Canadians in Radar
A Collaborative Oral History of World War II Veterans
proudly presented by
The Secrets of Radar Museum
Life on Leave: Radar Personnel Take Time Off
Time on leave gave radar personnel, and others serving in the war, an opportunity to pursue rest, relaxation, and normalcy. The stresses of serving in a radar unit could be overwhelming, and time on leave allowed radar personnel to take some down time that helped them return to their duties refreshed and ready to work. Personnel used their time on leave to visit family, travel, pursue recreation, and go on dates, often meeting their future spouses.
Janet Bates
Janet Bates: Well, in our off time, the land army was so desperate for people to work on the land because most of the men, you see, were in the services. So in our off time they used to ask us, like in Kent with the cherry orchards, would we go and pick cherries. We’re up on ladders picking cherries or stocking hay in the fields. Even though we were in the WAAF they still recruited us and we were getting paid for it.
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Interviewer: So how much time did you get off? Did you get to travel much? Other than being sent to different places?
Janet Bates: Well, you were on … on defensive radar you were on, what was it now, three shifts, I think. 7:00 to 3:00, 3:00 to 11:00, and 11:00 to 7:00. And then if you were on 11:00 to 7:00, of course, you went to bed because you had to have got up sometime, did something. I know I played tennis, if I could find somebody, because you’re on duty again at 11:00 that night. Now on Oboe, we had … I know the night shift you went on at 6:00 at night until 8:00 the next morning. Because you see, with Oboe you weren’t watching the screen 24/7, you knew when your operations were going to take place. You knew there was going to be a bombing raid on Norway, or Berlin, or you know, where ever. You knew when it was going to happen so really it was downtime there but of course you couldn’t go off the operational site. And then you got leaves, yes, you got what they called twenty-four or thirty-six hour passes. Every so often I’d go up to London and this Marjory that’s in one of the pictures, she had an aunt and uncle lived, wasn’t in London, but she often used to ask – I got quite friendly with her – to go to their home for the weekend, like … and they had a cottage down on the south coast. I can’t remember where now, but they asked us down there, you know, and … So you had those and then you got a … what they call a week's pass every how many months. I got to Glasgow to see my aunt and get away from the … And in fact when … after, I was up there one time, Fred managed to arrange to get the same time off and he … I met him at Saint George's Station in Glasgow and he spent the week, you know, in Glasgow with me.
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Janet Bates: Now, if I was lucky and got there maybe two minutes to midnight, I might get a taxi up to the station. If not, I had to hoof it, and that wasn’t pleasant in the dark of the night. You went down from the station in Dover and you had to walk up this big hill and then go all the way, for miles it seemed, to where our camp was. And there was an army camp part way, and sometimes there’d be some soldiers coming back so I’d walk along with them and you felt sort of safe but it used to scare me when I’d go along that road and I’d see a car coming towards me, and I thought “Oh no,” and know what I’d used to do? Dive in the ditch and wait until he’d passed! Well you never knew what character might be on it, woman on her own, you know.
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Joseph Lesley Brown
Joseph Lesley Brown: Anyway, point being, my relatives hadn’t seen me since I was six years of age, nor did they know I was in Ireland, but I went up to Belfast and knocked on their door and one of my aunts opens the door and I’m standing there in my Canadian uniform with “Canada” on my sleeves. She takes one look at me and says, “It’s Lesley!” So that was great, just loved that. They were so good to me.
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Joseph Lesley Brown: We had arranged to get married and D-Day kept getting in the way, in that Doris’ mother, she had to do all the arranging. We couldn’t do anything where we were. And the first indications were that D-Day may happen in May, so everything had to be cancelled. Now it wasn’t in May and everything had to be rearranged. Anyway, we did get married.
Interviewer: When did you get married?
JLB: April 22, 1944.
I: But you were on different stations when you got married?
JLB: Yeah. But because we were married, Doris was entitled to be on the same station, so she came to Ventnor. We were able to live off site. We lived with a charming couple. Lovely bungalow, Swiss cottage it was called, overlooking the Channel.
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Edna Simpson
Interviewer: Did you get any holidays?
Edna Simpson: Well, you got leave, when that came around, and then you could go do whatever you liked. And then sometimes you got a weekend type of thing off, but maybe in the middle of the week.
I: So how often would that happen?
ES: It all depended you know, there was nothing set because it all depended how the staffing was, and how busy you were, and that sort of thing.
I: So if you get, say a day or two off, what would you do? Would you stay around the station?
ES: No, we wouldn’t, because we were always stationed in very remote cliff side sites, so that you were quite a distance from places. So what we used to do, my friend and I, we used to hitch all over the place because at that time, hitching and in uniform, you were quite safe. Everyone picked you up. Wherever we were, we went into the nearest city.
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Interviewer: So if you had a bit of leave, if you could get to a nearby town or something, chances are you could get to meet with people from the next station.
Edna Simpson: Well, you could, but you didn’t get to know people except on your own station. And you see, on every station, if you had some time off, they had what they called liberty runs, and we used to travel back and forth in big lorries. And they’d have a liberty run to the nearest town and so everyone would sign up to go on a liberty run. You could go to a show, or you could go shopping, or something like that. So that was one means of transportation.
I: Was there a lot of social stuff happening on the station?
ES: They would always have dances, local dances. And then when we’d live close to Veryan and Cornwall, they’d have like a local dance in the country, like in the hall, and they’d have it open to all military people. So there was always soldiers or something in their areas because everyone was involved.
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Edna Simpson: I’ll tell you about the places I travelled to, and what I’ve seen with my friends, and things like that.
Interviewer: So what did you generally do? I guess it depended on how much time you had off, but did you do a lot of hiking or exploring?
ES: Yes, hiking and we used to, occasionally, we rented a bike and would do some biking. And then if we got to, I’ve always been a great reader, and if we got to a city or a town we’d buy books. I’d spend hours looking in book stores. Or go to a film, or something like that. And occasionally they’d have like NAAFI, which was National something-I-can’t-remember. They always provided entertainment, they were in charge of entertainment on stations and sometimes they’d bring in some entertainment and it would be open to anyone who was off duty to go, and that would be…
I: So it was like a singer or something?
ES: Or a group, dancers, or a little play. Something like that, some kind of variety show. Yeah, your dad got to see a lot of variety shows
I: Why did he get to see a lot of variety shows?
ES: I don’t know, he liked them.
I: And did some of your friends get married during the war?
ES: Yes, they did and I met one at one of these reunions and I hadn’t seen her since the 1940s, like when I joined up. And she told me she was engaged at that time and she married a chap and he was in the army and she was only married a couple of months and they just had a leave together of a few months or something and he went off to the far East and that was it. And that’s what happened, so many times. You know, we lost so many people.
I: Which is why, some of the reasons that people did things that they wouldn’t have necessarily done, you know, because you just never know.
ES: And that’s why sometimes they rushed and got married because that was the only chance they’d ever have, perhaps. Or they might have taken longer.
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Edna Simpson: Eddie and I, we always wanted to see different places that we hadn’t been before.
Interviewer: So it wasn’t that you were going to visit somebody and their family.
ES: No, no. We didn’t really. But occasionally, someone in the area, if you got talking to them, they'd say, “Oh, would you like to come around and have tea with me?” You know, they’re civilians, because we were in uniform we met some nice people like that.
I: So where were some of the places you would have gone?
ES: Well, in Wales, in Haverfordwest, I went and it’s a lovely old Welsh town. Old church, and old history and stuff like that. A quite interesting history. And you have to think that before the war started I’d never been anywhere from home. I was only sixteen. And I mean, my father and mom thought that the place to go for a holiday was Blackpool. So we went every summer to Blackpool and sat on the beach and made beach sandcastles. And then one year we were very adventuresome and we went to the Isle of Wight. But those were the only place… oh and I’d been to Wales with Edith, been hiking in Wales. But those were really… I’d never travelled anywhere else. So it was very interesting to travel to different places where we hadn’t been before.
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