Forgotten letters deliver a vibrant portrait of the life – and death – of Elizabeth Johnston
A Fife town is set to commemorate the story of one of its most talented daughters after research by Professor Kevin Dunion uncovered a wartime tale of love and loss
Early on Christmas Day 1918, a young woman dressed in the khaki uniform of the Woman’s Army Auxiliary Corps made her way through the streets of Rouen, to the deserted St Ouen Church. Some hours later her body was spotted by two American soldiers, on the roof of the chapel below the tower, from which she had fallen.
The dramatic circumstance of her death was notable even in a town wearied by war. It made the front page of the Journal de Rouen which carried a detailed account of the death of “this young Englishwoman.” It wondered “how it could have happened, since the balustrade that protects people visiting the gallery is close to a metre high.” It’s a question which provokes conjecture.
One thing we know is that she was no Englishwoman, but proudly Scottish. Elizabeth Johnston was born on 26 December 1890 and grew up in a house in Anstruther next to her father’s sailmakers yard, the second eldest of a family of six girls and one boy. After leaving Waid Academy, Elizabeth joined the Post Office as a telegraphist and then moved to Glasgow to work for the Western Union. She was already a prolific letter writer and it was that attribute which later gives us an invaluable insight into life of a worker in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. In fact, Elizabeth is now widely referenced in the recent histories of women in the First World War. But none of these have looked to tell the story behind the published letters.
When war broke out she was desperate to get close to the action. “I’d love to get away to Alexandria or France and serve in some of the hospitals as an orderly or clerk or some such thing.”
The problem for Elizabeth, as for so many workingclass girls, is that they could not afford to give up work to volunteer, in the way that the women of means who served as nurses with the Voluntary Aid Detachment could do. All that changed with the formation of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in 1917, whereby women would be paid.
After arriving in France, Elizabeth noted in her diary “received my first ‘Active Service’ pay, my army paybook being endorsed, ‘In the Field’. When I think of my regimental number, my army shoes and my identification disc, I, positively, feel thrilled!”
She was posted to a camp in Rouen and was billeted in a wooden hut which was freezing in winter and stifling in summer. Telephonists in the Signals Unit always had to be on duty, even when the Germans began to carry out air raids on her camp. Elizabeth tried to reassure her parents that “the chances of anything serious befalling a WAAC are very remote indeed, in fact well-nigh impossible.” But one bombing attack in April 1918 on the huge British military base at Etaples took the lives of nine WAACS.
Prior to joining up Elizabeth had been offered an editorial job with the local newspaper in Anstruther and it published her account of the Armistice. She captures the exuberance of the French civilians and the Allied troops of many nations, many of whom were recovering from injury in the large military hospital outside Rouen. Within weeks Elizabeth too was hospitalised with influenza in the global pandemic. She describes how the Signals girl next to her had oxygen pumped into her lungs but to no avail.
But Elizabeth recovered and went back to work. So it was that she came off night shift on Christmas morning and went up the fateful church tower. She was given a funeral with full military honours. Her Scottishness was emphasised when her coffin was brought to the graveside draped with the saltire. A Canadian soldier had taken the Union flag from her coffin, in accordance with her
“When I think of my regimental number, my army shoes and my identification disc, I, positively, feel thrilled!”
wishes he later told her family.
This young soldier, Donald Cameron, had only met Elizabeth on Armistice Day but they had become romantically attached. He was able to tell her family that they had previously climbed the church tower and gone out onto a narrow ledge which surrounded the roof. It had been a misty day and Elizabeth had said they should go back some time when it was clearer.
Donald was clearly very affected by her loss – he returned to the tower several times to establish the exact spot from which she had fallen and why it might have happened. His view, which was shared by others, is that through a combination of the after-effects of the flu and not having rested after a 12 hour night shift, she had either fainted or simply fallen asleep whilst leaning against the tower and toppled over the low barrier.
Who was Donald Cameron? After going through all of the military records of Canadian soldiers with his name I identified a young Canadian Highlander from Amherst, Nova Scotia. Son of a master tailor from Ellon his family had emigrated to Canada only in 1912 from Coventry, where Donald and his three brothers were born. He was just 16 when he joined up in 1915, having lied about his age.
My research has uncovered previously unknown information about Donald which showed the extent of his fondness for Elizabeth, and the unexpected consequence of it. Clearly he remained in touch with Elizabeth’s family and at some point had paid a visit to them. This brought about a dramatic twist in this tale. It came from a letter written by Elizabeth’s youngest sister Williamina, which was passed to me by her great niece Ann Mckelvie. Win, as she was known, married a Canadian called Cameron. It was not Donald, but his brother Alick, who must have accompanied him on his trip across the Atlantic. After their engagement Win had sailed to Nova Scotia in 1924 to be married, and Donald was the best man at their wedding. Sadly, Alick died in 1929 and Win returned home to Fife.
I have trawled through census returns, immigration records, newspaper reports, and university references to find out what became of Donald. He had studied for a PHD, and was made a professor of English at the University of Berkley and then at the University of Saskatchewan. In the Second World War he joined the Canadian Army as an intelligence officer decrypting Japanese signals. He died in 1977. Donald had married twice and I established he had two children by his second marriage. Tentatively, I contacted his daughter Mary Martel-cantelon in Ottawa to tell her what I had found. She had known nothing about Elizabeth or of her late uncle’s marriage to Win. It was an emotional conversation as I read out her father’s letters to the Johnston family.
Now to commemorate the centenary of Elizabeth’s death the cousins previously unknown to each other, Mary and Ann, are coming to Anstruther to unveil a blue plaque which will be placed on the sailmaker’s house where Elizabeth had lived.
● An event combining words, images and specially composed music is to be performed on 12 December in Cellardyke church and on 14 December in the Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, based on my booklet After the Armistice; Love and Loss – the Life and Death of Elizabeth Johnston, QMAAC; www.anstrutherburghcollection.org
About 10 years ago I wrote a history of Anstruther and Cellardyke in the First World War tracing what had happened to all those in our local war memorials. In the course of that research I came across a long out of print little book which contained extracts from Elizabeth’s letters and diary. I was fascinated with her story and especially in finding out about her relationship with Donald. It has taken many years to piece it all together.