It was the Second World War. A million young Canadians were marching off to risk their lives. One of them, David K. Hazzard, was separated from his beloved wife Audrey, but soon found a way to fight the loneliness – with his pen.

He wrote hundreds of letters, beginning each the same way – 'Dear Sweetheart.' They are a riveting account of what he went through.

How did he cope without Audrey and his two young daughters? How did they cope without him? In the weeks ahead, the series Dear Sweetheart will publish new letters daily. In the end, their story is our story.

We tell it as a homage to those who died, the 180,000 veterans who survive, their children, their grandchildren – and Canada's fighting families today.

Our first letter is written just before he ships out ...

Thursday, July 10, 1941

Dear Sweetheart,

I hope that you didn't think I was being too casual in my goodbye to you at the station. But you know how I hate a scene, and I didn't feel any too good myself so I had to say cheerio and run. But really and truly this was the worst yet. It was extremely hard to say anything to you or particularly the youngsters, and I am glad they aren't old enough to realize the uncertainty of this last goodbye.

Before I go any further though, I want you to know that I feel certain that I'll be back with you for a great many more anniversaries. I have left these matters up to our Mutual Friend and have a very definite feeling of assurance in the matter. The only uncertainty I have is the length of time I may be away on this trip. But I will say that the next time I am home should be for good.

The one important thing I want you to know is that I love you with all my heart, and that this love will not alter one bit no matter how long I am away.

I am never really living or feel complete unless you are with me.

Your job now is harder than mine in that you won't have definite knowledge of where I am, but all I want you to do is trust in our Friend that we'll be together again. And your job above all is to look after two young ladies and keep them happy. Please for my sake keep smiling, and above all don't worry.

I am not very good at saying these things on paper, but remember Tennyson's remarks on prayer, and that we believe in them. Above all remember that I love you and will always be thinking of you.

With all my love to you, Anne, Karen and Nanny,

I am always yours, David K

P.S. I love you.

Globe feature writer Erin Anderssen describes how David and Audrey met ...

The love story of David Kilbourn Hazzard and Audrey Flora McPherson began simply, with a walk home from church one evening. They had been rehearsing lines in the old parsonage for a play to be performed by the Young People's Society of Wesley Mimico United, in which, as they laughed about later, Audrey was playing one of David's daughters.

Dark-haired and petite, not yet 18, she barely reached his shoulder. He was five years older, confident and dashing, the third son of six children. His father had been a general yardmaster for the CNR in Brockville, in eastern Ontario.

There were many more walks to the doorstep of her mother's white, clapboard house at 9 Summerhill Rd. in Mimico, now part of Toronto's west end. Eventually, when he asked for a kiss, he received one.

On July 10, 1934, they were married. The village paper capped their wedding announcement with the headline "Popular Mimico Young Couple Wed." Audrey, it was reported, "wore a gown of white crepe with tulle veil arranged with orange blossoms," but it was a small ceremony, with no reception – like most of their circle during the Depression, they were broke. They left for their honeymoon immediately, borrowing a wheezing old Plymouth to drive to a cottage owned by a family member on the St. Lawrence River.

Audrey quit her teaching job, and they moved into a small Toronto apartment. David had a good position as a tire inspector with the Dunlop Tire and Rubber Goods Co. in the city. A year later, daughter Anne was born, and they moved to the McPherson house on Summerhill Road to save money. Nanny, as Audrey's mother was called, welcomed the company; her husband had died when Audrey was 14, and there was plenty of room, even with her younger brother, Walker, still at home. David and Audrey's second daughter, Karen, arrived three years later.

Every night before leaving work David showered and changed, so he could go home to his girls not stinking of melted rubber.

On Sunday mornings, he got up early to bring Audrey breakfast in bed, and on weekend afternoons, they'd often load Karen and Anne into the car for country drives. They went dancing for hours, or to the movies, or to rehearse for their next play with the local theatre society. On Wednesday evenings, David went off to run drills as a reservist with the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada, a close-knit Toronto regiment with a storied history dating back to 1860. (He was a first-class marksman – when the Dunlop Rifle Club participated in international shooting competitions, David had always made the Canadian team, and he had the trophies and medals at home.)

Sometimes, when he tucked Anne and Karen into bed, he would recite from memory the poem The Highwayman, before leading them in the Lord's Prayer. And each night, Audrey fell asleep with her head on David's shoulder. They had a good life, in hard times.

The war begins

Then, on Sept 10, 1939, Canada went to war.

In that moment, for nearly every family across Canada, the world changed. By the end of the war, roughly 1 in 11 Canadians had volunteered for service, a tally that exceeded one million troops, including 50,000 women.

Today, only 180,000 veterans of the Second World War are still living, and their average age is 84. They are the last memory keepers of the conflict – teenagers who signed up for the adventure and landed at the frontlines, young men left jobless by the Depression who donned uniforms for army wages, or fathers and husbands like David Hazzard, who saw war brewing and knew, for their children's sake, that it could not be lost. How did they endure those years? How were our own families changed by them?

In many cases, those answers can be found only in the letters they wrote home.

The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa has tens of thousands of letters collected carefully into catalogued boxes in a temperature-controlled room behind the library – memories, regrets and hopes dashed out on crinkled sheets of fragile paper. Most of the letters skirt the true horrors of war – to appease the censors, and to spare their mothers and wives, who watched each morning for the postman and devoured the words from their loved ones at the breakfast table.

The value of those letters now is not in documenting military details or strategy, but in recording the thoughts of common men in an unimaginable situation: I'm still alive. Don't worry. Send underwear.

In June, 1940, as France collapsed under a German onslaught, the Queen's Own Rifles were mobilized. The call went out for 1,000 men to form an overseas battalion. On the last day of recruiting, in late June, after keeping a promise to train his replacement at Dunlop, David Hazzard drove down to the University Avenue Armouries, passed the medical, and received his orders to report to Camp Borden, outside Barrie, Ont. He began writing to Audrey, a day after leaving home.

Camp Borden

July 2, 1940

I am feeling well except that I haven't yet toughened enough to sleep on boards. The last two days have burned my face until it is one big blister…

Sgt. David Hazzard was one of the "potato baggers," so named because the military had run out equipment by then, and sent their latest recruits to camp with a burlap sack and a length of rope, to double as a duffel bag. At Camp Borden, the regiment scrambled to get organized – the men needed tuberculosis vaccinations and gear. And, until they built their huts and hooked up electricity, they'd be sleeping on dusty wooden slats and ticks stuffed with straw.

Among these men, Sgt. Hazzard stood apart. David was 31 years old, which got you called "pops" by your platoon even if you weren't a husband and father on top that. A faithful churchgoer who taught Sunday school, he didn't smoke or drink – "when tough times arrive," he said, "I want to be in full possession of my faculties" – which made him an oddity at the mess bar.

As a sergeant, his job was to train the men – to "supply the beef" as one of his friends put it – and he took it seriously. He aspired to become an officer. When, over the next year, he was sent on a training course, he was disappointed at finishing second in a class of 50.

Army life

Like many soldiers, he complained about the "incompetence" of his superior officers, just as he was frustrated by recklessness in the men who served under him. He had no patience for laziness, and his men sometimes grumbled about him. But one day, he knew, training might be the only thing that would save them in battle.

He broke up gambling rings, worried the young soldiers might throw away all their pay, and reminded them to write to their mothers. When some of his men didn't get mail, he asked Audrey to find women at home who would adopt them.

"Letters from home are more valued than parcels," he explained, "no matter what they contain." Audrey, at his request, also sent him cartons of cigarettes, which he shared with his platoon.

Botwood, Nfld.

Aug 15, 1940

When we first arrived, things were in rather a jumble, but gradually a certain amount of order has managed to assert itself and the boys are enjoying life … I suppose that I have taken you entirely too much for granted. Now I realize what you mean to me, and the gap that is left when I cannot be with you.

The Queen's Own landed in Botwood, Nfld., on Aug. 10, 1940, after travelling in style on the ocean liner, Duchess of Richmond. Audrey and the girls had been able to make one last trip to Camp Borden on a Sunday afternoon to say goodbye.

David's company headed off to Gander, a crucial airfield during the war, to guard against sabotage from enemy agents. "The country here," he wrote, "is about as wild and desolate as anything you ever saw."

To an Ontario boy who had never before swum in salt water, northeastern Newfoundland was foreign country – literally, since the province had yet to join Canada.

No one hurries here, he remarked to Audrey; the trains never run on time, the mail comes through only if it can do so "without causing a disturbance." He was astonished by the reception the troops received; the men were billeted in private homes, and "entertained as if they were visiting royalty," with softball games and dances.

David was posted to the nearby town of Lewisporte for several months to watch the coast for enemy action. He stayed in a hotel overlooking the bay, and the main hardship was walking four kilometres to a pond for a bath.

He became friends with a doctor in the area, and occasionally, went dancing – a pastime that would become a source of tension between him and Audrey, though he always assured her that his behaviour was above reproach.

Botwood, Nfld.

Sept 7, 1940

I doubt you would recognize me now. I have sprouted a moustache as a result of a contest we started in our platoon. Everyone donated 10 cents and when we leave the country the man with the bushiest and the man with the neatest moustache will split the pot.

Talk continued incessantly about where they would end up. "No one had any definite information, and it is my belief that matters are still up in the laps of the gods," he observed wryly to Audrey in October. He was assigned quartermaster duties, organizing the supplies of the regiment, even monitoring the bar tabs. Not a bad job, he said, but he hadn't joined the army to be a clerk.

Audrey continued her constant flow of letters and packages – peanuts, gum, soap and razor blades. As the temperature dropped, he wrote asking her to organize a group of friends to sew pyjamas for his platoon, since none had arrived by regular channels.

He was adjusting, perhaps more than he liked, to a soldier's life: "I probably won't be able to sleep at home," he wrote, "except on the floor."

Final training

In November, just as winter was setting in, the regiment left Newfoundland for Sussex, N.B. Now back in Canada, the men were promised a short Christmas leave. In preparation for their reunion, David wrote to Audrey that, as per her wishes, he had shaved off his mustache.

Sussex, N.B. Dec 19, 1940

When you get [this letter], I'll be with you. Just think – all you have to do now is to look up and there I am. How's about a kiss?

On his return to Sussex, training began in earnest. In Newfoundland, the regiment had experienced the mental game of soldiering – the tedium of waiting around, the isolation, the discomfort of hard beds and bad weather. But some of the soldiers had yet to practice throwing a grenade or handle a Bren machine gun, which would be Canada's main combat weapon for the infantry.

"So you think I will be an accomplished dancer, at least, when I leave the army?" he wrote in one letter. "Maybe so. I've done more since I joined than for quite a while previously, and paradoxically, less shooting. Figure that one out."

Now, with the war advancing in Europe, new equipment began to arrive. David received night classes in map reading, tactics and discipline – what he saw as his first practical lessons since being mobilized.

Back in Mimico, the headlines grew more urgent, and the gossip at the Ladies Guild more colourful, particularly when one wife received a letter from a pregnant woman in Newfoundland who claimed her husband was responsible. The date of the regiment's imminent departure for England was guessed at weekly.

Sussex, N.B., Feb. 27, 1941

The line of hooey some of these boys write home is awful. We haven't been on a twenty mile route march since we enlisted, and young Bacon was hurt in a fight which followed a drinking spree last pay night. However, if he wants to have it that that was the way he got hurt, I wouldn't disillusion his folks. But don't sympathize too much with any hard times stories that the boys' wives or mothers tell. Most of them only dream these things.

His letters focused on boosting Audrey's spirits, and reminding her of his love – occasionally, so ardently, that Audrey censored his notes by destroying them. (David urged her to save all his writing, "for unless our daughters feel the way we do, they shouldn't even think about getting married.")

But, as spring arrived in 1941, the wear was showing in his words. Between the camp tales and domestic business of his letters – his fatherly admonishments when Karen cut off her hair, or reminders to Audrey to get the oil changed in the car – his worry slipped in.

He feared the war was being lost. In March, the Bismarck sunk HMS Hood, the flagship of the British Fleet, and on every front, the Germans appeared to be winning.

"Unless something happens soon," he wrote, "I can see where we and all the men in Canada are going to be needed to keep Germany from landing troops on our own shores."

He saw, as well, how military life was making him a stranger to his family.

"What will be the end be?" he wondered to Audrey. "Can we pick up our lives where we left them?

Sussex, March 7, 1941

I realize that this war business is much harder on you than it is on me but that is just the condition that we must put up with.. If all of us put our own little desires for new things and happy times now, ahead of our duty, we soon wouldn't have either freedom or liberty to enjoy anything…

Please don't read the above as a scolding or a lecture of any kind, but that is what we must keep in mind all the time. When I see pictures of youngsters in hospitals, all banged up from bombings, I can't help but feel that, until this menace is removed, the manpower of the entire Empire should be willing to undergo the sacrifice. It must be heartbreaking to have children turn to you for protection during an air raid and know that you are as helpless as they. That picture more than anything else makes me put up with being away from you and the young ladies…

In the spring of 1941, Audrey travelled down on the train from Toronto, and the two of them spent a weekend in Saint John. He made her pack a fancy dress, and booked a room at the Admiral Beatty Hotel. They both knew he would be crossing the ocean soon. In July, it was made official. "Here is the news you have been dreading," David wrote. He would have 48 hours at home, after which "we shove off for parts unknown."

He made it home a few days before their seventh wedding anniversary. The morning he left, Audrey snapped a picture of him on the front lawn; he is crouched, in uniform, with his arms around Karen and Anne.

And then, like other families all across the city, they drove him to Union Station, so he could catch his train.

From now on, he and Audrey would have to live on letters.

---------------------------

Sussex, New Brunswick, Friday July 18/41

Dear Sweetheart,

Still here, but not for long. We are all packed, the huts are being scrubbed down and everyone is busy. This will be my last letter I will be sending you from in Canada. I'm having it mailed in Toronto by Mrs. Moore Jackson who is going home tomorrow. I had a letter and parcel today. The letter was from you. Written Tuesday, and the parcel from Dunlop's. It came at an inopportune time for me as every available niche of space is filled in my pack and kitbag. So we have just finished eating everything eatable that was in it. The rest of the stuff is split up amongst us.

I have a few postcards of Quebec City left and I'm sending one to each of the kids. They'll go in the regular mail and may be a few days late getting to you. All mail, civilian and otherwise is being held up in Sussex and will not be sent on until we are away from here. One thing I forgot to mention previously is my new address. It will be B64408 Sgt. D.K. Hazzard, ‘C' Coy. 1st Battalion, Queens Own Rifles of Canada, Canadian Army Overseas.

And now all I want to say is what I've said many times before. I love you. That is something that will never change as long as I live. And I have been doing what you asked in our letter ever since I have been away. That is I remember you in prayer every night before I drop off to sleep. It is very necessary from now on that both of us put all out trust and faith in the God that we both know and who has brought us along the way so far. So with all my love to you, Anne and Karen and Nanny I am as always,

Yours

David K.

P.S. I love you.

Keep your chin up and keep smiling. Dave

XXXX

Keep the young ladies trained in the way they should go so

Sussex, New Brunswick Friday July 18th 1941

Dear Sweetheart

Another opportunity to get mail away and I can't resist taking it so that I can tell you again that I love you. I'm going on my way to bed and as a last thoguht I want you to know that you are very much with me. We have to get up at 3:30 am tomorrow as that is the big day. We are supposed to have breakfast on the train which leaves here at 6:30 am and supper on the boat which will take us over. Just how soon I can get mail to you after that is a question. I hope that it will be soon. I received your air mail letter this afternoon and I'm glad to hear you say that you have caught the idea of living one day at a time. Also if you have an easier feeling mentally and, as you say, are confident that we will be together for a long time to come it means that you have really turned over your worries to the Father who has been so generaous to both of us and that thought makes me very happy. As far as any ‘blue' letters you may send me, are concenred, don't worry. I know how you feel and also why you write them. After all aren't my shoulders meant for you to cry on? Or rather, am I not supposed to comfort you in any way I can? And I love doing it. So ‘blue' letters are a necessity now and then and I love you for knowing that I will and do understand.

Keep close in your heart the knowledge that I love you forever and always, and that our Father is looking after both of us. Keep the young ladies trained in the way they should go so that eventyually we'll see them grow into ladies as sweet as you are. With all my love to you, Anne, Karen and Nanny I am

Yours forver

David K.

XXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXX

P.S. I love you

Dave

The weather has been perfect so far and I don't think that we have had any seasickness yet

Letterhead of - CANADIAN PACIFIC, ROYAL YORK, TORONTO (undated)

Dear Sweetheart,

At present we are living the life of Reilly and to prove this I am enclosing the menus of one day. The weather has been perfect so far and I don't think that we have had any seasickness yet. There is a bit of a storm blowing up at present and we have seen one small iceberg.

My biggest trouble so far is finding my way around. I have trouble locating my platoon and after I find them I can't find my way back to my own cabin.

I sent Anne a letter-card which will let Dad and Mother know that we are on our way somewhere. Our mail will be censored from now on and names of places, troops, dates and times cannot be mentioned. So don't be surprised if the menus I mentioned are not in the letter.

I'll write again soon and give you as much detail of our entire trip as I am allowed to.

Always yours.

Dave

P.S. I love you

Dave

When this business is over, you and I are certainly going on a long trip together

July 1941, On board the HMT Strathmore

Dear Sweetheart,

We are certainly travelling in style at present. Weather is perfect and the meals are the kind you read about. It will be a bit of a bump to land back into camp life when we finally reach our destination. When this business is over, you and I are certainly going on a long trip together. With all my love. I am

Always Yours, Dave.

PS I still do.