banana.
We had to start back for Yarmouth on the Thursday. Time passed too quickly and it wasn’t long before we were saying goodbye to the “crowd” that came to see us off. We spent about six hours in Montreal and saw as much as we could in that short space of time. But it didn’t seem as good as Toronto. We spent most of our time eating bananas and strawberries which were plentiful there.
The war, meanwhile, was entering its final stages, and Leonard’s final training was almost complete.
This is part one of two, telling Leonard’s story in the years leading up to D-Day. Part two will be released later on today.
Truth is power
Nominate an organisation that needs scrutiny
