Reflections of Havergal: 1994-2019

Appendices

Reflections Chronicle , 1996

Ann Plunkett O’Brian ’43 addressed the student body at Havergal’s 1995 Remembrance Day Service, making the unveiling of the Havergal Veteran’s Roll of Honour. With Ann’s kind permission, here are excerpts from her remarks:

When I was 18, I joined the Navy. I loved the uniform and I loved marching. When the Band played, I could have marched all the way to Montreal. Once, on parade, my silk bloomers fell down. I simply stepped out of them and kept marching. I was shipped to Quebec to His Majesty’s Canadian Ship St. Hyacinthe. It was the largest signals base in the British Empire Hands up all those who have heard of the British Empire. I was trained as a signaller, using Morse Code. We slept fifty in a room in the barracks. The food was appalling. But the good news was, there were thousands of sailors! Being a Wren was rather like being in school, with rules and regulations and women officers to tell you what to do, always in naval terms. “Plunkett lay aft on the quarterdeck” meant you had done something wrong and you were paraded before an officer, or worse, before the Captain of the Base. I was paraded seven times. Then the war really started for us. Shipped to Vancouver Island, we began our secret work. We were copying Japanese radio signals transmitted from Tokyo, Singapore, Guam our radio station was a wooden hut in a field surrounded by barbed wire. Ours was the only Canadian station, which made us very proud. We had Japanese typewriters, and we didn’t understand the messages. They were teletyped to Washington for decoding. The Americans had broken the Japanese code. We worked 8-hour watches. I think I got 30 dollars a month, my uniform, and always the ghastly food. We felt safe and cared for in uniform, and vital to the war effort. Well, we all know who won, so to end my story, I came home, went to university for a moment or two, left to marry an airman who had jumped out of two Spitfires, and lived happily ever after. May I leave you a message? I believe that with privilege comes responsibility, and you are all privileged. Serve your country: there are a thousand ways to make a difference. And Get a Life!

Good Morning Girls. It is 52 years since I have stood on this platform as Head of Frances Ridley House Hands up all those in Frances Ridley. While I talk, pass around my Wren photograph -- you will see that once we were smashing! I came to Havergal in September of 1939, the very month that war was declared. I was 14 Hands up all those who arc 14. The whole country was instantly consumed by the war. The Great Depression was over, everyone could get a job. It was an easy war to understand; there were the good guys and the bad guys, and we were the good. By Christmastime of 1939, my father and three of my four brothers had gone overseas. British war guests began to arrive at Havergal. They were smarter than we were, and they were wicked field hockey players. On that Christmas Eve, the doorbell rang. A telegram. My mother opened it in terror. The President of Imperial Oil wished her Merry Christmas in the absence of her son. By the fourth year of the war, my youngest brother had been shot down on a bomber raid over Germany. His body washed up on the shores of the Zuider Zee. This lone airman was buried in Holland in a village cemetery, becoming their symbol of hope. A naval officer brother, attached to the Royal Navy, had two ships sunk from under him. He was invalided out, and afterwards often asked on the streets of Toronto why he wasn’t in uniform. My eldest brother was wounded at Dieppe and taken prisoner to Germany.

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