Letters from London, 1944–45

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

On October 22, 1944, 22-year-old Edna Johnson of Elbow, Saskatchewan,
who was serving in London with the RCAF Women’s Division, added a
postscript to a letter she had written her sister: “This [letter]
sounds pretty good … do you mind keeping it for my future
reference?” Happily for her and fortunately for the rest of us, her
sister kept virtually all the mail Edna sent to her and to their
parents.

Johnson arrived in London on the eve of D-Day and sailed home in
December 1945, having met her future husband in England. During that
time she wrote home regularly. Her letters show a lively, inquiring
mind, and tell of weekends exploring the war-damaged city; of trips to
Cambridge, Oxford, Scotland, and Ireland; of rations and blackouts; and
of lively entertainment in a city crowded with young Americans,
Canadians, Australians, and others. Her descriptions are vivid and
pithy, but some things exceeded her abilities: “I wish I could
describe English bread, but it beats even me.” She writes of the
arrival of POWs, of attitudes toward the Zombies (conscripts protected
by Mackenzie King’s pledge from overseas service), and of the joy of
receiving parcels from Canada, which was exceeded, perhaps, only by the
joy of meeting someone from home.

Letters to her sister and to her parents, often written on the same
day, may at first appear repetitious, but then one notices subtle
differences; there are, after all, things one will tell a sibling that
one might not confide in parents. “Mom said she wished I wouldn’t go
to pubs,” she wrote her sister, who got frequent gossip about parties,
dances, and friends. And “I certainly didn’t tell Mom about the
bombs.”

Letters have an immediacy that would be lacking in a memoir penned
decades after the fact, and we can be grateful for this slight but
noteworthy addition to the historical record.