Letters from Beauly

During the Second World War, thousands of woodsmen joined the Canadian Forestry Corps to log the Scottish Highlands as part of the war effort. Patrick "Pat" Hennessy of Bathurst, New Brunswick, was one of them. For nearly five years, Pat served as camp cook with 15 Company near the village of Beauly, Scotland. A middle-aged farmer and lumberman with a third-grade education, Pat saw more of the world than he had ever dreamed of, visiting ancient battlefields he had learned about as a child, travelling to his ancestral Ireland, and attending lectures in British history at Oxford University. While in Scotland, Pat regularly corresponded with his family. Drawing from this unique collection of more than three hundred letters, as well as hundreds of archival documents and photographs, Melynda Jarratt provides a rare and unusual glimpse of what life was like for the men who served in the Canadian Forestry Corps and the families that stayed behind. Letters from Beauly: Pat Hennessy and the Canadian Foresstry Corps in Scotland, 1940-1945 is volume 23 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.