Len & Cub by Meredith J. Batt

Author:Meredith J. Batt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781773102658
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: 2022-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

“A Devil in His Own Home Town”

The demobilization of soldiers was a lengthy process. Many thousands needed to return to Canada, and soldiers became restless with the “hurry up and wait” methods of administrative officials. Cub returned before Len, leaving on the S.S. Baltic from Liverpool and arriving in Halifax on July 8, 1919. He was officially discharged on July 11. Len followed later, leaving England on September 6 from Tilbury. He arrived in Halifax on September 14 and was discharged on September 20.

During the last week of August, a celebration was held for the Havelock boys and nursing sisters who had returned by then. A baseball game was held between Havelock and the nearby town of Cornhill, followed by a picnic and speeches delivered at the public grandstand. J.D. O’Connell, a Havelock native who spent his life in various business endeavours and became known as the “Summertime Santa Claus,”1 attended the picnic and threw fifty dollars in pennies into the crowd for the local children. A meeting was held at the Public Hall that evening with Hilyard presiding as host. “Leonard A. [sic] Keith”2 was listed as one of the boys who had not yet returned from England, along with Roy Corey, John Corey’s father and a friend of Len and Cub.

Unveiling of the War Monument in Havelock, August 1921. (P27-421)

The war was over and the residents of Havelock settled into the new normal. Many loved ones had died in battle or from the Spanish Influenza. Neither Len nor Cub would ever travel so far from Havelock again. They would have seen first-hand the impacts of the war: the destroyed villages, the devastated farmlands, the suffering civilians, and of course the numberless dead. After major world-altering events, life is never the same.

With the end of the war and Len and Cub’s return to Havelock, a new phase in their relationship slowly began to unfold. They continued to spend time together and enlisted in Princess Louise’s 8th Hussars militia unit in Sussex, the oldest cavalry regiment in Canada. Given his previous training and experience as a veteran of the Western Front, Len was made a provisional Lieutenant in 1922.3 The training usually involved a nine-day summertime stint at Camp Sussex. Cub may have been attracted to the militia by the chance to work with horses, and he was active in the militia until the late 1920s, earning the rank of Lieutenant in 1924 and then Captain in 1928.4 Working with horses in a military setting required great patience and coordination, as manoeuvres needed to happen swiftly and flexibly.5 In contrast to Cub’s lengthy service, Len would leave the militia in the summer of 1923 when he moved temporarily to Portland, Maine.

Len in Lieutenant’s uniform of the 8th Hussars Militia unit. (P27-MS1F1-4)

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