Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

John W. Yost

John Watson (Jack) Yost was a "Delta kid", that is, he was raised in Hamilton's Delta district, named for the geometric intersection of its principal thoroughfares, King and Main Streets, in the east end of the city. An only child, he was born in Toronto on 6 January 1919 to John Henry Yost, a telegrapher with the Canadian National Telegraph Company, and Ethel Jane (Watson) Yost. When Jack was two, the family moved to Hamilton and took up residence in an apartment on Maple Avenue. In due course Jack attended the nearby Memorial School, a prominent district landmark recently built and dedicated to the fallen of the Great War. Then in 1933 he proceeded to Delta Collegiate Institute (DCI), an equally impressive red brick building opened in 1925, one of many high schools constructed after the war to accommodate the growing population of qualified adolescents in Ontario, Jack among them.
Proudly wearing the school's colours, red and white, Jack entered into whatever sports DCI had to offer. According to a former classmate and The Lampadion, the school's yearbook, he came to specialize in football and hockey, apparently finding basketball and track less exciting and challenging, that is, less physical perhaps. On the gridiron, playing flying wing at a weight of some 155 pounds, he soon gained the reputation of being a first-class pass receiver and a "hard tackler". He became equally well known for his "hobby" of inventing "trick plays" for bamboozling Delta's opponents, notably its principal rival, the venerable Hamilton Central Collegiate Institute. Toward the end of his high school career some of those frustrated opponents took to dubbing Jack "Screwball Yost" while his Delta admirers, seeking to deflate such a rude sobriquet, hailed him as "Yost, the galloping ghost". Off the Delta grounds he performed just as ably for a city team, the junior squad of the highly rated Italo-Canadian football club.

This "natural athlete, who often played by the seat of his pants" - to quote a former classmate -- did not disappoint his fans on the hockey rink either. That his father was an avid supporter of the Toronto Maple Leafs may account in part for the son's passion for the game. Especially skilled at defense, Jack also served one season as captain of the DCI hockey team. He and William (Bill) Lees, a close friend and fellow player, were members of the Delta team that won a city high school championship and then went on to defeat its Toronto counterpart at the Varsity Arena. Jack's appetite for the sport was almost insatiable. At sixteen he had starred on a team sponsored by a local milk company which confronted its competitors in no less a setting than Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. He also played in the so-called Mercantile League, which, according to a friend, played some of its roughest games in Brantford. It did not end there. He joined the Hamilton Church League and, again alongside Bill Lees, helped to win a city championship for the Tower Club team of Ryerson United Church. Not surprisingly, whenever called upon to list his hobbies Jack always put hockey first though football ran a close second. "Hobby", however, hardly did justice to the importance that Jack attached to hockey or to the time and effort that he lavished on the game.

As was the high school custom of the time the more popular Delta students and athletes were often lampooned or "roasted" in the pages of the Lampadion. Jack was one of those singled out for the dubious honour. Thus in the 1937 issue readers were told in what would now be politically incorrect prose that "Yost is so Scotch he deliberately caught a cold to use up a well-worn handkerchief". Again, though described as a "he-man" whose ambition was to join the Maple Leafs, he was destined, declared the deflating yearbook, to become a mere team mascot. The easy-going recipient of this rude attention probably remained unfazed by it all.

Jack's out-of-school diversions included playing baseball and tennis in neighbouring Gage Park, the latter on the courts of the Rosedale Club. Indeed, he and his hockey mate, Bill Lees, were on a Rosedale team that won a city junior singles and doubles championship at the Hamilton Tennis Club. Off the courts, Jack and his friends often roamed the "Mountain" (a popular term for that section of the Niagara Escarpment above Hamilton), a natural and untamed playground for most Delta kids of that generation. Halfway down its slope ran a railway line and the more intrepid of the neighbourhood boys would hop the freight cars when they slowed down to negotiate a curve in the tracks. "Jackie", as he was known to his family, may well have been among the intrepid. Certainly he had once dared his visiting younger cousin to board a rolling freight car with him. But as Elwy Yost recalled, he prudently declined the dare. In winter Jack discovered what other Delta habitues did, that the Mountain's slopes could also be transformed into excellent and sometimes terrifying runs for those navigating toboggans and sleighs.

Another diversion for Jack and his friends was the popular "hang out" known as the Delta Drug Store, a bustling emporium strategically located at the very intersection of King and Main Streets, the heart of the district. To the delight of its youthful patrons it came equipped with a well-stocked soda fountain, a "juke box" featuring the popular swing bands of the era, and a generous comic book section. (It even dispensed pharmaceuticals.) Equally popular was the adjoining Delta Theatre, which regularly showed nail-biting Saturday serials, cowboy films - starring the likes of Tom Mix and Ken Maynard -- and a full range of double bill Hollywood mysteries, comedies, and romances. If ever a district had a focal point for the younger generation the drug store and the movie house were it. Toward the end of his high school stay Jack also engaged in the teen-age ritual of dating, most notably a DCI classmate name of Joan Robinson, who lived close by in the neighbourhood and ultimately became his fiancee before he went overseas with the RCAF.

In the spring of 1938, Jack left Delta Collegiate with his junior matriculation and took a variety of jobs, including clerking for the Sawyer Massey firm and working in the shipping department of the Procter & Gamble Company on Burlington Street. It may have been at this time that he had the funds to acquire an old Ford, which, among other things, doubtless helped to expedite his social life. Since his parents did not own a car, he had been taught to drive by the Trumans, close family friends who lived in a neighbouring apartment in the building they owned on Maple Avenue. In any case, Jack's stints in the working world were brief. In 1940 he decided to go back to school and further his education at McMaster, the local university. For many like Jack in those Depression times, it meant that they could live at home and save money while gaining the benefits of a higher education.

The intervening summer of 1940, however, turned out to be a perilous time overseas. It saw the abrupt end of the "Phoney War", so called because since the outbreak of war with Germany the previous September no major military actions had taken place on what Great War veterans were still wont to call the Western Front. But the shattering enemy Blitzkrieg put an end to all that. By late June the Low Countries had fallen victim to it and the once formidable French army had been defeated in the field and the British Expeditionary Force unceremoniously expelled from the Continent at Dunkirk (or, as the popular mythology would have it, miraculously saved to fight another day). Though the successful evacuation of much of that force was generally considered an inspiring and ennobling event, nothing could disguise the fact that "Dunkirk" was also an unmitigated military disaster.

Jack may have been among the many Canadians who readily accepted the notion of a miracle of deliverance but he and other local citizens were soon made aware of the changed situation in Canada following the grim news from overseas. In the wake of it, Ottawa had passed the National Resources Mobilization Act to meet the crisis and the country was put on something like a genuine war footing for the first time. Much closer to home, a local militia regiment, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, had been speedily mobilized for active service, joining the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry to make up the city's major contribution to the military effort. Jack, who was working that ominous summer as a driver for Canada Coach Lines, an intercity bus company, soon found himself personally involved in these events. He and his fellow drivers were pressed into ferrying the newly kilted Argyll recruits, including at least one former DCI student, to their first assignment, guard duty at the Decew Falls power station. (It was firmly believed that enemy saboteurs might well try to harm such vital installations.) The war gave all the appearance of having arrived on the home front -- albeit in a rather modest and muted way.

When Jack enrolled at McMaster University the following September another cliff-hanging situation -- worthy of any gripping serial at the Delta Theatre - had again raised the public's already high anxiety level. The pivotal Battle of Britain was reaching its peak, and its outcome could well decide the fate of the United Kingdom, now desperately isolated, with only its air force capable of doing any kind of combat with the triumphant and well armed enemy at the gates. The gravity of the situation, emblazoned on every newspaper front page, was of course not lost on Jack and his generation of freshman university students. All the same, there was the here and the now of coping with their new experience in academe and this they set about doing. Yet they must have sensed that the day was rapidly approaching when they would have to make their own commitment to the war effort. In other words, they likely shared the feeling that they were simply marking time.

In any case, as best he could, Jack addressed the here and now at McMaster. Lacking his senior matriculation, he was doubtless required to take the General (or preliminary) Year, roughly the equivalent of Form V (Grade 13). In the absence of a student file it is difficult to determine how Jack fared academically at McMaster but there is no mystery about his accomplishments as an athlete. As at Delta Collegiate, he went out for football and hockey and soon came to the attention of the sports editor of the weekly Silhouette. Obviously he had lost little of his flair as a footballer. For example, playing quarterback in an intramural game against the Theologues, he led the "Frosh" in a "dazzling display" of passing and well executed "sleeper plays" that often put the otherwise football savvy "parsons" off stride.

On one occasion Jack did the unorthodox by electing to pass deep inside his own end zone. The ball was directed to his favourite receiver, halfback and long time high school team mate, Robert (Bob) Washburn, who went on to score a touchdown. In their DCI days the "Yost-Washburn duo" had been keen opponents of yet another standout member of the frosh backfield, the hard playing and aggressive Henry (Hank) Novak [HR], who had starred for Cathedral High School before coming to McMaster. Now happily all three were on the same side, proudly and defiantly wearing the green shirts of McMaster freshmen. Throughout it was evident that Jack was still enthusiastically indulging his hobby of "trick plays", so much so that the Silhouette editor announced, tongue-in-cheek, that he had been forced to consult the "Quarterback Manual" (a wholly mythical publication) to see if any of Jack's plays were authorized or even listed.

The athletically inventive and unorthodox Jack completed only one term - if that - of his freshman year. On 7 January 1941, the day after his 22nd birthday, he joined the service he had probably set his heart on from the beginning - the RCAF. By this time he had already grown a sporty "RAF moustache" to suit the occasion. A car-driving enthusiast and licensed chauffeur like fellow McMaster student and airman, Murray Bennetto [HR], he now fancied driving aloft as a flyer. He particularly fancied being a fighter pilot, the romantic dream of many a youth brought up on the derring-do aerial tales of the Great War, above all, on the celebrated exploits of the Canadian ace, Billy Bishop. In other words, like other would be flyers of that generation, he "wanted to have the white scarf and the goggles" affected by those who performed legendary feats in the air. These had often been portrayed on film in such memorable Delta Theatre offerings as "Dawn Patrol", which Jack and every male youngster in the neighbourhood must have seen at least twice.

After his enlistment, Jack's first step toward becoming a flyer was his posting to the RCAF's Manning Depot in Toronto. It was housed in the cavernous Coliseum (the so-called Cow Palace) on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition. There he joined hundreds of other recruits who would spend the better part of three weeks being groomed for what was vaguely called airmanship. In other words, they were subjected to seemingly endless drill, "physical jerks", marches, lectures, and innumerable inoculations and medical examinations, all the while living in strange and cramped quarters with sometimes strange people. It was also a matter of getting accustomed to the coarse blue uniforms and heavy boots issued to each batch of arrivals. However coarse the uniform, the ruggedly good looking Jack must have cut a striking figure in it. An old female admirer later observed that he would have made an ideal "poster boy" for air force recruiting drives. Meanwhile in spite of the monotony and the routine that could sometimes take over at Manning Depot, Jack probably shared the view of a high school classmate, Norman Shrive, who glowingly described the experience as "the time of my life".

Before Jack could move on to his preliminary flight training he had to engage in more of the same infantry-like ritual at Picton, presumably until trainees further up the "pipeline" completed their courses and made room for would-be successors. His responsibilities at Picton may well have included tarmac duty, a thin euphemism for manual labour, an exercise plausible enough on a station being readied to serve as a bombing and gunnery school. After Picton it was on to Trenton, site of one of the few operating RCAF stations before the wartime British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) produced scores of training fields clear across the country. Jack was stationed at Trenton for some ten weeks - 20 February to 4 May 1941 - acquiring, it would appear, more "airmanship" before finally being posted to No. 1 Initial Training School (ITS) in Toronto. To his delight he was selected for pilot training and in the process was promoted Leading Aircraftsman.

At last, on 7 June 1941, he was assigned to an Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS), No. 19, as it turned out, located at Virden, Manitoba. It would be his first and last trip to the West. He did not "wash out" as so many pilot trainees did at this stage. Rather he successfully completed the EFTS requirements in early August 1941, after being tested on Tiger Moth and Cornell trainers. He then returned to Ontario for the next stage of his instruction, which unfolded at No. 2 Service Flying Training School at Uplands (Ottawa). There he was put through the paces on the demanding Harvard trainer, the prerequisite exercise for an aspiring fighter pilot. Although Uplands became noted for brazen trainees who "buzzed" (flew low and noisily over) unsuspecting civilian targets, Jack, the intrepid youth who had once boarded moving freight cars, was apparently not among them. On the contrary, he successfully completed the course at Uplands without undue incident and on 24 October 1941 was rewarded with his pilot's wings and a promotion to Sergeant Pilot. A much gratified Jack had formally qualified as aircrew and now he awaited an overseas posting.

On his last leave in Canada he said his emotional good-byes to fiancee Joan Robinson and to family members and friends in Hamilton and Toronto. "I will always remember the last time I ever saw [Jack]", Elwy Yost wrote of the cousin he fondly regarded as an older brother,

It was one of the most joyous nights I can ever remember …. He was in uniform and it was [1941] up at Granma Yost's place … in north Toronto and Jack (no longer "Jackie") was all set to go overseas. I'll never forget the fun we had teasing our mutual granma who came from a German background about the bombs Jack was going to leave on Hitler's doorstep …. Jack and I kept singing verses from a popular poem at the time ridiculing "Adolph Hitler, der Lord of Shermany.".

On 26 October 1941 Jack took another step on the road to overseas when he was dispatched to the RCAF's Y Depot in Halifax. Shortly thereafter he was in a contingent bound for the United Kingdom. After his safe arrival on 11 November 1941, albeit in the midst of the "Blitz", the Luftwaffe's nighttime bombing campaign, he was assigned to the RAF Trainees Pool. Then on the 23rd of the month he was sent to the personnel reception centre in Bournemouth that served as the next stop for every newly landed Canadian airman. After that orientation experience, things moved fairly swiftly. On 9 December, now equipped with battle dress and flying kit, he was posted to Fighter Command's No. 55 Operational Training Unit based at Usworth in County Durham. After a long train ride to that part of northeast England Jack arrived at his new quarters and started a fresh phase of his military service.

Usworth had been a fighter and training station in the Great War when it had sent up aircraft to intercept approaching Zeppelins. Now it was serving in another world war. Reorganized to accommodate No. 55 O T U in March, 1941 - at about the time Jack was in training at Trenton -- it played host primarily to multi-gunned Hawker Hurricanes, Fighter Command's mainstay interceptors during the Battle of Britain. Jack soon discovered that pilots drawn from many nations came to Usworth to be "trained up" to proper operational standards. He doubtless was also informed - though not in so many words perhaps - that "British fighters were part of a scientific system of air defence evolved over many years, operating in exactly the role for which they were designed". He was soon made aware too that in addition to Hurricanes, aircraft of varying types were deployed at Usworth - sometimes in target-towing - to help the trainees come to grips with flying and doing battle in a speedy fighter.

Reminiscent, however, of the Silloth air station on Solway Firth, where former McMaster student Franklin Zurbrigg [HR] served and died, Usworth became notorious for the number of aircraft lost on training flights. Sadly, some two months into his own training at the station, Jack would fall victim too. On 16 February 1942, while he was on a cross-country flight in Hurricane # 7052 (Mark I), bad visibility forced him to land at the RAF field at Waddington, Lincolnshire. The following day - the 17th - with weather conditions apparently improved, he was given permission to return to Usworth. So far so good but barely fifteen minutes after take-off he flew ironically into another kind of hurricane, a blinding snowstorm. He soon lost his bearings and crashed and died a few miles northwest of the town of Horncastle. To the dismay of his grieving parents, "trick plays", Jack's stock in trade means of thwarting the opposition in an earlier theatre of his short life, had been of no avail in this case. Yet if he had survived and become operational at this time he would likely have faced a grim future in the short term. On sweeps over France, for example, he would have had to contend with superior German fighters such as the Focke-Wulf 190, which was taking a particularly heavy toll of Allied aircraft in the early months of 1942.

Ten years later cousin Elwy and his wife visited Jack's grave in Coningsby, not far from the crash site. In the kind of rendezvous that "Jackie" would have appreciated, the Yosts eagerly sought out and were touchingly entertained by the lady who voluntarily tended the graves of air force personnel buried in the local churchyard, Jack's included.

John Watson Yost is buried in the Coningsby Cemetery, Coningsby, Lincolnshire, England.

C.M. Johnston

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Robert Johnston, William Lees, Darlene Pounder, Norman Shrive, George Truman, Robert Washburn, Elwy Yost, and Dorothy (Robinson) Zengo kindly provided documentation or written and oral recollections that made this biography possible. Wm. Lees granted an informative interview and furnished helpful source material (see WL below).

SOURCES: National Archives of Canada / Wartime Personnel Records: Service Record of Sergeant Pilot John W. Yost and Report on Flying Accident … Not Attributable to Enemy Action; Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Commemorative Information, Sgt. Pilot John W. Yost; WL: group photographs and Hamilton Spectator sports cuttings and obituary of John W. Yost; F. Norman Shrive, A.C. 2, "RCAF Diary: 27 Jan. - 5 Feb. 1942, No. 1 Manning Depot, Toronto" (in the diarist's possession); McMaster University Library / W. Ready Archives: Silhouette, 24 Oct. 1940, 3; Delta Secondary School (formerly DCI) Library: Lampadion 1937, 20, 27, 1938, 35, 67, 71, 1939, 51, 58, 1942, 27.
Spencer Dunmore, Wings for Victory: The Remarkable Story of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in Canada (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994), 63, 71-2, 75, 132, 133, 318, 350, 356; Richard Hough and Denis Richards, The Battle of Britain: The Jubilee History (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), 309, chap. 21 ("Retrospect"), and "Sources"; Wayne Ralph, Aces, Warriors and Wingmen: Firsthand Accounts of Canada's Fighter Pilots in the Second World War (Mississauga: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 80.; Blake Heathcote, Testaments of Honour: Personal Histories of Canada's War Veterans (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2002), 268 [Frank Cauley's recollections]; Les Allison and Harry Hayward, They Shall Grow Not Old: A Book of Remembrance (Brandon MA: Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum Inc., 1996, 2nd ed.), 836.

Internet: "No. 55 Operational Training Unit, RAF", Dave Charles, "History of Usworth Aerodrome" (Usworth [England]: North East Aircraft Museum, n.d.), 7 pp., www.neam.co.uk/usworth1.html

[ For related biographies, see Henry Eugene Novak, Harry George Zavadowsky, Franklin Charles Zurbrigg ]