The horrors of the two world wars, as experienced by those who fought overseas, are well documented. However, for those left at home, life was anything but normal.
For Robert Naylor of Drayton, a brittle Newspaper clipping from 1945 serves as a reminder of how different his childhood was from those who grew up later in peacetime.
“Oakville, March 12 – The best birthday present in the world arrived over the week-end for Bobbie Naylor, who will be four this week. It was his dad, who bas been overseas with the RCAF so long that this is the first time he has seen his son,” the story begins.
Naylor points out he wasn’t the only youngster in the neighbourhood whose father wasn’t around during their early years.
“A lot of them were gone overseas,” he recalls.
“It’s not often that an airman comes home to get the first glimpse of his son and discuss aviation with him at the same time. But, that’s what happened to Sergt. Irwin Naylor. He enlisted with RCAF ground crew in October, 1940, and was overseas before the end of that year.”
Overseas, Irwin Naylor served as a radar operator on warships. He started out in Britain before moving on to postings in Gibraltar, Egypt, South Africa, Madagascar, India, Pakistan and Ceylon. His ship was set to go to Manila when the war ended and they were told to return to England.
Though very young, Robert said he became aware that things were different, even here in Canada, during the war.
“I can remember mother going to the store and having to use coupons to buy groceries. You had to have a coupon for meat, a coupon for butter …”
When his father returned from overseas, the Naylor family’s story was unusual enough that the Royal Canadian Legion in Oakville arranged for a photographer from a local Newspaper to attend the reunion.
“Already Bobbie is a model plane enthusiast. Now he has a pair of silver wings his dad brought home, in addition to the Oriental jewelry he brought Mrs. Naylor,” the article notes.
After the war, life continued to affect the Naylor family, says Robert.
“Dad had to leave Oakville about 1947 because of nerves from the war. Mother said he was way different from when he left,” Robert said, explaining the family moved to Spanish, Ontario, northwest of Sudbury, at that time.
While his father didn’t talk often about the war, Robert says, “Every so often he let something out.”
In the Bay of Biscay the elder Irwin’s ship got torpedoed.
“He said they had to pile sandbags in the back of the ship to keep the water from going in and they sat that way for over a month until a Dutch tug came and threw them a line … Everybody was afraid to come near because they though maybe the Germans would use it as bait,” explained Robert.
Irwin was wounded in the torpedo attack, hit in head with a piece of shrapnel. Robert says his father was disoriented, wandered the ship for three days and was actually declared “dead or missing,” at one point.
“His buddy told him three days later he better go to the captain and tell him he was alive, or there would be something sent home that he was killed in action.”
Another story Robert’s father shared was about an incident in the Mediterranean Sea.
“They saw a PT boat and all of a sudden something must have hit it, because all of a sudden the guys were going up in the air like rag dolls.”
Irwin Naylor was posted in England, along with his cousin, Ken Naylor, during a period of heavy bombing known as The Blitz.
“They had to go out and search through the rubble looking for survivors in London,” said Robert.
Robert spent much of his life in Northern Ontario, working as an ambulance operator in Blind River, Espanola and Sudbury. In 1972, he married Sharon Close of Goldstone and the couple moved to Drayton in 1986.
Of his father’s time in the service, the 1945 article states only, “After serving in England and Scotland for a year and a half he was posted to Colombo, Ceylon, where he served until recently.”
But for Robert the story of a life begun at the outset of a global conflict goes much deeper, and comes with a very distinct set of memories.
