War, farm and family
Louis Wilfred Frank Latham of Drayton Born: Aug. 25, 1926 in England Died: July 5, 2018 of age related illness
DRAYTON — When Lou Latham was just over two years old, his mother, Annie, died and it would be up to his older sister, Margaret, only half a dozen years older, to take over the role.
Their father, Frank, having suffered through the horrors of the First World War, was an inattentive parent and there were many times when young Lou would go hungry, or Frank would hand him a bag of chips from his favourite pub where they lived in England.
Frank suffered from shell shock, commonly known today as PTSD. A diagnosis didn’t make life any easier for young Lou, who started working on the farm where his father was the farm hand. Lou died July 5, 2018, leaving a legacy his family is beginning to fully comprehend.
“He was six years old and herding sheep to market,” said Lou’s daughter, Glynis Belec, imagining a six year old today being responsible for such a task.
Life was not easy for the boy, born in 1926, when England was still struggling postwar.
In November 1943, Lou decided to follow his father’s military example, enlisting in the 45 Commando British Royal Marines, lying about his age to get in. At only 17, Lou found himself deployed to some of the most dangerous places in the Pacific, including the jungles of Borneo, Japan and Malaysia.
“He took on everything as a challenge, he saw a lot of action,” said Glynis, who noted her father also suffered PTSD as well as tinnitus, a result of the constant percussive noise during the war.
Lou’s first marriage during the war didn’t survive, but not until after their only child, Cassandra, was born. The marriage failure plus the war separated Lou from his daughter and they wouldn’t reunite until decades later.
Lou had also been struggling with the added defeat of being the less favoured son. His older brother, Major Dennis Joseph Latham, Royal Army Service Corp, was the pride of their father. Lou was a corporal.
Life eventually did bring happiness to the marine: he met a pretty little spark plug named Enid Williams, a nurse serving in the British armed services.
Glynis said her parents met at a military social event and married in November 1953. Lou had intended to make the marines a career, but following a serious motorcycle accident in Tripoli, he was discharged from active duty.
The same year he married Enid, Lou was suddenly a civilian and he would end up dabbling in several jobs, including driving a steam roller and a milk truck before landing a job with an auto company that transferred him to Scotland where the family lived for six years.
Though their lives were stable, Lou had one yearning, a yearning for farmland that he thought could be satisfied in Canada where he assumed rural properties were less expensive.
“He wanted to do farming,” said Glynis. “His father had always had sheep.”
Lou flew to Canada in January 1967, followed a few months later by Enid and their children Glynis, Rosemary, John and Susan. The family sailed to Canada on a nine-day voyage aboard the Empress of India, complete with the family collie and Enid’s sewing machine. Turns out, Canada was not as inexpensive as he’d hoped and the idea of being a full-time farmer was not possible so Lou settled for a job at the Ford plant in St. Thomas.
Glynis recalled the family was disappointed when they arrived at their new “ranch house” in the city of London. Being unfamiliar with the term, the kids were thinking cattle spread not suburban lawn.
“We were convinced we had a ranch with critters of every description,” she recalled. “Shortly after that maybe within six months we moved to a farmhouse in Wallacetown.”
This new life as a hobby farmer still didn’t take the soldier out of Lou.
Trevor Belec said his grandad’s personal motto was “Once a marine, always a marine.”
So what did this mean? Well to start with, the family was not allowed to eat food such as burgers and pizza with their hands. Forks and knives only. It was all about being proper and disciplined.
Enid went back to nursing and though she never fully qualified as a registered nurse in Ontario she was able to work at what was then called a “graduate nurse” which meant she had all the qualifications, just not the official registration.
Lou eventually switched jobs from Ford to the auto parts company, Blackstone Industrial Products in Stratford, where Enid worked as an industrial nurse. The family moved to the small town until Lou’s first major heart attack in 1983 which signalled it was time to retire. They moved back to London.
Enid’s own health was beginning to slip, a myriad of problems plaguing the former nurse including diabetes.
“She was a fighter,” said Glynis, explaining how her mother lived for years with many problems.
Enid eventually required more care and moved in with Glynis and her family, eight months before she died in 2007. Lou managed on his own in their London house, but nine years ago he, too, had to move closer to Glynis and her family in Drayton. At first it was in assisted care, then his own little house and finally, after another heart attack, he moved into Glynis’ home.
She said she had made a promise to both parents that they would never end up in a nursing home, a promise she kept with the help of her family.
When Lou left the couple’s London house, he didn’t leave much behind and it wasn’t an exaggeration to say he had a hoarding problem but everything had a story if not a theme: African masks, Asian dolls, ceramic figurines of everything from dogs to garden gnomes, movies, replicas of knights’ armour, entire walls filled with photographs and, of course, boxes and boxes of military memorabilia.
Then there was his music. Lou loved music and Glynis’ husband, Gilles Belec, built him a little space in his part of the house where he could sit and just listen. “He’d sit for hours,” she said. “He’d be conducting.”
In Trevor’s tribute he talked about how Lou had many interests, including “the obvious military connections, he was a professional boxer, a police officer auxiliary, he built Ford vehicles, managed a rock and roll band in the 1950s, and was a WW2 history buff.”
Glynis also spoke of how her father regularly visited kids in school, speaking to them as a veteran.
Granddaughter Angie Smith recalled affectionately, “I loved the way his eyes would light up and you would get the biggest hug and sloppiest kiss.
“I can remember going to the barn with him when I was small. He had such strength yet gentleness with the horses.”
Trevor remembered “He loved his family, so much, every member, no matter how close or far they were.”
Lou’s war experiences eventually caught up to him, haunting his nights. Glynis said he would have recurring dreams that would wake him in the middle of the night, so vivid he thought they were real.
“He was reliving wartime,” said Glynis. “He’d wake up in a sweat, the dreams, the dreams.”
Nov. 11, Remembrance Day played a significant role in both Enid and Lou’s life. Trevor remembers “instead of being jaded by the horrors of what he saw, he dedicated his life to remembering his comrades, the men and woman around him that went through the same things that he did and sacrificed along the way.”