Jesse Moses

During his service with the Ontario Regiment (Tank), Moses trained in England and Scotland before heading to Sicily for the Italian campaign. He and his regiment arrived at Greenock on the Clyde on July 1st 1941 but almost immediately left by train for Lavington, near Salisbury Plain. In a letter he wrote to his fiancee, Olive Hill, dated July 2nd 1941, Moses described his first few days in Britain: This letter is coming from somewhere in England, and I mean somewhere, because if they turned me loose, I wouldn’t know which way to go to get out. This is our third day in England, that is since we landed. We have been in two countries though, England and Scotland.”Most likely you have read about these old castles. We passed about six of them on our train ride from Scotland to England. One we passed, they say was over five hundred years old. I wish you could see the trains they have over here. The boys got a kick out of them because they are so small. One fellow went so far as to say the toy train his father bought him was as big. Boy, you ought to see them go. They are off in a cloud of dust”.”

https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/bts/2019/11/11/the-letters-of-trooper-jesse-moses/ (All information and photographs courtesy of John Moses); regiment’s training location at Lavington: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30077725. Image credit: John Moses.