BackStory Episode 16
Bill Hall, centre, at training centre in Moncton, NB
In this, the last episode of the podcast Fondly yours…, it is 1944.
Marguerite is in her second year at Bryn Mawr College. Will Hall has been in the RAF and training for a year, ‘chaffing at the bit for action’, but having just been moved from pilot to navigator training and sent to Moncton, New Brunswick.
Canada became one of the main training grounds for young pilots and air crew members from all over the world as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Britain realized that air power would be an important factor in the war effort but Britain was also under siege by Nazi Germany, so Canada was seen as ideal training ground for the pilots, navigators, bombers, radio operators, air gunners and flight engineers.
Over a four-year period, more than 130,000 personnel from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries in the Commonwealth graduated from 107 training schools across the country. Most of them were in their late teens or early 20s and found themselves a long way from home.
This is where USOs filled a need. USO (United Service Organizations) clubs were a “Home Away from Home” for many military personnel and workers in wartime industry. The term became synonymous with any club with a similar mandate. But the official USOs were accountable to the National USO's standards and regulations. Depending on the size of the community and its needs, there could be more than one club each with its own specific clientele. One club might have had more lively entertainment like dances, sporting tournaments, and outings. Another might offer a daycare and activities for wives and children of soldiers stationed nearby. Some USOs became well known for organizing entertainment for soldiers overseas, with star entertainers such as Bob Hope.
Marguerite describes Miss Ely’s USO in episode 15, and again in this one. It was thanks to the USO that Marguerite and Bill met. They had a few meetings over the course of only one week, before Bill had to return to Moncton, New Brunswick and then back to England. They corresponded by mail for two and half years. Read some of their wonderfully descriptive letters to each other in Frostie & Bill.
In this final episode we also learn the fate of Jackie (John Henry) Fink. Early in the creation of this podcast, I was corresponding a lot with my cousin Elaine in England. Elaine is the niece of my Dad, William F. Hall and the daughter of his brother Ronnie and Eileen, who was Jackie’s sister. Elaine agreed with my idea of imaginary Maude falling in love with her real uncle Jackie.
Elaine came from England to visit me this year, in the Spring of 2023, and came with me to the sound booth in the Lynn Valley Library to record the letters that had been written to her grandmother, Rose, one year after the torpedoing of the Empire Impala in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. All aboard were presumed lost at sea, (and Rose Fink would have received a letter about that in 1943), but not officially declared dead until one year later.
During WWII, 4,700 British-flagged ships were sunk and more than 29,000 merchant seamen died.
The Empire Impala was a merchant steam ship, sunk by U-boat-591. “On March 7, 1943, the Empire Impala in convoy SC-121 was ordered to pick up survivors from the Egyptian, which had been sunk by U-230 at 02.10 hours. She was not seen again. At 09.06 hours on 7 March, U-591 torpedoed and sunk a straggler of the convoy, which was the Empire Impala. The master, 41 crew members and six gunners were lost.”
And what of Maude? In earlier episodes we heard of her and Marguerite’s fascination with codes, and of Maude’s mother and her mysterious, unnamed work on the continent. I imagine my imaginary Maude, in order to drown her grief, immersing herself in the same type of war work as her mother.
But that is another story.