Leave a Few for Later, Dad: The war story of a young Kiwi sailor with a bird's eye view of the 'Big Show' - D Day 1944

Douglas Simpson served as an Ordinary Seaman between early 1944 to war’s end. He was a New Zealander who, along with thirteen Kiwi trained classmates, was seconded to the Royal Navy for Operation Overlord. The third son of a Railway family stationed in Taihape, New Zealand, Doug worked as a barber until his eighteenth birthday when he enlisted in the Royal New Zealand Navy. Doug’s two older brothers were already in the Army, but Doug chose the Navy so he could get overseas quicker. He did not want to miss out on the big adventure that was the war. Doug was a serious correspondent. He began to write home on his way to the war and kept it up right through the end of the war in Europe and beyond. He wrote of the trek across America by train on his way to Great Britain, of the long wait in corrugated iron nissen huts in the forests of southern England before D Day, then of his firing anti-aircraft guns on the deck of the Royal Navy Destroyer HMS Isis against the German coastal batteries on D Day and for many weeks thereafter. It was hard for hm to fill a letter sometimes due to the Censor, but Doug wrote of his life in the Rest Camp while convalescing after his ship was blown up in the Channel. He wrote of his times on leave in England, of the people he met who offered hospitality to the young lad from the other side of the world. He wrote of the girls he met and the celebrations on VE day and of his other two drafts to sea. Throughout the letters, Doug said to his Dad, “Leave a few for later”. Doug wanted some deer to hunt with his father upon his return from the war.