Props on Her Sleeve: The Wartime Letters of a Canadian Airwoman - Softcover

A first-hand account of the experiences of a young Canadian airwoman who served both in Canada and on overseas duty, this series of 150 letters brings home the day-to-day immediacy of life in uniform during the Second World War. Moments of hilarity interspersed with impatience and frustration are recorded verbatim, along with an underlying sense of urgency about winning a war that hung in the balance for too long. Written to the Dead of Women at Macdonald College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Mary Buch's letters lay untouched for over fifty years after her return to Canada from England in 1945. Today they serve as a looking-glass into the War Years that is tinged with the freshness of youthful spontaneity and the promise of a brighter tomorrow. Carolyn Gossage has interwoven colourful contextual sidebars that provide today's reader with an overview of times and circumstances that have become increasingly elusive in the intervening years.

Mary Buch was born in Montreal, and after World War II lived for many years in that city's Lakeshore community. She served on the local school board and was also actively involved in education at the provincial level. After graduation from College Marie-Victorin she went on to work in Youth Protection in Montreal. In 1983, following her retirement to Brockeville, she became immersed in genealogy and local history, and is a past-president of the Brockville and District Historical Society. Mary Buch has two sons and three grandchildren who live in the United States Carolyn Gossage was born in Toronto and educated at St. Clement's School, the University of Toronto and La Sorbonne. As a teacher, her fascination with unrecorded history resulted in the publication of her first book, A Question of Privilege: Canada's Independent Schools (1977). This was followed in 1991 by Greatcoats and Glamour Boots: Canadian Women at War and Double Duty (1992), based on the wartime journals and sketchbooks of Canadian war artist Molly Lamb bobak. A member of the Writers' Union of Canada since 1979, her time is divided between writing and research projects; but tutoring children on film sets - such as the Goosebumps series - adds a novel and entertaining dimension to her life. For recreation she maintains her long time love affair with the Great outdoors - sailing, skiing and bass fishing whenever and wherever possible.