Kiss the Kids for Dad, Don’t Forget to Write: The Wartime Letters of George Timmins, 1916–18 ed. by Y.A. Bennett (review)

Kiss the Kids for Dad is a welcome addition to the growing list of published collections of ‘letters home’ from soldiers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. While all hold interest to both historians focusing on the period and the general reader curious about Canada’s Great War experience, three factors make this book stand out. First, when he enlisted in 1916, George Timmins was thirty-three years old, securely employed, and happily married with a young family. Consequently his letters offer the perspective of a more mature and ‘rooted’ individual than is often the case. Second, and not unrelated to the first factor, these sixty-three wartime letters (plus four letter fragments) are more nuanced in their subject matter and its treatment, providing substantial insights into his relationships with his wife and children, extended family, and pre-war community, as well as his new military community and his experiences as a combat soldier. Third, the collection is edited by a historian who is familiar with the history of and academic literature on the First World War. She chose wisely to leave Timmins’s words alone, instead focusing on providing an extensive context for them. A thoughtful introduction comprehensively sets the stage, and for the curious intent on further reading, Bennett concludes the book with a comprehensive scholarly bibliography.

We learn much from George Timmins’s surviving letters – that he enlisted primarily out of a sense of obligation, deeply loved and longed for his wife and children, thoroughly disliked the enemy and believed in the justice of the cause for which he was risking his life, held to conservative British Canadian working-class values that were not much changed by the dislocations and disruptions of the war, and seemed to have returned from the experience remarkably ‘intact.’ The inevitable self-censorship employed by soldiers in such correspondence – often a more serious obstacle to candour than military censorship – is apparent, but rarely seemed to be an impediment to his conveying what he wanted to say. Poignant moments abound, none more than his taking every opportunity, after requests in his ‘best broken French,’ to hug and kiss French and Belgian children who so reminded him of his youngsters in faraway Oshawa. There is certainly humour, too, with his rather awkward but persistent efforts to interact with Belgian and French civilians and his obsession with their food standing front and centre. And because of the way he diligently attempted to respond to the queries and concerns in his wife May’s letters, we also learn a great deal about her and her struggles on the home front, which became increasingly trying and a source of both worry and bitterness to him.

All books have their flaws, or at least their shortcomings. In the case of Kiss the Kids for Dad, they are few. The role religious belief played in George Timmins’s life is not clearly delineated. Also, it is never made clear – and perhaps can’tbe – how war experiences shaped the life of George Timmins, veteran. In addition, some of the military explanations in the contextual notes could have been better explained and drawn on superior sources.

But these ‘criticisms’ are minor. The letters – and thus George Timmins – are allowed to speak to us directly. They do so eloquently and in so doing provide us with insights into the war experience not only of one Canadian soldier and his family, but of the many more who remain voiceless, whose equally loving and carefully crafted letters home fell victim to the bane of historians – subsequent moves and deaths and the inevitable discarding of memorabilia. Serendipitously, George Timmins’s letters were spared such a fate, and we are fortunate for that.