LITT, Olive Lillian
Age at Death: 21
Rank Private
Unit Canadian Women’s Army Corps
Service Number W30665
Place of Burial Walkerton Cemetery, ON
Date of Birth 1942.02.01
Place of Birth Brant Township ON
Enlistment June 28, 1944, Kingston ON
Date of Death 1945.09.10
Daughter of Gordon and Nellie Litt, of Formosa
The fifth of eight children in a farming family, Olive left school after Grade 8 to work—first as a ward maid in the Kingston Isolation Hospital, then doing shift work in war factories, while helping with the family farm on the side. Two of her brothers also served in the military. Her appraisal on enlistment stated, “She is a strong looking young woman. She looks as though she is accustomed to hard work.”
She completed basic training in September of 1944; her examiner wrote that she “is most enthusiastic about Army life and states, ‘Everyone has treated me wonderfully.’” She was assigned to the Rideau Military Hospital in Ottawa as an orderly.
In February 1945, she was hospitalized, complaining of a severe hacking cough, fever and drastic weight loss. Her medical record states, “She hopes to recover sufficiently to re-enlist.” She died that September of pulmonary tuberculosis.
