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On The Wings of The Morning

7 May 2024

Lieutenant Arthur Clair Gilmour

As a teenager, I read the Bandy Papers, a three-time Leacock Award for Humour-winning, FWW series of novels by author Donald Jack. Jack’s horse-faced anti-hero, Bartholomew W. Bandy, when thrown out of medical school in 1916, enlists in the infantry. His face drives nearly everyone he meets to murderous rage, including his Colonel who transfers him to the Royal Flying Corps. The joke of the novel being, with the life expectancy in the RFC merely a few weeks, Bandy’s promotion was an almost certain death sentence. Of course, Bandy proves the exception, surviving, becoming an unlikely Ace and nearly killing his former Colonel by running him over with his airplane. It set up a lifelong dream to fly in a Sopwith Camel for me. This RFC reputation was, in reality, no joke, and many young flyers and their observers did indeed come to a premature end. One such Canadian loss was Lieutenant Arthur Clair Gilmour.

Gilmour was born in Saint John, New Brunswick on 26 May 1893 to Arthur Burrell and Helen Bertha (Jenks) Gilmour. Arthur’s only brother Francis, born in 1891, died at 10 months of age in 1892. His younger sister, Margaret joined the family in 1899. There would be no other children. Arthur Sr. was a clothier or “merchant tailor” and his son followed in the family business. In April of 1915, 22-year-old Arthur married Miss Nellie Beatrice Williams, daughter of Frank and Isla Williams. The young couple set up housekeeping at 315 Union St, then an area on the edges of the city, now home to a large shopping mall/office complex. By January of 1916, Arthur had enlisted in the newly formed 115^th Battalion and Nellie was expecting their first – and only – child. Arthur had spent three years with the 62^nd Fusiliers, Saint John’s volunteer militia regiment which is most likely why he entered the CEF as an officer. He was placed in command of a platoon – usually 24 to 40 “other ranks”, NCOs and an officer – during training in Saint John and Valcartier, PQ. It was an intimate group, compared to the massed thousand or so who made up the battalion and it seemed Arthur came to know them all well.

I get the impression that both Arthur and Nellie were generous and caring people, and that business must have been good for the two generations of the Gilmour men because of two incidents mentioned in letters home from James Gilmore, one of the men in Arthur’s platoon. First, when the 115^th arrived in England in July 1916, it was quickly broken up to reinforce depleted battalions at the front. This often happened if battalions hadn’t recruited their full strength. When Gilmour was faced with parting from his men, he was so moved, he wept openly in front of them as he bid them goodbye. That Christmas, Nellie, her newborn son only a few weeks old, made boxes of goodies for all the men of her husband’s former platoon and shipped them overseas. Arthur himself sent gifts to certain members of the platoon as well.

It appears Nellie moved in with her in-laws at 197 Germain St in the summer of 1916, an upscale neighbourhood of elegant brick townhouses built in the 1880s after the Great Fire of 1877 leveled the city. The house where they lived burned in 1918 and a 7-story Italianate, heritage-designated apartment building stands in its place. Arthur (III) Clair Gilmour was born there on 3 October 1916, long after his father, whom he would never meet, had left for England.

In January 1917, Gilmour was placed in a Garrison Duty Battalion and a month later was transferred to the 3^rd Labor Battalion. On 10 February 1917 he was on his way to La Havre, France. This battalion worked in the rear areas, as most of the men were considered not fit for service in the trenches. Because most of their work was building rail lines to funnel ammunition, supplies and men to the front, the 3^rd became the 11^th Battalion, Canadian Railway Troops in November 1917. Perhaps this was not glamourous enough work for Gilmour, perhaps he wanted to see more action. Whatever the reason, in August of 1917, he was probationally attached to the RFC, as an Observer.

While not pilots, and initially looked down on by pilots as mere ballast, by 1916, Observers were an integral and highly trained part of an aerial reconnaissance team. Working with their pilot, Observers mapped routes, determined compass bearings, distances and times for a search. In the air, they were tasked with documenting sightings, troop movements, gun emplacements and any other relevant details of the enemy trenches and fortifications. They often photographed the layout of these. They were often the targets of enemy fighters and guns from below as they carried vital information back to HQ. Their badge was a single wing (pilots had double wings) sprouting from an “O” to distinguish them from pilots.

_{Armstrong-Whitworth F.K.8}

Arthur likely spent time in England training for his new role, and arrived in France on 16 November 1917 with the RFC. In January 1918, he was attached to the 82^nd Squadron and officially appointed Flight Officer (Observer) on 19 February 1918, with his senority backdated to November 1917. It was probably around then that he had his photo taken, wearing the so-called “maternity” tunic of the RFC, and sent home to his beloved wife and one-year-old son.

On 6 March 1918, 24-year-old Arthur and his 19-year-old pilot, Second Lieutenant Donovan L Sisley, hopped in their two-seater Armstrong-Whitworth FK8 to undertake a photographic mission southwest of Itancourt, France. In the formation was Lieutenant J. Kernahan. At the same time, five German Fokkers from Jasta 48 under the command of Ltn. Kurt Küppers was on patrol.

_{Ltn K. Küppers} _{(1894 – 1971)}

Fokkers were one of the most feared airplanes and the more pedestrian F.K.8 didn’t stand much of a chance when the two groups met near Séry-lès-Mézières. Gilmour and Sisley’s airplane was seen going down in flames on the German side. Küppers was credited with shooting down Sisley and Gilmour’s plane.

The initial report offered the family hope that both young men had survived, but stated that no further “particulars” could be expected for 3 weeks. Rumour ran that Arthur was in hospital and a prisoner of war. Unfortunately, word soon came from Kernahan that he had seen Gilmour hit and slump over in the cockpit. The F.K.8 fell in flames and was seen by officers of the 122^nd Siege Battery to crash on its back and burst into flames. Arthur’s body was retrieved and buried in the military hospital cemetery at Itancourt. All this information was sent to the young widow in a letter by a Red Cross Society official, Florence K. Ellissen. Its hard to know whether knowing such details would have made it easier or harder for the family. Perhaps there was some comfort in knowing Arthur was likely dead already before crashing and burning.

When Arthur’s medals arrived in September of 1922, and his “death penny”, the memorial plaque, nearly two years later, that wound would have been ripped open anew. It doesn’t appear Nellie ever remarried. Gilmour is remembered on the Flying Services Memorial in Arras, France

Our Darling Soldier Boy

16 April 2024

Private James Alec Gilmore

Grand Manan is a small island sitting in the wash of the mighty Bay of Fundy currents, part of the province of New Brunswick. Lashed by storms coming up the Atlantic coast and often muffled in the dense fog the Bay is known for, it is the site of numerous shipwrecks, old and new. Its population today is barely over 2500 people; in the 1880s it was half that. But the residents – most of whom wrest their livelihood from the unforgiving seas around Grand Manan – are resourceful, hardy, pragmatic and deeply in love with their stunningly beautiful island home. One such fisherman was a young man named James Alec Gilmore.

James – Jimmie to his family – was born on 20 October 1888 to Alexander (Sandy) and Lydia (Smith) Gilmore, the seventh of their ten children. Sandy was a farmer rather than a fisherman; Lydia was originally from Maine. When James was only 8, the sea claimed his eldest brother, 18-year-old Leeman. That seems not to have discouraged James from following in his brother’s footsteps to becoming a fisherman. Or perhaps that was just the pragmatism: fishing is one of the few options for a young man living on a small island.

James was an educated young man; his handwriting is neat and practiced in the letters he sent home. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, of average height, he was not particularly young for the time when he enlisted. The war had been raging for nearly a year and a half in January of 1916 when 28-year-old James – unmarried and still living at home – ventured to the mainland to sign on. He was attested in nearby Saint John. Perhaps he had hesitated when the original recruiting drive of August 1914 happened, and when the 26th Battalion was formed in New Brunswick in November of 1914, it may have been that his parents – having lost a son already – talked him out of going. The 115th Overseas Battalion was commissioned on 22 December 1915, and on 13 January 1916, James had submitted his name.

_{James (left) at Valcartier}

The battalion trained that winter and spring in New Brunswick before travelling to Valcartier Camp in Quebec late in May/early June. They weren’t long there before sailing from Halifax, NS on 23 July 1916 on board the S.S. Olympic. James wrote home with delight, describing the ship for his father and mentioning a swim he’d had mid-Atlantic! They landed in Liverpool eight days later, traveling to the Bramschott training camps near Folkestone, where their training would have continued. James was able to get a pass to visit London, coming home, he said, broke but well pleased with his time there.

_{ames’ platoon, likely at Bramschott (based on the huts). James is back row on the right end.}

In late September, James wrote his last will and testament, a typical action for men bound for the front. Sure enough, a week later, James – in a draft of 200 men, no officers – was transferred to the 24th Battalion, Victoria Rifles, a unit who had seen some of the devastating fighting at the Somme – at Thiepval, Flers Courcelette and Ancre Heights. They had been involved in the disastrous attack on Regina Trench on 1 October 1916, and were in need of men to fill their depleted ranks. James arrived on 13 October, as the battalion was relieved from their front-line duties. In fact, the subsequent winter was free from any major operations for the Canadian Corps, and James would have had a relatively “easy” time in his first months. In a series of letters home, addressed to his “Mamma” James assured his family he was well and “fit as a pig”. He often requested smoking and chewing tobacco, mentioned the many boxes of goodies received from home, including bottled lobster. At Christmas he received a box from the wife of his former platoon officer, Saint John native Lieutenant Arthur Gilmour. Mrs. Gilmour had sent a gift to each of the original platoon members. James had noted that Lte. Gilmour was deeply saddened to be parted from his men, moved to tears at their separation. 25-year-old Lte. Arthur Gilmour transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an Observer in 1917 and unfortunately was lost over German territory in March 1918.

In the winter of 1917, a major attack was in the plans and those months were spent in preparing for an assault that would become infused with myth and lore: the attack on Vimy Ridge. The Canadian Corps had come under the capable command of General Sir Julien Byng (later Viscount Byng of Vimy) and Canadian Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie, whose meticulous planning resulted in the stunning victory over the formerly impregnable German stronghold on Vimy’s slopes.

It was a nasty, squally Easter Monday, 9 April 1917, when the Canadian Corps attacked. The 24^th Battalion and James Gilmore, were posed to attack up the shallower slopes of the Ridge directly in front of the town of Neuville St. Vaast. A hot meal and a tot of rum in their bellies, the troops were in place by 4am, many in the former mine tunnels dug deep in the chalk. At 5:30am, nearly 1000 guns barked out, laying down the creeping barrage behind which the Canadian troops marched up the Ridge. Every three minutes the guns would lift the line of fire 100 yards and the soldiers would surge forward following the grey-white puffs of shrapnel, leaping over shell holes, barbed wire entanglements and destroyed trench lines. They faced hand-to-hand combat and machine gun fire, but at 6:15am, exactly on schedule, they had reached their objective, the Black Line. While the fighting continued for days more, the majority of Vimy Ridge was captured that day, and it had become very clear to the Germans by mid-morning, that they had lost. What wasn’t clear was where James Gilmore had gone.

He was reported missing on the 2 May; three months later they concluded he had died in the action that snowy, sleety Easter morning. Canadian casualties numbered 10,600, of which nearly 3600 died, either that day or later of wounds. For three long months, Sandy and Lydia prayed and hoped to hear word their son was safe, only to have their hopes dashed with the follow-up telegram and perhaps a handwritten letter of condolence – small comfort that that would have been. Lydia, obviously a well-educated and well-read woman, poured out her grief in a poem that still hangs, framed, beside James’ photograph in the family home in Grand Manan. I saw the photo and the poem in person – James’ great-nephew is a friend – and I was honoured to have made a visit to Vimy Ridge, to walk that now-peaceful and hallowed ground up to Allward’s stunningly beautiful monument where James’ name is inscribed.

Our Darling Soldier Boy by L.J. Gilmore

I can see my darling
I can see him everywhere,
I can see him in his home
A sitting in his chair.

I can see him coming along the road
He’s nearly to the gate;
To me he looks so lovely
He seems both tall and straight.

I can see him coming up the lane,
Oh how I loved that form!
I can see him coming up the lane
Clad in his uniform.

I hear him coming in
I hear his gallant tread,
I hear him coming up the stairs
A going to his bed.

I knew he had to go away
Those awful Huns to fight,
I crept into his room
And kissed him goodnight.

And when he went away
He kissed me goodbye.
He turned, and looking back
He told me not to cry.

And could a mother help it?
You can all your art employ
To stay a mother’s tear
In parting with her boy.

They say he is gone
And I shall never see him more.
They say he was killed
Upon a foreign shore.

Twas on an Easter morning
In that land so far away
In the midst of the battle
They say he passed away.

They say in France he’s sleeping.
It takes from us such joy,
For at home we are weeping
For our darling soldier boy!

_{Mother Canada weeping for her lost sons} _– _{Vimy Memorial overlooking the Douai Plain, France}

The Boys from Alberta

20 February 2024

Private Roy Weldon Rydberg

Two brothers: both big Viking men, both violently killed, but five years apart. How much pain would their hard-working farmer father have felt?

Emil Rydberg was an 18-year-old with big dreams when he moved from his hometown of Alingsas, Vestergotland, Sweden to the United States in 1881. He married 14-year-old Jenny Era from Missouri and soon had two blue-eyed, blond sons, Roy Weldon and Ray Victor. Emil worked as a driller, presumably in the zinc mines of Missouri, but in December 1901, Jennie died, leaving her 7- and 5-year-old sons in their father’s care. In 1904, Emil uprooted his life once again, moved his family to Alberta, Canada and took up farming. In 1907, he married an ex-pat English girl, Caroline, from the farm next door, and Ray and Roy soon had a small herd of half-siblings: Annie (1908), Selma (1910) and little Emil (1913). Roy would, however, never meet the youngest of his sisters, Mary (1916) and Jean (1919).

Roy was only 16 years old when he applied for a parcel of land of his own, declaring his intention of becoming a British citizen; Canadian citizenship was still nearly 40 years in the future. In 1914, he was still unmarried and so he ventured into Calgary to sign up with the 103rd Calgary Rifles in September 1914, in time to train in Valcartier, PQ and sail on – appropriately enough – the SS Scandinavian with the First Canadian Contingent. In Salisbury, Roy got into a bit of trouble, earning 14 days’ detention while at Sling Plantation, but that wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for the rowdy Canadian troops. Roy was transferred into the 10th Canadian Infantry Battalion, and in April 1915 was in the Ypres area. On the history-making day of 22 April 1915, the 10th was in Divisional Reserve in the town of Ypres, having been sent there on the 19th. Two of the battalion majors and a captain were riding from Elverdinge, 6km northwest of Ypres, to Breilen, when they noticed a “peculiar” coloured cloud – described in the war diary as “greyish, yellowish, greenish” and dark – hanging low to the ground. It was the German release of chlorine gas, the first large-scale, successful gas attack of the war. The French territorial troops in its path had no idea what was happening and no chance at all.

_{View of the area where Kitchener’s Wood used to be. The 10th Battalion attacked across this field; hundreds of Canadians died in this spot.} _{(photo author’s collection)}

At the same time, the shelling of Ypres had intensified, the Germans using what was noted as their “heaviest of guns”. At 5:20pm, Roy’s 10th Battalion was told to report to Weiltje, a small village NE of Ypres, deeper in the Salient. They arrived at 7:45pm and were given orders to take back Kitchener’s Wood and its captured British guns from the Germans. At 10:47pm, the 10th was lined up waiting for the 16th Battalion to join them. The moon was full enough that the woods and the fields they must cross were clearly visible. An hour later the order to advance came. Fifteen hundred men, shoulder to shoulder, walked across the dark fields. Not a sound was heard but the “soft pad of feet and the knock of bayonet scabbards against thighs” wrote Major D.M. Ormond in the battalion war diary. Halfway across, the men found a hedge and the sound of them breaking through “brought on a hail of bullets”. A moment’s panic, and the Canadians burst out running, but their close formation – a hold-over from 18th century battles – meant casualties were massive. Despite this, they took the woods, recaptured the guns but it was futile. HUndreds of yards deep into the enemy lines, surrounded on three sides, their position was untenable. Destroying the guns, they retreated and entrenched just south of the woods; the cost of their attack was terrible. At 6:30am on the 23rd, it was noted that out of 816 “other ranks” (all those lower than officer rank), there were 188 men left – Roy one of them. The 16th faired little better, having 263 other ranks left. Only 5 officers were left in each battalion.

_{The Brooding Soldier Monument to the First Canadian Division at St. Julien (photo author’s collection)}

What remained of the 10th fought on that day where they had dug in, and on the 24th of April, were moved to Gravenstafel Ridge, halfway between St. Julien and Passchendaele. By the 25th, the battalion had no senior officers left, no one to keep the war diary updated, but we do know they saw continuous action. On the 29th of April, they were pulled back and took up a position on the west bank of the Yser Canal just south of a regimental aid station in a make-shift bunker, manned by then-Major John McCrae who would in the coming days pen the most famous and popular poem of the war. On 1 May 1915, the remnants of the 10th Battalion endured heavy shelling and heavy casualties, and still Roy survived. But his time was limited, and just two days later, on 3 May 1915, under another bout of heavy shelling, Roy was killed. The same day McCrae took pen to paper. Roy was laid to rest in what became Essex Farm Cemetery, and where today, a monument is erected to McCrae’s poem, In Flander’s Fields.

_{Monument at Essex Farm} _{(photo author’s collection)}

And what of the other Rydberg brother? Ray, who went by Victor, was listed as a farmer but may have been part of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (later to become the RCMP). He finally enlisted in May of 1918. While he made it to England, as part of the Canadian Reserve Cavalry Regiment, he was struck down by pneumonia and discharge with asthma, arriving home a year later. He never made it to the Front. It seems Victor became unsettled in life and fell into bootlegging. In 1920, at just 24 years old, he was shot and killed by police near the American border. His despairing father and step-mother had to fight the American authorities to retrieve his body. An article documenting the event seems to have mixed him up with his brother Roy, placing Victor incorrectly in the 10th Battalion. Emil had lost both his sons from his first marriage, and his three youngest children would never know or remember either of their older brothers.

The Gales of November Came Early

15 February 2024

Private Edward James Christy

Every Canadian – at least those over a certain age – feels deeply when they hear these words sung:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early[1]

And what does the 1975 wreck of an American ship in a November storm on Lake Superior have to do with a soldier killed in the First World War? Edward James Christy was a survivor of the worst – if not the most famous – November gale to hit the Great Lakes. And perhaps that gave him an overly optimistic view of his chances of surviving a war.

There is very little information available about this young man, aged only 23 when he died. His parents, it seems, registered neither his nor his sister Lillian’s birth; she registered her own at age 71 in 1966. If Edward had more siblings, I can’t find them, but I suspect not. There is no record of his parent’s marriage, or Edward’s. It seems his local newspaper knew of one, even though Edward denied being married on his attestation papers. What we do know is he was born 6 August 1892 to Hugh and Nellie (Sullivan) Christy; Lillian came along three years later. Blue-eyed and blond, he must have been his parent’s delight, their literal “fair-haired child”.

The family lived in the Barrie, Ontario area but it seems later Nellie was living in Collingwood on the shores of beautiful Georgian Bay, Lake Huron. In 1908, Hugh, a plasterer, died at age 44 of pulmonary TB, perhaps from years of breathing plaster dust, leaving 16-year-old Edward as head of the family. In 1915, Edward’s profession was listed as a steward, on a ship plying the Great Lakes presumably, and I also assume he was working as such, or at least some position on board, two years earlier.

The Great Lakes are so unfathomably large and deep – carrying over 20% of the world’s fresh water supply – they act like seas, and with hundreds of miles of open water, the winds can build the waves into monsters. When the cold north winds start to blow over the still-warm water of the lakes, the result is the Great Lakes’ famous “gales of November”. In 1913, two fronts collided to create the deadliest lake storm in recorded history, a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that killed 250 people, sank 19 ships and stranded 19 others, and dumped many feet of “lake-effect” snow. Called the “Big Blow”, the “Freshwater Fury” and the “White Hurricane” by the press, winds topped 140kph and the lakes saw waves up to 11 metres. Somewhere in this storm, Edward was on board ship, was one of the lucky ones and survived. His mother was probably incredibly relieved to have her son safely home after that!

In January 1915, with the First Contingent of men not yet at the Front, Edward decided to sign up for the war. Perhaps his adventure of two years before gave him a taste for more. Perhaps life seemed a little dull compared to the excitement of travel to Europe and a little fighting. He ventured to Sarnia, Ontario and on 28 January 1915 passed his medical exams. At 5’ 6”, he wasn’t terribly tall – he’d never make a gunner – but was of average height for the time and fit. He was signed on to the 34^th Battalion and set sail from Montreal on the SS Hesperion on 17 August 1915. On arriving in Shorncliffe, he was placed in the 9^th Reserve Battalion. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians – the ones that came after the First Contingent – spent their first months of overseas training in the lush, bucolic fields around Folkestone and lived in the army camp at Shorncliffe. It must have been beautiful that late summer and fall. But all good things come to an end, and on 3 January 1916, Edward finally made it to the trenches, joining Jim Johnstone in the 2^nd Battalion, then in the Messine area, near Wulverghem, Heuvelland, Belgium. Over the next few weeks, the battalion was rotating in and out of the front line, but always in this location, marked D1 to D4 in the war diary. I was able to match these locations to current maps and visited the exact site. Now it is a quiet, peaceful place of rolling fields, small stands of trees, the steeple of the church in Mesen (Messine) easily visible. Then, the Germans were in lines a few hundred yards away, and raising your head to look at that steeple would have risked a sniper’s bullet. But it wasn’t the enemy who ended Edward’s war. He took care of that himself.

In the FWW, hand grenades were called “bombs” and special training courses were held to learn how to make and throw them. By 1917, they were standard kit for Canadians, but this was early 1916, and the armies had only been issued them late in 1915. Perhaps Edward was given one, perhaps he’d had some bomb training. Perhaps he picked it up thinking it was a lark to have one. Either way, he stuck it in his pocket, and somehow, while Edward was on sentry duty, it detonated. Despite immediate medical care, and despite being rushed to the No.8 Casualty Clearing Center, where teams of surgeons had state of the art surgical units, Edward died of his wounds. Abdominal wounds, of which this most likely was, had a more than 50% mortality rate.

Mrs. Christy’s fair-haired child’s luck had run out after just seven weeks at the Front.

Edward is buried at the Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension, in Bailleul, France, 14.5km southwest of Ypres.

[1] Gordon Lightfoot “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”

A Tale of Two James

12 December 2023

_{Private James Ward Maxwell/Sidey}

James W. Johnstone and James W. Maxwell. They were both in the 2nd Battalion, occupying a quiet line of trenches just northeast and up a slight rise from R.E. Farm cemetery. Maxwell fell the day after Johnstone: the 23^rd of February 1916. Neither were mentioned in the battalion war diary as having given up their lives, but James Maxwell was accorded even less attention (if possible) than Jim Johnstone. The war diary coldly states “Day very quiet. Nothing of note.” James Maxwell – somehow, I do feel he went by Jimmy – was not nothing. Maxwell, like many of the first Canadians to enlist was British born, in Edinburgh, Scotland to be precise. And Maxwell was not his real name.

_{James Johnstone (left) and James Maxwell (right)}

James Ward Sidey came to Canada in 1911 with his father William Sidey, and brothers John, Robert, and Thomas, from Dublin, Ireland. He left behind a sister Isabella and his mother, also Isabella, who had remarried a man named William Maxwell. The Sideys joined James’ older brother William Charles who had come to Toronto, Ontario in 1908. James worked as a painter and in 1914 was care-free and single.

At the outbreak of the war in August 1914, brother Robert likely left for the UK to enlist with the BEF, as there seems to be no Canadian records. He was killed in January 1915 in action, before the Canadian First Contingent (excepting the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry) got to the Front, which goes somewhat to confirm this. On the 26^th of January 1915, James signed on, too, perhaps because of his brother, but using his stepfather’s last name – Maxwell – and giving their address in Dublin for his next-of-kin. He assigned his pay to his mother.

At 5’ 3” and a slight 125 pounds, James was unlikely to have been accepted in the first round of recruiting. However, he was accepted into the 34^th Battalion that January and began training. From the very beginning, he proved full of high-spirits, or just plain defiance, or maybe it was the beautiful summer weather. On six occasions between May and August of 1915, he was deducted pay for misdeeds, and served 5 days in detention on one occasion, and 96 hours on another. He hadn’t even left the country, yet! On the 23^rd of October 1915, he finally sailed for England. At this point, James was transferred into the 9^th Battalion, Jim Johnstone’s original one, which was in reserve in England. Sidey was not done with his bad behaviour, though. In December 1915, he decided to travel to Dublin to visit his family there, whom he hadn’t seen in 4 years most likely, so one can’t blame him, being the Christmas season and all! However, James had no leave and was 14 days “Absent without Leave”; he lost 17 days’ pay.

Just before Christmas, James Sidey finally was transferred into the 2^nd Battalion and on the 3^rd of January 1916, arrived at the Front. For the 2^nd Battalion, this was a line of trenches just north of the tiny village of Wulverghem, Heuvelland, Belgium, within sight of Mount Kemmel and the Messine Ridge where 19 mines would be blown in 1917, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions and considered then the loudest man-made noise in history. Six of these mines were never used; one exploded in 1955 after a lightning strike, one sits currently under a farm and is still a danger to the family living there.

_{Looking east from the approximate line of the 2nd Bn trenches in February 1916, toward Messine Ridge (Mesen).}

Jim Johnstone was on leave in London when Sidey arrived to join the battalion, and in his own words, was not much interested in meeting new people at that point anyway. He had lost so many friends, it seemed pointless to make new ones. The two James’ perhaps never met or interacted much. How ironic that they would die a day apart – Johnstone having served a year at the front, Sidey 7 weeks – and lie forever side by side, companions in death if not life.

John William Sidey, James’ oldest brother, on hearing of the loss of a second brother at the front, said “I am going now.” At 35, John was getting a bit long in the tooth, and while his attestation papers were signed in March of 1916, he was discharged in August as medically unfit, with the comment that he should never have passed the medical to begin with. A newspaper clipping mentions two other brothers in khaki. I found one: William Charles, who also gave a false name, Wallace this time, and his father as William Wallace, when he enlisted in December 1915. William, a sapper, was gassed and in hospital in Etaples in May 1918 when he was further wounded in the air raid on the Canadian hospital which killed 66 staff and patients, including two Canadian nursing sisters. William never returned to the front, being discharged in October 1918. James’ father was denied his War gratuity for deceased soldiers, having been granted money for William. Of the fifth brother “in the ranks” – presumably Thomas – there is no evidence he signed up in Canada under the name of Sidey. Perhaps he, too, used an alias.

A Pilgrimage to the Sacred Lands

8 – 14 November 2023

A dream came true this November, when I finally made my long-delayed trip to the Ypres Salient and paid a visit to Jim Johnstone. It absolutely was a pilgrimage, a journey of remembrance. A person cannot travel the roads of northern France and Belgium without being struck forcefully by the world’s loss in young men. Who knows what they may have accomplished, had they lived?

We flew into Paris early in the morning, and rented a car, immediately setting out for the Front. Stops that first day included Thiepval, Beaumont-Hamel and Vimy, before arriving in Ypres. In the pouring rain, we attended the daily 8pm ceremony at Menin Gate. Unfortunately, the Gate is undergoing a 2-year restoration project and is completely shrouded from view. Despite this, the scale of its size was breathtaking and humbling; it is so much larger than I had thought. I did manage to peer in a few cracks to see some of the panels! Remembrance Day at the Menin Gate was an experience never to be forgotten. The dedication to honouring our fallen by the Last Post Association volunteers is unprecedented and unwavering; they celebrated their 33,000^th ceremony this fall, and have daily honoured the 55,000 men named on the Gate since 1928 (other than during the German occupation of Ypres during WWII).

Over the next days, we visited the Brooding Soldier, Essex Farm, Langemarck German cemetery, Ploegsteert and Jim. We saw Hill 62, Sanctuary Wood, Hill 60, Tyne Cot cemetery, Sint Eloi, Mt. Kemel, Messine Ridge, and Passchendaele where we took part in the November 10^th commemorative walk. As a side trip, we drove to Boulogne, where the many hospitals were based, Wimereax Cemetery, Calais, Dunkirk – site of the miraculous evacuation of British troops in 1940 – and Bruges (highly recommend!). We visited many, many cemeteries, from which I chose at random a Canadian soldier. These men will be featured here over the coming weeks and months.

He Will Not Return To Me

23 August 2023

_{Lieutenant Daniel Lionel Teed, MC}

He’d followed in his brother, Hugh’s footsteps, attending Rothesay Collegiate School and the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, and in January 1916, he again joined his brother, enlisting in the Canadian Expeditionary Force as a Lieutenant. Daniel Lionel Teed – who went by Lionel – would also follow his brother in sacrifice. M. Gerald and Margaret Teed would endure the heartbreak of losing a second son just two months before Armistice, when the end of the war was firmly in sight and the Canadians were storming through German defenses in the Hundred Days Offensive that would help win the war.

Lionel was the Teed family’s third son, born 12 October 1893 and still a student living at home when he enlisted in the 36^th Battery, Canadian Field Artillery. Tall like his brother, he wore his uniform with dash: jodhpurs, leather puttees and polished spurs, a riding crop in hand rather than a stick. Two months later, 13 March 1916, he sailed for England on the S.S. Missanabie, the same ship brother Hugh had traveled on when home on medical leave the previous summer. After attending a Howitzer course at Bramshott, Lionel embarked for France on 13 July 1916 and set up with the 36^th Battery in one of the “hot spots”, in the Ypres Salient. Within 24 hours, they came under very heavy shelling, quite a trial by fire. In August, they were transferred to Kemmel, a quieter area, then in October 1916 headed for the Somme. One thousand yards behind the lines at Courcelette, the battery was still the target for their counterparts on the German side, but their Commanding officer, Major Daniel A. MacKinnon proudly stated they returned 100 shells for every one that came their way. In April 1917, Lionel participated in the attack on Vimy Ridge, his battery part of an unprecedented nearly 1000-gun barrage that opened the battle.

Trench fever felled Lionel in the late spring of 1917. Spread by the ubiquitous lice, it caused high fever, headaches, abdominal and bone pain. Treatable now (it is found among the urban homeless population) by antibiotics, then a man suffered through until it ran its course.

It was in August 1917, while engaged at the battle for Hill 70, that Lionel was severely wounded by a brand new and particularly vile form of chemical warfare: mustard gas. Mustard gas, “the king of battlefield gases” was, unlike chlorine or phosgene gas, an irritant rather than an inhaled gas, in that it caused severe blistering of skin, eyes and other mucous membranes. It could soak into the soldier’s uniforms and burn their skin or those who came to help them: fellow soldiers, the nurses and doctors who undressed the casualties. Gas masks were nearly useless against it. It would be weeks before Lionel rejoined his unit… in time to return to the hell hole of mud that was the Ypres Salient and the battle of Passchendaele.

By March 1918, the 36^th Battery was back in France and defending Arras against the German Spring Offensive. The battery took a pummeling by an estimated 2000 German shells but as MacKinnon wrote “Some brave deeds were carried out by members of the battery…”. Lionel was awarded a Military Cross (MC). The German attacks had failed, and the demoralized army was soon under fierce pressure. Beginning 8 August 1918, Canada’s Hundred Days Offensive began: first the Germans were pushed out of their lines at Amiens, then the Drocourt- Queant Line; the Canadians crossed Canal-du-Nord, liberated Cambrai and finally, on the last day of the war, Mons where it all began for the British in August 1914. Sadly, Lionel would not see these final successes.

1 September 1918, the 36^th Battery was ordered to blow the barbed wire at the Hindenburg Line and given 4000 rounds to do so. Their position was exposed, observed by enemy balloons. Their shells were falling short, so Lionel telephoned Major MacKinnon with this observation. Thinking he was not getting through, Lionel decided to run down to the No 2 gun to pass on the information to MacKinnon, the kind of brave, selfless action that likely earned him his MC. No sooner did he arrived at the gun when a German shell hit directly. Lionel, Sergeant MacKay, and Gunner John Cornfoot were killed instantly. MacKinnon called this one of the saddest blows in the 36^th Battery’s entire war experience. Lionel Teed was, he said, one of the best, a brave, extremely clever officer and loved by all. But the war did not stop for fallen soldiers, not with victory in sight, and the battery moved on with the tide until the end. Lionel is buried at the Monchy-le-Preux Cemetery, Pas de Calais.

_{Twice in his service record, Lionel was appointed “acting Captain”, meaning he was temporarily serving in the role in place of another officer, rather than being permanently promoted to the rank.}

Lionel’s oldest brother, John, welcomed a 4^th son in December 1918. He named the little boy Daniel Lionel in his uncle’s memory. John’s previous son, born in June 1917, had been named Hugh Mariner. Lionel and Hugh’s sister Emily would also welcome a son in 1923; he was named Lionel Mariner in honour of both the lost Teed brothers.

To Live In The Hearts We Leave Behind Is Not To Die

14 August 2023

_{Lieutenant Hugh Mariner Teed}

He was tall, a handsome young man who wore his meticulous officer’s uniform and neatly clipped mustache well. His square, dimpled chin was at home with his upright posture. No doubt he was at ease in that uniform having been a cadet at the Royal Military College. His manners were those of gentleman; his father, a well-to-do barrister and King’s Council, had sent his sons to be educated at one of Canada’s elite boarding schools. It is little wonder the daughter of a postman was swept off her feet. In January 1915, Violet M. Stacey married a dashing Canadian officer, Lieutenant Hugh Mariner Teed, who had only arrived in the Salisbury area three months before as a member of the First Canadian Contingent. A week after the wedding, he was sent to the trenches. How well did she really know her husband? How could she know what would become of the confident young man she had, in all innocence, capriciously married?

Hugh Teed was born on 21 January 1892 in Dorchester, New Brunswick, and grew up in the port city of Saint John in an elegant three-story brick home in an upscale neighbourhood. He attended Rothesay Collegiate School in the nearby community of Rothesay, NB, home to the province’s oldest and most wealthy families. Hugh was at home in Saint John, working as a civil engineer when war was declared in August 1914, and he immediately joined at the rank of lieutenant. He trained at Valcartier, PQ, and shipped overseas to England in October 1914, where the Canadians would spend the winter of 1914/15 in camps on Salisbury Plain. The soldiers and officers spent much time in the surrounding villages, and it is likely Hugh and Violet met while she was a cashier in a local book shop, a job she was doing as recently as 1911, according to the census. War gives great urgency; hasty marriages were common in the 1914/1918 conflict. Hugh, age 23, and Violet, 21, married on 30 January 1916, knowing he would soon be sent into the fighting. Indeed, Hugh proceeded to France on 7 February 1916 with the 1^st Infantry Brigade, completely unprepared for what he was about to face.

April, May and June 1915 were truly a baptism by fire for the fledgling Canadian Division. First came the Second Battle of Ypres in which the Germans launched the first large scale gas attack of the war and might have overwhelmed the Ypres Salient but for 18,000 untested Canadians. Casualties were an appalling 6035 men, of which 2000 were killed. This was followed in May and June, by bloodbaths at Festubert and Givenchy; another 2900 were killed or wounded in these battles. Hugh was traumatized; his mind was broken.

On 26 June 1915, Hugh was admitted to hospital as NYD: Not Yet Diagnosed. The physicians of the Canadian Army Medical Corp (CAMC) were being confronted with a new mental disease that was to cause much controversy. We now call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); it would then come to be called shell shock or neurasthenia. While the term shell shock was used as early as February 1915, it quickly fell out of favour and by May of 1915, Dr. Aldren Turner described it as a “…form of temporary ‘nervous breakdown’, exactly what was written in Hugh’s records. By July 1915, and having been sent to hospital in England, the medical boards decided Hugh had had a nervous breakdown.

While officers were given more leeway than the other ranks, this would have been hugely stigmatizing. The military felt the term “shellshock” legitimized what amounted to malingering and cowardice. Decisions in labeling and treating it were made, like many others, in an effort to get men back in the trenches, reduce the numbers invalided out of the trenches, and, in the long run, reduce the monetary liability of the government for post-war pensions. In fact, the term “shell shock” was disallowed in military and medical reports by 1916. The result was that sufferers often went from objects of sympathy, to ones of contempt.

By his medical board hearing in August of 1915, perhaps in recognition of the stigma, Hugh’s debility was now referred to as “anemia”. He complained of shortness of breath and “extreme weakness”. Blood work found his cell counts low. He was found unfit for even light duties and granted leave home to Canada from 12 August to 11 October 1915. This leave was extended to 15 November 1915. Violet joined her husband in Canada on 29 August, travelling to the family’s summer home in Dorchester, Rocklyn, a mansion built in 1831 by Father of Confederation, Edward Barron Chandler.

_{Rocklyn/Chandler House}

The couple returned to England together on 22 November 1915. Perhaps those long months in peace, at home, went some way to healing Hugh’s trauma, but how difficult was it for him to face his return to the war?

In December 1915, Hugh was appointed acting Captain, and in January was cleared as fit for general duty. He was not returned to the front, however. Hugh bounced around for several months, from HQ in Shorncliffe to a training camp at Bramshott, and staff duties with the 17^th reserve battalion. Not until 30 August 1916 was Hugh finally sent back to France, attached to the 2^nd Battalion in the field. Two weeks later he was off teaching a grenade course for three weeks, having been appointed the Battalion Bombing Officer.

Hugh may not have been a prolific letter writer; his last letter to his family was on 23 November 1916. In it he seems very cheerful, happy to be at the front fighting, calling the sights over the war-torn ground “wonderful”. He described a rescue mission to the enemy line to bring back the wounded and dead, and was looking forward to his leave in December, ten days in England.

_{Letter to his father, dated 23 November 1916}

It’s impossible to know Hugh’s mental state at this point. PTSD isn’t easily treated or cured, that we do know, and a return to the front would have been triggering for him. What we do know is on 9 January 1917, only 24 years old, Hugh died by “accident”. His circumstances of death register – registers Sip to Z all together – have not survived. We will never know if he was fatally injured by “friendly fire”, by an unfortunate mishap with a grenade during training (most likely) or worse. The family were told, or chose to believe, he was “killed in action” and they were not wrong. Hugh Teed deserves to be remembered with compassion, and to be honoured for his sacrifice, as much as any of the men killed by enemy fire.

_{Hugh’s “death penny”, the memorial plaque issued to families, has been embedded in the family memorial stone.}

“To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.”

– epitaph on Hugh’s gravestone in Bruay Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France

Capturing the Hangstellung

11 August 2023

Most Canadians have heard of the Easter Monday attack that captured (much of) Vimy Ridge on 9 April 1917. Some have heard of the longer time it took to capture Hill 145, where the now-iconic Canadian memorial stands today, and the final attack to capture the “Pimple” on 12 April that completed the objective. Fewer still may have read of a small but essential skirmish on 10 April, in which the Canadians fought downhill, off Hill 145, to capture the German-occupied Hangstellung, a line of trenches at the bottom of the hill. In the late afternoon, the 44^th and 50^th Battalions followed a creeping barrage into heavy shelling from the Germans. “Down went a dozen of Canada’s finest chaps in the first 60 seconds” according to Private Victor Wheeler of the 50^th Battalion. One of those who died on the second day at Vimy was 27-year-old Lieutenant, and new father, Guy Randolph Yerxa. I’ll admit feeling a special poignancy for this story: Guy was my 2^nd cousin, twice removed.

Guy was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick on 15 February 1890, son of Randolph K Yerxa and Mary E Torrens. Guy was 12 when his father died at only 38 years old while away from home working in Massachusetts. Eight years later, tragedy would strike the family, when Guy’s older brother Roy, then 22 years old, died. A tall young man with striking colouring – bright blue eyes and dark hair – Guy worked first for the Royal Bank in Fredericton before transferring out west. By 1914, he was working as a government surveyor in Calgary.

In December 1914, the former militia member (71^st Battalion in Fredericton) signed on when the 50^th Battalion began recruiting in Calgary and was quickly assigned as Regimental clerk. The 50^th would remain in Calgary for much of the next year, and it was during this time that Guy married 17-year-old Louise M. King, living with her family in the upcoming neighbourhood of Parkdale on the Bow River. When Guy was shipped out in the fall of 1915, Louise was pregnant. Little Randolph was born in March 1916. Guy would have received the happy news in England where the battalion was stationed, and he was promoted to Company Sergeant Major then commissioned as a Lieutenant. He completed a training course in July and in August 1916 the battalion finally embarked for France.

Guy’s first real taste of battle was part of the larger Somme campaign, more specifically the Battle of Ancre Heights. This disputed ground was southeast of Beaumont-Hamel, between Thiepval and Courcelette. The battalion had arrived in the area in early October, having spent August and September north of the area as part of an amalgamated Allied unit. The 50^th was involved in the renewed attempts to capture Regina and Desire Trenches in November. At this time Guy was appointed adjutant, becoming a staff officer assisting with unit administration. This was not merely a backroom position as Guy would see action in the trenches.

The 4^th Canadian Division, of which Guy’s 50^th Battalion was a part, joined the rest of the Canadian Corps north in Artois in November 1917. The winter of 1916/17 was mostly free of large-scale operations, but rather kept the Canadians raiding, and training for the planned offensive at Vimy. In March 1917, in what might have been a raid to collect prisoners and information, Guy led a group of men to the enemy line under heavy fire. Later he organized the rescue of the wounded. For this “conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty” he was awarded the Military Cross (MC). It is unlikely Guy knew anything about it, as the award was not authorized by Sir Julien Byng, Commander of the Canadian Corps, until May 1917.

Guy’s story was edging toward its end. He’d turned 27, and enjoyed a long leave, likely in England far from the fighting. Now he and the Canadian Corps were facing a monumental task: the taking of what hundreds of thousands of French and British soldiers had failed to take, Vimy Ridge. The battle itself is too complicated for a short blog post. It has entered the realm of myth, a legend of nation-building, and Canadian unity, grit, and determination. I highly recommend Dr. Tim Cook’s book on the subject for anyone who wants to learn more. In it he states: “There were many ways to be killed on Vimy Ridge.” Victor Wheeler described men “impaled like grotesque scarecrows” or “scattered… in gruesome fragments”. The operation that took Guy’s life hardly rates a mention in most descriptions of the battle and only one page in Cook’s hefty tome. Like many others, Guy’s death was swift and unmarked by many other than his mother, who had now lost her husband and her only two sons, and his young widow. Of Guy himself nothing was ever found to recover and bury properly. His only monument is Allward’s masterpiece on Hill 145.

Louise King Yerxa received Guy’s MC medal in a presentation by the Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta in June 1917. She later forwarded it on to Guy’s mother, Mary, small solace for the gaping hole in her life. Louise remarried in 1922. Of their son Randolph there is not much information. It appears he lived until 1981, dying in the US where he moved to marry his third wife, after two divorces in 12 years. There is no evidence he ever visited or met his grandmother, Mary who died in 1951.

Two Brothers, Three Telegrams

28 June 2023

_{Frederick (L) and James (R) Manning}

They were the first and second-born sons of Dr. James and Helen Manning’s five children. Their father was a prominent and well-respected city dentist; their mother, the niece of Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley, Premier and Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, as well as member of Sir John A. MacDonald’s first federal government. They grew up on a street of elegant brick and stone homes, most of them constructed after the 1877 fire that had burned two fifths of the city. A live in servant cared for their needs. Fred was the oldest, named for his mother’s brother, and James came along 19 months later. No doubt the brothers were close companions growing up. Both were dark haired with brown eyes; Fred stood five inches taller – the big brother in all respects – at nearly 5’11”. Both enlisted and were commissioned as Lieutenants in 1916 and both fought at the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Only one came home.

Frederick Charles Manning was born on 24 July, 1895 just a year after his parents’ marriage. A bright boy, he graduated at the head of his class at Saint John High School, and promptly headed to Fredericton to the Normal School where he achieved the top classification for a teacher’s license. Fred, only 18, then took over teaching at the school in Fredericton Junction. A year later, he enrolled in Arts at Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, perhaps to upgrade his teaching qualifications. It was here that Fred took command of the C.O.T.C. and where a recruiter for the 219^th Highland Battalion of NS came calling in early 1916. Fred immediately stepped up, the first in the university to do so, according to an article in the Saint John newspapers. Fred arrived at Aldershot Camp, NS, in May 1916 for training. By June, his “ability was recognized and he was promoted” to a commission. After the summer in Nova Scotia, his battalion headed overseas, sailing from Halifax on the S.S. Olympic on 12 October 1916, and landing in Liverpool a week later. His next four months were spent in England, the training a seemingly endless process, but on 9 February 1917, Lieutenant Frederick Manning was taken on strength by the 85^th Battalion and on the 10^th was finally on his way to France.

James Harold Manning, born 15 February 1897, took a different path than his older brother. He was determined to follow in his father’s footsteps, and so enrolled in the same dental school in Pennsylvania as James Senior. Like his father, he had served in the 62^nd St. John Fusiliers, where his father had made a name for himself as a marksman, even competing in 1890 at the prestigious Bisley shooting competition in the UK. It is unsurprising after his first year completed and with his older brother enlisted, that James came home to do the same.

In June 1916, he joined the 140^th Battalion. This path led him to Valcartier for training. Oddly, he made it to England months before Fred, sailing on the same ship as his brother would, the S.S. Olympic, on 18 August 1916. I have to wonder if the brothers had any opportunity to visit each other; I certainly hope so.

James, promoted to Lieutenant as well, was sent to the Crowborough Military School for an advanced Field Officer course. He was attached to the RCR and the PPCLI, taken on strength of the 144^th which was absorbed into the 18^th Reserve Battalion before finally being drafted into the 52^nd Battalion on 10 February 1917, following his brother to France two days later. Quite a convoluted path!

Both brothers were now on an inexorable path leading to one of the biggest battles in Canadian history, that at Vimy Ridge, and surprisingly both survived the initial assault on Easter Monday 9 April 1917 even though Fred’s 85^th was at one of the worst ends of the ridge, at the well-fortified Hill 145 where the memorial now stands. They would have known about the victory but perhaps unaware of the sensation it was causing at home. After the incredible tension and anticipation leading up to this attack, the following days might have seemed anti-climactic, winding down to “normal”. Well, as this war has shown again and again, bad things happen when least expected.

On the 15 April 1917, a knock that no family wanted came to the door of 158 Germain St in Saint John. A telegram that surely sent hearts plummeting had arrived. James and Helen knew they had two sons in the big battle that was making the newspaper headlines. But all was not lost: Fred had been wounded and it was “serious but not dangerous”. Little did they know, it was more than that. Fred sustained a gunshot wound to the head and had a fractured femur, the long bone in the thigh. Both were life-threatening injuries. It had happened two days earlier and Fred had been whisked by the now efficient medical system to the No. 14 General Hospital south of Calais. Three days later another telegram arrived, this time with the horrible news that Fred, only 21 years old, had died of his wounds, ironically on the same day the first telegram had arrived. The blows did not stop there. The very next day, 19 April, a third telegram came. I can only speculate what the mourning family – younger siblings Laurence, Marjorie and Thomas, ages 18, 17 and 15, were still at home – thought. Perhaps it brought a piercing shaft of hope that Fred hadn’t really died. Perhaps it brought the terror that James had also died. What it said was that James was wounded, not seriously, and on the same day the first telegram had arrived.

James had taken a shrapnel wound to his left forearm and two fragments had to be surgically removed. It was a “Blighty”, one of those wounds serious enough for a long recovery but not serious enough it would risk the patient’s life moving them across the Channel. James was off for an extended stay in England at the 2^nd Western General Hospital in Manchester. Four months later, on 15 August 1917, he was fit for duty and back with his unit, but not for long.

On 27 August 1917, less than two weeks since his return to the front, James led a party tasked to capture a German machine gun nest. Nine miles behind their position a British artillery unit was laying down a barrage but due to errors in their ranging, the shells fell near James’ position. The telephone wires had been cut so they were unable to message the British. A terrific explosion buried James, but he was dug out by his men. Shaking off the trauma and rounding up seven or eight others, he continued his attack, driving off the Germans and seizing their machine guns. It was this action that led Major General (then Lieutenant-Colonel) Forster, VC, to call James “a born leader of men…”

As he made his return a whizzbang, a small caliber German shell, hit within six feet of James, throwing him violently across the ground and leaving him concussed. A piece of the shell drove through the palm of his left hand, shattering the bones. James found himself back in Manchester at the 2^nd Western as doctors struggled to save his hand from both the physical damage and gas gangrene, a dread result of the filth of the trenches. In the era before antibiotics, surgically opening the wounds and exposing them to air was the only way to stop gas gangrene. Not only did he have the hand injury to contend with but the site on his thigh where they had removed skin for a graft on his hand had become badly infected and he was still suffering a back injury from being thrown by the shell.

By November, the medical boards saw no hope for James’ hand, and he was medically invalided back to Canada on 19 December 1917. What a sigh of relief his family must have breathed to have him back home again. He was sent to Toronto in one last attempt to fix his hand, but James was left with a clawed hand, the fingers immovable, all their joints fused, the palm and back crossed with scars. James’ dream to follow his father into dentistry came to an end.

Undeterred, James took up town planning and landscape gardening, working in Boston, before attending Harvard University. He ended up in NYC then traveled to Maturin, Venezuela as part of the engineering staff for Standard Oil. Six months into his stay in Venezuela, James caught what might have been malaria or hemorrhagic fever or both. That spring of 1924, seven years after surviving the fighting at Vimy and Lens, James Manning died at age 27. He had lived a life packed densely with experiences, almost as if he had known he would not make old bones. Despite his roaming, James never lost his nostalgia for his foggy port city home by the Bay of Fundy, writing this poem:

If I were ruler of this land with majesty complete,

If I owned all these many leagues and not a yard beside,

I’d give them up without a sigh for room to place my feet,

By the fog-bank and the rain, and the sound of Fundy’s tide

Follow Me to Hell

19 June 2023

_{Lieutenant Victor Gordon Tupper
Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205389952}

Captain Victor Gordon Tupper, MC

He called it the “biggest push that has ever been launched” and he had just made the German barbed wire when struck in the hip by a shell. Gordie slipped to the earth with an “expression of surprise, the faint flicker of a smile” and, according to a brother officer who witnessed it, “died within seconds”. Tragic, romantic, heroic, and, from descriptions of the young Captain, possibly true, kind of like the battle of Vimy Ridge itself.

Gordon Tupper was a cheerful, active, outdoorsy young man. His older brother described him as having a great love of hiking, fishing, and the unruly game of rugby. It seems little wonder that when the war began in August 1914, he immediately joined up at the tender age of 19. He enlisted as a Private and his profession was listed as chauffeur, but in fact, he came from quite an illustrious family as his last name suggests. Gordon was the 4^th son and youngest of six children born to the Honorable Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, KCMG, and Lady Janet Tupper. His father was a lawyer from Halifax, NS, who followed in Gordon’s grandfather’s political footsteps, becoming an MP, then Justice Minister, and the Solicitor General in a number of Conservative governments. Charles H had been knighted in 1893 after helping broker a deal in the Bering Sea Arbitration. Gordon was born in Ottawa on 4 February 1896 and his godmother was Lady Aberdeen, wife of the Governor-General of Canada.

Gordon’s grandfather was the Sir Charles Tupper, a Nova Scotia physician, politician, former Premier of the province, Father of Confederation, and 6^th Prime Minister of Canada. The senior Sir Charles was a protégé and good friend of former NS Premier James William Johnston – yes, that J.W. Johnston, great-grandfather of my Private James W. Johnstone (even though the last name has a slightly different spelling!). Sir Charles Tupper, senior, has the dubious distinction of being the shortest serving Prime Minister, one who never sat in Parliament. After 68 days in the PM’s office, in May of 1896, Sir Charles was out, the Conservatives defeated. Charles Hibbert promptly moved his family all the way across the country to British Columbia, first to Victoria, then to Vancouver, where Gordon grew up, and Charles H, oddly, continued to serve as MP for Pictou, NS.

In September of 1914, Gordon found himself in Valcartier, PQ, with thousands of other eager young volunteers. Traveling from there to England in October 1914 on the S.S. Andania, he spent that winter in misery on Salisbury Plain, coming down with, as so many did, pleurisy and pneumonia. In February 1915, Gordon was left behind with the 17^th Battalion in reserve as the rest of the Canadian men shipped to France. He missed the big show in Ypres in April 1915, but because of the horrific losses, was transferred to the 13^th Battalion in May 1914. In July, he was transferred to the 16^th Battalion, recommended for Cadet School, and by August was promoted first to Lance Corporal then temporary 2^nd Lieutenant. His former commanding officers described him as brave, cool in action, and courageous, as having judgement, tact, and true leadership. It certainly would explain his meteoric rise. By October 1916, he was a Captain and in February 1917 an acting Major.

Tupper was initially assigned as a Transport Officer but later went to Communications. It was in this role he earned his Military Cross. Under heavy shell fire and personal peril – he was wounded – and “displaying great courage and determination” staying at his post while wounded, he kept the communication lines open between the front lines and HQ, and between the spotting officers and the artillery. In November of 1916, he was “gazetted” – written up in the London Gazette for conspicuous gallantry in action and awarded the Military Cross, the second highest decoration an officer can receive.

Gordon seemed genuinely to enjoy his time in the war. He wrote repeatedly to his parents not to worry about him, that while, yes, there were stressful times, they were not constant, and he had a wonderful time while away from the front. Of the Battle of Mont Sorel, he wrote: ”Really I never enjoyed two hours more in my life than when we were attacking. Wonderful excitement!” Later, he wrote: “Will you believe me when I say that I have enjoyed the last two years more than any others in my life?”

In April 1917, he wrote his parents one of those letters, his third of the war, he said. He had been “over the top” on a few occasions, but this time he would be leading his own Company, 150 officers and men, who would, “follow me to Hell, if need be.” He was proud, calling it the “most glorious day of my life” and was convinced the path to peace was through the action that we now know as the battle of Vimy Ridge. His parents were not to feel sorry for him.

Promptly at 5:30am on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917, nearly 1000 guns and mortars opened up with a roar, pounding the German lines that wreathed the slopes of Vimy Ridge. Firing for three minutes, they lifted 100 yards and fired another three minutes, creating a creeping barrage, behind which poured four Divisions of Canadians. On the right, attacking toward Thelus, the 1^st Division, commanded by Major-General Arthur Currie, and including the 16^th Battalion and 21-year-old Captain V. Gordon Tupper, would ultimately be successful in capturing their objective, as would all the Canadian Divisions, taking the entire ridge.

Gordon was one of the lucky ones whose body was retrieved and properly buried at Ecoivres Military Cemetery, his stone engraved with words chosen by his parents, Be ye faithful unto death and I will give you a crown of life. The battle of Vimy has become legend, almost mythical, a fantasy of nation-building and the crowning glory of Canadian bravado. The ridge itself is home to the foremost of Canada’s war monuments, eclipsing even the National War Monument in Gordon’s birthplace, Ottawa. His name may not be on that monument and its site is not the section of ridge he assaulted in his first command, but I like to think Gordon Tupper would still be proud that the memory of so many young men who sacrificed everything are remembered there, near the place where he, in his words, “went under”.

Absent Without Leave

6 June 2023

_{Harbour, Saint John, N.B. (1929)
Credit: Canada. Dept. of Interior / Library and Archives Canada / PA-049781}

He was a stranger in town with few friends. Where would he go? The options were limited.

Not all my stories are about men who died in glorious battle, or even men with proper attestation papers, from which we can learn much about them. John Daniel Pike never enlisted in an overseas battalion, never signed those papers on which we might see his age, his eye colour, or his hair colour to form a picture of a young Canadian. John was part of the home guard, and all we can say about him is he had a mouth full of cavities that likely would have kept him home, if indeed he did try to go overseas. That is not to say protecting Canadian soil was not an important contribution to the war effort.

_{Canadian Defence Force Recruiting Poster. St. John Globe, April 7, 1917,}

In April of 1918, the Canadian Garrison Regiment was formed to bring together the various detachments of home defense under one umbrella. In Saint John, it drew its strength in large part from the 62^nd Regiment, the storied St. John Fusiliers, which had formed in 1872 (as the 62^nd Battalion) and contributed members for the Boer War in South Africa. Changing its name to the 62^nd Regiment in May of 1900, many members volunteered for the 26^th Battalion in 1914, and as such the 62^nd has been awarded a long list of First World War battle honours. Others of the 62^nd had been guarding the port of Saint John, New Brunswick since the outbreak of the war.

John Pike was not a native of Saint John, having been born and raised far to the northeast of New Brunswick in Belledune, on the Baie de Chaleur. He may even have seen the convoy of the First Contingent when they gathered there to await escort to England in the fall of 1914. John was the first of Thomas and Mary Pike’s ten children. In 1911, 17-year-old John was living on the family farm, having no stated profession. Two years later, at 19, John was working as a labourer to support his 25-year-old new bride, Mary Ella Hamilton. Their only child, a daughter Margaret Hannah, was born six months after the wedding. It was not an auspicious start to a marriage that would deteriorate.

When John joined the 62^nd Regiment is yet unknown to me. I am sure deep digging could find that information in the NB Archives, but it is mostly irrelevant to this story. I suspect it was not until late in the war that he moved to Saint John to join the home guard, as he was a relative stranger to the city in 1918. What is clear is John and Ella had parted ways and not amicably. According to Major C.J. Morgan, John had “serious family troubles”. On what must have been his transfer into the Canadian Garrison Regiment, in April 1918, he refused to sign papers transferring his pay to his wife. Further, Morgan said, without elaborating on specifics, Pike defamed his wife’s character. After “outside influence was brought to bear” – on Pike presumably – Morgan was directed to pay Ella Pike $248 on April 24^th, a large sum in those days. Three days later, John was back in Morgan’s office, anxious to see if Ella had received it, perhaps hopeful she had not got all of it, and asked if he could have a share.

According to the official records, John Pike was absorbed into the 7^th C.G.R. on 1 May 1918. In fact, on the early morning of 1 May 1918, John was posted by Sergeant C. Tracey to the #3 post, 3^rd relief (4:30-6:30am) on the docks on the west side of the harbour, relieving Private Frank Galley. Lying alongside of the “beat” which John was required to patrol, was a cargo ship, perhaps laying in supplies to go to an increasingly desperate England. Galley and Pike had had time to chat recently, as they sat waiting for their Medical Board examination – presumably on their transfer to the 7^th – and John had discussed his desire to transfer to the 9^th Siege (overseas) Battery. John may have really wanted to flee his home situation.

At 6:30am, May Day, when the sun at that time of year is well up and shining (if no rain or fog) over the harbour toward the west side docks, Private C. Daigle marched with the 1^st relief to take over #3 post from Pike. The beat was empty. P. Lumsden, Corporal of the Guard that morning, not finding Pike, posted his guards then returned to report the missing soldier to the Sergeant of the Guards, Tracey. Tracey immediately went to look for himself, and soon called all the guards to search the sheds. At 7am, the news of a missing guard made its way to Lieut. J. Harris, who reported it to Major Morgan and notified the Military Police. Not a sign of John or his equipment was to be found.

Just when was John Pike last seen? According to Private Earl Hawkes, who had spent the 4:30 to 6:30 guard duty at #1 post, immediately next to Pike’s post, John had been there, patrolling as required, not five or ten minutes before the relief came at 6:30. How could a man disappear that quickly, and without a trace? The immediate assumption was that John Pike had absented himself without leave. The Military Police were dispatched to search the city. Interestingly, the Saint John City Police were never briefed or asked to assist. But where could he go if he didn’t know the city and had few friends there? Neither was the coroner informed when Morgan’s thoughts turned to the idea that perhaps Pike had had an unfortunate accident and fallen off the pier into the cold and turbulent waters of the Saint John harbour; an unsuccessful grappling operation was initiated the next day, May 2nd.

On May 3^rd, an inquest was held. Major George Keefe, 1^st Depot Battery, Lieut. W. Colin Ewing, 9^th Siege Battery, and Lieut. E. S. Cosman, 7^th Bn, C.G.R. presided. After the testimony of Major Morgan, Lieut. Harris, Sergeant Tracey, Privates Galley, Daigle and Hawkes, the conclusion was drawn that, given Pike was seen after daylight and in such proximity to the other beat and the crew of the ship, it appeared “impossible for Pte Pike to have met death with an accident” without someone seeing or hearing something. Nearly two months later, Major Morgan completed the paperwork deeming Pike illegally absent and his pay was deducted $100.96 for the missing kit he had taken with him: his uniform and a weapon, presumably. Pike’s Active Service record baldly called him a deserter.

The harbour in Saint John is where the mighty St. John/Wolastoq River, eastern Canada’s largest, with a daily discharge of 3.5 billion cubic feet, meets the highest tides in the world, which rise and fall nearly 30 feet. The harbour swirls with treacherous currents, and the water temperature rarely gets above 12 degrees Celsius in the heat of summer. The harbour reluctantly gives up her dead, sometimes playing with bodies, sweeping them in and around the docks, carrying them out into the Bay of Fundy and back again, sometimes for months or years, often times never returning them at all. I have yet to find that John Pike was found. What is known: his wife remarried in October of 1919. Perhaps she took it upon herself to decide Pike wasn’t coming back or perhaps she had official word his body had been found. On 27 January 1920, John Pike’s “Part II DB#30, SOS [struck off strength] Deserter” was cancelled and the following substituted: “Pt II DB #27, SOS Deceased, drowned (acc[ident])”.

Despite his marital woes, and his money issues, John was a victim of this war as much as any of the men who fought overseas. Pulled (or driven) from his home in the north, he found himself in an unfamiliar port, doing tedious duty on a dangerous wharf. Sadly, there is no picture of him. We don’t know whether he was tall or short, fair or dark, handsome or plain-faced. What we do know is he was only 23 years old – too young like many of them – and father to a little girl, only 4 years old, whose memories of him likely faded with the passing years.

Four Days in October

21 May 2023

_{Clarence Buckley}

28 days. Not even a month at the Front after 10 months of training and traveling to get to the big show. His parents might have got a letter saying he’d made it to the battlefields, if he’d written them, before getting that dreaded telegram on 26 October 1915 to say he was dead.

Clarence Buckley was the third son, one of nine children, born to a scandalous relationship: his father, James, was Catholic, his mother, Maggie, Church of England. His parents didn’t get married – may not have been allowed to by their families – until Clarence’s oldest brother, George, was nearly two years old. The children soon began arriving with regularity: Francis in 1892, Florence in 1894, Clarence in 1896, Mary 1898, Ellen 1899, Annie 1900, Margaret 1906 and finally Peter 1909.

Dark-haired and blue-eyed, Clarence was a big lad, handsome and cheerful, smiling even in his formal portrait in uniform. He’d graduated from St. Patrick’s School on the west side of Saint John (a Catholic school although he was raised in his mother’s Anglican denomination) and gone to work for the railroad as a gas engineer. When war was declared, he signed on to the newly formed New Brunswick 26^th Battalion in November 1914. Although unnecessary, he fudged his birthdate by a year, as so many did, claiming to be born 27 March 1895 rather than 1896. Perhaps he thought being a bit older gave him a better chance of going overseas. Nevertheless, over he went in June 1915, along with his friend, Jack Cameron. Sadly, his mother did not get to wave him farewell. Maggie Buckley, worn out with childbirth and consumption (tuberculosis) died at age 44 in January 1915.

After months at Sandling Camp in Folkestone, the 26^th Battalion and Clarence Buckley finally made it to France and Belgium in September 1915. Crossing to Boulougne on the 15^th, they marched or took trains to Wizernes, then Hazebrouck and Bailleul, finally ending up in permanent billets in Scherpenberg, Belgium. On the 28^th of September 1915, the 26^th Bn went into the trenches for the first time. “A” company, of which I am relatively sure Clarence was a part, stayed behind in reserve. Was he disappointed at missing the “fun”? Likely, as so many were eager to do their bit. He would however have to wait 11 more days, while listening to the rumble of the artillery not so very far away.

On the 9^th of October, it was Clarence’s turn to occupy K and L trenches. Four days later, the inexperienced “A” company was tasked to assault a mine crater, presumably occupied by the Germans. It was costly for the 26^th Battalion: 3 officers and 30 “Other Ranks” (ORs ie the NCOs and privates) were wounded; 19 OR were killed. Clarence was, for the moment, among the wounded. One of “C” company’s stretcher-bearers, a good friend of Clarence’s whom he nicknamed “Doc”, had been detailed to support the action in which “A” company was involved. Doc found Clarence badly injured in the field and carried him back behind the lines. It was clear to all, including Clarence, that he was not going to survive his wounds. Doc gave him enough morphine to deaden his pain and checked on his friend at every possible opportunity. Each time, Clarence would smile and cheerily ask, “How goes it, Doc?” his cheerful personality undaunted at facing his own death. Jack Cameron came across his friend, but by that point, as Jack wrote home to his parents, Clarence was, mercifully, unconscious. Clarence died shortly after sunset on 13 October 1915 and was buried in La Laiterie Cemetery on the Kemmel-Vierstraat Road. He’d been in Begium less than a month and in the fighting lines for four days.

The Brothers Cameron

29 April 2023

_{Hector and Jack Cameron} _{(note Jack’s two wound stripes on his sleeve)}

His friend liked to recount Hector Cameron’s first encounter with a bullet on the Western Front: laughing at the hole through his flimsy wool cap, the 15-year-old crowed “A close one doesn’t count!’ Less than a month later, Hector would be dead, lost in his first battle – the first real battle for the 1^st Canadian Contingent – at Ypres.

Hector McDonald Cameron was the youngest child of Captain Lachlan “Lock” and Annie E. Cameron of Lepreau, New Brunswick. In 1914, his oldest brother Charles was living in Connecticut, one sister, Anna, was married and living in Woodstock, NB, and only his brother Ian Donald and sister Mary were at home. According to family lore, Hector had gone up to stay with Anna and her husband. At nearly 5’8” he was a relatively big lad for the time, and perhaps he was helping on a farm. Whatever the reason he was there, it made a much shorter journey for him to Valcartier, QC, and one far from his parent’s control, when war was declared, and recruiting began for a Canadian overseas contingent. Saying his birthday was 31 December 1892 (rather than 1899), the medical officers concurred his “apparent age” was 22. As such, he needed no written permission from his father to enlist. Further, he seems to have been coy about his name, giving only his initial “H”. Strangely, no one seemed to question it and his name is only later filled in, first as William, then as Hector. Regardless of the lies, Hector, only 14 years old, was accepted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and, after spending a few weeks training in Valcartier, sailed on the S.S. Scotian to England in October 1914. He celebrated his 15^th birthday in the miserable conditions of Salisbury Plain that December.

Ian Donald Cameron had been named for an older brother who drowned while his mother was pregnant with him, but as his mother found she couldn’t bear to use her late son’s name, he was called Jack. Seven years older than Hector, Jack enlisted in New Brunswick’s 26^th Battalion in the fall of 1914. Perhaps he had had no intention of enlisting in those early days, and perhaps he hoped to look out for his younger brother when word came eventually from Valcartier.

The 26^th Battalion formed in October 1914, and Jack attested in Saint John in November 1914. While Hector trained far from home in England, Jack spent the winter of 1914 through to the spring of 1915 near home, training in Saint John. The men were anxious to get overseas, and discipline became an issue, but Jack seems to have behaved, refraining from the clashes with police that plagued the 26^th’s last months in Saint John.

Meanwhile Hector was off to France. After transferring to the 14^th Battalion (the 12^th, his original assignment, was retained in England as a reserve battalion), he sailed for the front at the end of February 1915. The Canadians were brigaded with British units to learn the ropes and helped with the fighting at Neuve-Chapelle in those early days. But as April progressed and the Germans secretly laid plans to release chlorine gas at Ypres, the Canadian battalions found themselves posed to take a huge role in the defense of the Ypres Salient. As the apex of the Salient collapsed inward on 22 April 1915, the result of the first large scale, successful gas attack of the war, Canadian battalions were thrown into the fire, including Hector and the 14^th Battalion. On the morning of 23 April 1915, less than 12 hours after the initial gas attack, the 14^th occupied positions near St. Julien. There, they faced renewed German advances, and as the firing began, Hector’s luck ran out. According to a letter from Sergeant L.E. Locke to Captain and Mrs. Cameron, Hector was hit in the head and died instantly. Whether this was the truth, or just what seemed the best thing to say to ease his parent’s grief is unknown.

By the time Jack sailed for England in June 1915, his parents would have been informed of the loss of their youngest son. One can only imagine the distress of Lock and Annie, having lost two sons already and now watching a third set off into danger.

Arriving in England in late June, the 26^th trained near Folkestone before embarking for the front on 15 September 1915. Jack seemed determined to relieve his parents of their worry, writing home that “We are having the time of our lives here and are perfectly happy…” How much they believed this cheerful statement is speculation. Jack spent the winter of 1915/16 near Kemmel and St Eloi. In February, he sustained what must have been a relatively minor gunshot wound to his left leg, requiring a visit to the No. 4 Canadian Field Ambulance and three-week recovery at the Divisional rest station. By early March he was back in the line in time for the dismal fighting over the craters of St Eloi, the remains of British mines detonated to destroy the salient the Germans had formed in the area. However, before the next momentous Canadian offensive at Mount Sorrel, Jack was seriously injured again and this time it was a “Blighty”.

Blighty was the nickname British troops had for England, and a “Blighty” injury meant a trip across the channel for an extended stay in the comfort of a hospital far from the fighting. These were injuries too serious to mean a quick turn-around back into the fighting, but not serious enough that evacuation risked killing the patient. In Jack’s case, he sustained a gunshot wound to his right knee, his left arm above the elbow and a devastating shrapnel wound across the back of his left hand, shattering the bones. From the No. 11 General Hospital near Boulogne, Jack travelled to Folkestone, then the Bearwood Canadian Convalescent Hospital in Wokingham, and finally the Granville Canadian Special Hospital in Ramsgate. As the months wore on, it became clear that Jack would never regain much use of his left hand. Repeated infection – for which there were no antibiotics – in both his hand and elbow meant operations and procedures to clear infected tissue and which left draining holes. By December of 1916, Jack was sent home to Canada, no longer fit for active service. Convalescing in Halifax for much of 1917, Jack finally made it home that August and was formally discharged on 31 January 1918.

Their son was home and safe, if left with a permanent disability and a limp. Captain Lock Cameron did not have long to revel in this joy, dying at age 62 in December 1918. Despite a $270 pension, Jack’s life was forever changed, and he would need to use ingenuity to cope with his injured and useless hand. He married the sister of a fallen comrade of the 26^th and rejoiced in the arrival of children. While he sought refuge in the bottle, as many survivors did, Jack also volunteered with the Royal Canadian Legion, and helped veterans of the Second World War negotiate the return to civilian life.

Hector, however, was left where he fell. In the chaotic days of 22 – 25 April 1915 there was no time to retrieve the dead, and his body was lost in the subsequent fighting, churned into the unforgiving mud of the Ypres Salient. His only memorial is on the Menin Gate.

Everyone Behaved Splendidly

22 April, 2023

Please excuse this card, etc

May 2/15

Dear Isobel:

Got thru battle of Ypres all right. Sorry to say we all have had many casualties but at present don’t know just who is missing or wounded etc. Very terrible battle while it lasted, everyone behaved splendidly. May go down to base and get reorganized. Was shot thru clothes three times but escaped all right.

Jim

No Life Like It

Captain William Pitt, DCM

11 April 2023

He was obviously proud, and it certainly was an achievement. A half-smile quirked up one neatly trimmed, grey mustache. His Sam Browne belt and gloves shone with polish. The gauntleted cuffs of his uniform showed the double line and three pips of his new rank. The photo, taken in a Saint John studio, was an extravagant memorialization of the moment. After decades in the military, and a previous rank no higher than Sergeant, William Pitt was a Captain. Honorary, to be sure, but a Captain, nonetheless. It was a far, far cry from where he began life as a poor orphan in Victorian England.

The young Princess Victoria called Wolverhampton a “large and dirty town”. During her reign it didn’t change much, only growing larger and dirtier, if richer. The hub of the Industrial Revolution, Wolverhampton in the Midlands thrived because of its geology – the rich seams of coal and iron which fueled the factories producing everything from bicycles to trains. The so-called “Black Country”, the Midlands is thought to be the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Mordor. John Pitts worked in the iron factories as a “Moulder” creating the moulds for casting iron objects. It was heavy work, with long days, but the pay kept his family housed and fed. His wife, Maria, had been a servant until her marriage. Life was difficult for the family; at least three of their first five children died either as infants or in early childhood. In 1873, 35-year-old John himself was carried away by illness; Maria and their infant son died the next year. William Pitt, only two years old, and his two remaining siblings were left to the mercy of the over-crowded and under-funded Victorian orphanage system. It may not have been ideal, and he was not adopted, but William seems to have been saved from the cruelty of life on the streets. Once he was old enough, he was educated at the Blue Coat School on Little Berry St in Wolverhampton. Run by the Anglican church, it was the oldest charity in the city. By 1877, it housed up to 20 boarders behind its rather plain and severe façade and William was one of them. Education only went so far for poor children and by the time he was 16, William was out on his own. He headed for London, trying to find work. Apprenticeships took money, however, and William spent time in 1885 in London’s notorious workhouses.

It’s hard to compare a decorated Captain living and working a respectable job of bookkeeper in Saint John with Dicken’s Oliver Twist, but their stories are not far off. The workhouses of Victorian England were the bottom rung for impoverished people of the time and a last resort. Many preferred life on the streets to being admitted to the demeaning drudgery of a workhouse. Forced to give up their clothes and possessions, those admitted were issued a uniform (relatively clean at least) and required to perform hard manual labour – for the men it meant breaking rocks. For three months, William stuck out the miserable life of hard work and parsimonious meals of gruel. Fleeing back to the Midlands, William got work in a warehouse but the military life attracted him.

In October 1886, at age 17 – but claiming to be 18 – he joined the British Army. It would not be the last time he lied about his age. He was promoted to Corporal three years later in 1889 but could not seem to keep out of trouble. Maybe his hard life on the streets caught up with him, for less than a year after his promotion, he was tried for some wrongdoing and demoted back down the ranks. Perhaps that taught him a little respect; in 1891 was again promoted – to Lance-Corporal – and in 1893 back to Corporal. That same year he got married to Minnie Elman Cooke, none other than the daughter of his former Headmaster at Blue Coat School. That her father permitted the marriage, knowing William’s history in detail, speaks volumes as to the young man’s character.

The next ten years took the new family around the globe. It was a good life, if lived in a barracks, and allowed Minnie the luxury of a servant. William transferred to the Lancashire Fusiliers and with that regiment was stationed in India and Pakistan, where his second daughter was born, in Egypt, and in Malta where his third daughter arrived, before heading back to England. It was, however, in South Africa that he distinguished himself. The Second “Boer War” was fought from October 1899 to May 1902. William saw combat at the Battle of Spion Kop and took part in the relief of the siege at Ladysmith. He was promoted to Quarter Master Sergeant in 1899 and gazetted in 1903 with a Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for “distinguished, gallant and good conduct in the field”. It is the second highest award given to non- officer ranks, eclipsed only by the Victoria Cross (VC).

_{NCOs of 2nd Lancashire Fusilliers, Ireland, 1906 (Pitt marked by arrow)}

Once William was home from South Africa, the Pitt family transferred to Ireland, where William and Minnie’s only two sons were born. Sadly, neither boy lived past the age of three. In 1907, William was discharged after 21 years in the British Army, and perhaps that was when he started thinking of emigrating to Canada, to a new life and better opportunities. In 1910, 41-year-old William, 43-year-old Minnie and their daughters, Dorothy, 16, Eva, 15, Lucie, 11, and Maisie, 7 set sail for New Brunswick. William was going to become a farmer.

Steamships made regular trips from Liverpool to Canada in the early years of the 20^th century carrying thousands of English immigrants across the Atlantic. On April 14, 1910, the family boarded the S.S. Southwark bound for Nova Scotia. The Pitts, unlike most immigrants who set off immediately for the Prairies, decided to go instead to New Brunswick and settle along the lush, rich farmland of the St. John river. The 1911 Canadian census finds them in Maugervillle, just down the river a few miles from Fredericton, on their own little farm. Beautiful and pastoral, with the river wide and placid and full of fish, it was a far cry from the Black Country, but the winter must have been a shock, for the area gets bitterly cold and snowy, worse than anything they’d have experienced in England. Perhaps the spring flooding that the river basin is prone to ruined them; perhaps it just was not the life for the family. By 1914, they were back down at the mouth of the river, living in Saint John and William was a clerk with the St. John Railway, collecting accounts. It certainly was not a life to which he was used.

Did he miss the comradeship of life in barracks, within the military brotherhood? A quiet, homey existence in a house of women was far removed from the masculinity of the military parade ground. Did his heart beat faster with excitement when he heard of the outbreak of war in August 1914? I expect there were some discussions at home. He was 45, too old; they were finally settled after a life of hopping around the world. But William was determined and resorted to a lie that had got him in before: in November of 1914, he went to the 26^th Battalion recruiters and knocked three years off his age.

The now “42 year-old” with his military background, was promptly promoted from Private back – provisionally – to Sergeant and appointed Regimental Quartermaster. Like an old fire horse at the bell, he was likely excited to be back in uniform and off on the march, even though his back was getting creaky and his feet hurt more than they had 7 years before. By June 1915, he was in England and bunked down in East Sandling camp near Folkestone, Kent. In September, he scarpered. Gone for five days, he was severely reprimanded and fined five days pay; a mature and experienced military man should have known better. Where he went is a mystery. He had no family but his brother in Wales. Perhaps though, he went to visit his in-laws, certainly not telling them he was absent without leave. His escapade, however, did not prevent him being confirmed in his rank of Sergeant a few days later, and shortly thereafter, the battalion was in France.

The winter of 1915/1916 in the trenches was not an easy one for William. He was felled by influenza in March and his life was taking its toll on his body. Poverty and long years in the British Army had aged him. Arthritis was giving him grief. Hospitalized in May in Boulogne, France, he was soon transferred to England, and spent the next six months in one hospital after another. His back ached and his feet were sore, his knees and ankles were in bad shape, and he required a cane to get around. His body had betrayed him. In December 1916, his time overseas was done; he was sent home to Saint John. There the medical board examined his records and concluded that, contrary to what the English doctors had said, his disabilities were not due to exposure in the trenches but to his “advanced” age – 47. They recommended a discharge due to medical unfitness. It was not likely welcome news to William, On 30 April 1917, he was formally “struck off strength”.

But William and the military were not done with each other. Five days after being discharged, William’s appendix put him in the hospital for surgery. He was immediately reinstated, and in November given an honorary Captaincy. It was a heady rise and no wonder William had a photo taken. It is difficult to make out that despite the stiff, erect military posture, he was leaning heavily on his cane. He had risen a long way from the filthy workhouse in London.

William’s career continued through 1918 and 1919 with the 1^st Depot Battalion, and as Adjutant and Quartermaster of the No. 7 Canadian Ordinance Corps in Saint John. He spent a few months as Accounting Officer of the 7^th Canadian Garrison Regiment, but time and failing eyesight were catching up to William, then only 50 years old. To the medical board, he appeared much older. Once again, he was stuck off strength as medically unfit. Instead, William found himself a place in a militia – the 7^th Canadian Machine Gun Brigade, where he was given the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major.

Determination was not lacking in the man. What his wife and daughters thought of it is unknown, but in February 1920, with the war long over, William was back in the 1^st Depot Battalion recruiting office and signed up…again! The Canadian military took him in…again. He gave his profession as “soldier” and his military experience as 21 years in the Imperial (British) Army, 4 years in the Canadian militia and 5 years in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was reinstated as Honorary Captain. One must wonder if no one read or perhaps had access to any of his previous records. It does not seem likely they did. What is clear: the military was where William was happiest and most fulfilled. It had given him the first real home and sense of belonging as a teenager, a place where he was accepted and included, likely for the first time in his life. However, this was William’s last grasp at army life. It was soon obvious that he was unable to perform his duties. Three months later he was discharged for the final time. Even the militia – in which he served simultaneously – sent him on his way.

The 1920’s ushered in a vibrant new culture, short skirts and wild jazz. William, however, had to settle into quiet middle age and his career as a bookkeeper for Customs. It paid better than the military, but certainly was not nearly as exciting as travelling to exotic locations and fighting wars, yet worse was to come. The symptoms would have come on gradually: his appetite was not what it used to be. Perhaps he was losing weight, but no wonder with heartburn and nausea. Maybe he assumed he had an ulcer causing his indigestion, maybe that his normal diet just did not agree with him anymore. Eventually, William and Minnie would have realized something was very wrong. The diagnosis was a death sentence: just three days before Christmas in 1927, William Pitt succumbed to stomach cancer at age 58.

He was buried with his military honours: his rank of Captain, his DCM in full view. For a boy suppressed by the class system of England, it was far above what any but the most exceptional could achieve in the fiercely class-based British Army. But he had done it; he had risen, not to just a sub-altern rank, but to Captain.

Photos courtesy of Captain Pitt’s great-granddaughter, Pat McKinney

A Tale of Two Brothers and a Ridge Called Vimy

Will and Steve Bird

6 April 2023

Will R. Bird knew something was up when his brother, Steve, walked around the wagon Will was loading while working in Saskatchewan. First, his brother was wearing his full military uniform with kit. Second, Steve had arrived at the Western Front less than a month before in September of 1915. Sure enough a telegram came for their mother: Steve C. Bird had been killed 19 days after setting foot in France.

Will was 20, Steve two years younger, the year the war broke out. Steve enlisted in the 25^th Battalion out of Halifax, NS. At nearly 5’9”, he was taller by far than the average (around 5’6”), a muscular 180 pounds, and fearless. Will told a story of Steve leaving two military police officers on the ground when they tried to prevent him popping home to see his mother before shipping out to Europe.

In early October 1915, the 25^th Battalion was in the Ypres-Kemmel area; Will Bird says Hill 60. It was their second foray into the forward lines, and the weather was turning cold and rainy. They relieved the 24^th Battalion on October 5^th, and the next few days were spent learning their trench routines, repairing defenses, barricades and barbed wire fences. For two hours, centered on sunrise and sunset, the men were on “stand to”. These times were considered the riskiest for a German attack, so all hands were on watch at the trench walls, rifles at the ready. As the sun went down on the evening of 8 October 1915, the 25^th Battalion men were in their positions, unaware that below their feet, the German’s had dug a mine tunnel. Either because the Germans thought the British were approaching with a counter-mine, or they worried about flooding with the coming rainy season, that evening, just before “stand down” they detonated their mine, and at the same time rained a hellfire of shells and machine gun fire upon the Canadian line. Where the mine blew, half of one platoon simply disappeared, 19-year-old Steve Bird among them. Only pieces were found, not enough to identify any of the casualties.

Will had tried to join his only brother in 1914; they were extremely close, and it was natural to want to be in the same regiment. Will, unfortunately, was turned down, and on more than one occasion, due to his bad teeth. It was after his brother’s death, that Will, who had gone out west to work, came home to Nova Scotia, determine to enlist. One can imagine his mother’s distress, having lost one of her two sons already, but Will was persistent and joined the 193^rd Battalion in April 1916, landing in France in December 1916 with the 42^nd Battalion. Will survived the war, earning a Military Medal for his actions in the dying days of the war in November 1918 at Mons. But it is his story from Vimy that is startling.

Will had missed the big show on Easter weekend due to coming down with mumps but he was soon back with a drastically altered battalion – some of his best friends had been killed in the attack – and working near Vimy village digging trenches. He had been invited to join some new men in their shelter in the railway embankment. Around midnight, he was wakened by a touch on his arm, and found his brother Steve standing over him. Motioning for Will to follow him, Steve led Will out of the shelter, down a path, then faded from view. Will waited, hopeful his brother would reappear. After ten minutes, growing cold, he wrapped himself in his great coat and found a spot in a nearby ruin to sleep. In the morning he woke to find men digging out the ruins of the shelter he’d been in earlier in the night. A shell had destroyed it and killed the two men Will had left behind. He fully believed Steve had saved his life. Will came home, became a prolific writer, publishing a memoir of the war in 1930, And We Go On. He later rewrote it as Ghosts Have Warm Hands in 1968, although many prefer the earlier version. Will died in 1984 at age 92. His only son, named for his brother Steve, was killed in July 1944, just days after surviving the Canadian landing at Juno Beach.

Llandovery Castle!!!

Anna Irene Stamers

3 April 2023

June is a lovely time to cross the North Atlantic. The hurricane season is not yet beginning, and the seas are often flat as a mill pond. After an uneventful trip to Halifax to drop off 644 patients, the Canadian hospital ship, HMHS Llandovery Castle turned around 3 days later to head back to England. On board were 258 people, including 102 medical staff of which 14 were Canadian nursing sisters. One of those sisters was 29-year-old Anna Irene Stamers.

Anna was the daughter of a sea captain and had grown up on the seashore in a working port city. Her father, Benjamin A. Stamers, made a career of teaching navigation in Saint John, New Brunswick, and no doubt he’d kept his daughters entertained with stories of his voyages and growing up on Turks Island (now Turks and Caicos) of the British West Indies. Likely she thought often of her father on the many trips she’d already made across the Atlantic. Anna was no stranger to cool, salty sea air or the hazards of sea travel. A beautiful young woman, she was tall and slender, as tall as many of the men she nursed. Her dark hair was kept neatly tucked under her crisp white wimple, and black lashes framed her clear blue eyes.

She had grown up the middle of three sisters. Their father ran his own marine navigation school near the docks at the port, until his sudden death at age 42. Anna’s mother, at only 35, was a widow; Anna and her sisters, ages 14, 12 and 7 had no father. The next few years were undoubtedly difficult for the young widow and her daughters. At some point the family moved into the home of her uncle, John Stamers, his wife and their three boys.

Anna graduated from nursing school before 1914. At the outbreak of the war, Anna, at 26, was already working as a nurse. It is not likely that as a good Baptist, she would have joined the staff of the brand-new St. John Infirmary opened by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity that year. Instead, she probably worked at the much older General Public Hospital. Built in 1865, at the urging of Dr. Robert Bayard (whose name still graces the road leading to the former site) it occupied a 3-acre parcel of land just behind her mother’s home. In March of 1915, Anna presented herself to a medical examiner in Montreal; in June she signed her attestation papers. It was likely here in Montreal that she was recruited for her first military assignment.

In January 1916, Anna arrived at Moores Barracks Hospital at Shorncliffe, not far from Folkestone on the coast of southeast England. Folkestone’s harbour had become the jumping off point for Canadian troops heading over to the front, and the training camps were set up there. It was also the closest point to bring in the wounded to England’s hospitals, lying at the narrowest section of the English Channel across from Boulogne, France. From Shorncliffe, Anna was sent to Boulogne in February to the No. 1 Canadian General Hospital.

The General hospitals received casualties from the front, from casualty clearing stations and field ambulances. Their patients were either not too badly injured and expected back in the lines quickly, or conversely, were those in such poor condition they were not likely to survive the trip to England. Neither were these hospitals the permanent buildings you might imagine. There were no buildings large enough to house the number of patients they served, so they were collections of huts, tents and other temporary shelters, tasked to house thousands of patients. Swamped during battles with the critically injured, the General hospital setting was fast paced and high stress. Anna would have seen the worst injuries, fresh from the front, in men plastered with the mud of Flanders, and she would have been working in freezing cold, wet conditions. In early June 1916, she was hospitalized herself with an ear infection. Without antibiotics, her recovery took almost three miserable weeks. Anna worked at the No.1 for more than a year, with her only time off a 14-day leave, likely in England.

Finally, in May of 1917, Anna was transferred back to England, to the Ontario Military Hospital in Orpington, Kent, endowed by the province of Ontario for the princely sum of $2 million. The hospital, later designated the No.16 Canadian General hospital, was a far cry from Boulogne. At the time it was one of the most advanced military hospitals in the world. Brand new, its rooms were large and airy, filled with light from the generous windows. One of the nurses wrote home in delight that the admissions department had 10 bathtubs, so no longer did they have to put filthy men in clean beds. Photos show gleaming clean floors, wide spaced beds and plenty of light. Working there must have been an absolute joy for Anna and all the medical staff.

Her initial time at No.16 was very brief, for a week later, Anna was transferred temporarily back to Canada, and that stay was extended. In July she was again granted leave, and likely headed home to Saint John to visit her family. How peaceful a summer in Canada must have seemed, the train journey through the countryside from Montreal to home, along the valleys of the St. Lawrence and St. John rivers, the war almost a distant memory. Her welcome home must have been enthusiastic; it had been a year or more since she’d seen her mother. And certainly, the visit would have been a consolation to Lavinia Stamers in the year ahead. By the fall of 1917, Anna was back at No. 16 General Hospital for the winter.

In March of 1918, Anna was transferred to a new position, as a member of the medical team caring for patients headed for Canada on HMHS Llandovery Castle. The Llandovery Castle was a beautiful ocean liner. Five hundred feet of sleek elegance from her upright bow to her graceful fantail stern. Only one smokestack rose amidships from her cabin top. Launched in 1913 from the yard in Glasgow, Scotland and finished four months later in January 1914, she was still practically new. In the summer of 1916, she was commissioned as a hospital ship and assigned to the Canadian military for the transportation of her wounded men. Painted white, a bold dark stripe circled her hull, interrupted only by large crosses, like the one on her stack, indicating her status as a non-combatant protected by the Hague Convention X of 1907. Unarmed, she ran with full lights, and brilliantly lit up Red Crosses. The Germans, however, seized on one restriction in the Hague Convention: that hospital ships should not be used for military purposes. The Allied hospital ships, they claimed, were carrying able-bodied soldiers to the fight, and therefore could legitimately be targeted and sunk as “combatants”. Nine hospital ships had been torpedoed already by the Germans (and one by the French) including Llandovery’s sister ship, the Lanfranc Castle.

The Llandovery Castle made a quick return trip across the Atlantic that June. In seven days, she was south of the Irish coast, nearly in the Bristol Channel. In another day or so, she would slide up the west coast of Wales and into the port at Liverpool to safety, another successful trip across the Atlantic under her belt. As the long summer evening slipped toward night on 27 June 1918, the Llandovery steamed through the choppy seas and many on board prepared for bed. Likely, they were excitedly looking forward to sighting land in the morning, and for yet another trip to be ended. Little did they know they were being stalked by the German submarine U-86, under the command of 27-year-old Iron Cross 1^st Class recipient, Helmut Brummer-Patzig.

The impact of the torpedo at 9:20pm threw some on board out of their bunks where they had settled for the night. Panic, though, was minimal. The fourteen nursing sisters – some in nightdresses and Anna among them – promptly assembled at lifeboat No.5. The women were all hastened aboard; it was obvious the boat was going down and quickly. Sergeant Arthur Knight and eight other men were on board the lifeboat with them as they were lowered into the darkening, rough sea. All along the deck, this same procedure was being repeated with other lifeboats. As No.5 touched down, they were dragged along by the Llandovery’s forward momentum and smashed against her unforgiving flank. Desperately they tried releasing the tether lines which had fouled. Swinging an ax, Knight chopped, unsuccessfully, while others used the oars to push the lifeboat away, fearing they be dashed to pieces against the Llandovery. First one ax broke, then another. The oars snapped. But finally, the lines broke and lifeboat No.5 was set adrift. As she slid down beside the Llandovery, the liner’s stern suddenly broke and sank, creating a huge whirlpool. Disabled, their oars all broken in the attempt to free themselves, the passengers of No.5 lifeboat watched helplessly as they were pulled closer and closer to the whirling maw. Not one of the 14 women screamed or cried. Stoically, they remained erect, professional in their blue uniforms and white aprons, life vests pulled over top, waiting agonizing minutes for their fate. At one point, the Matron, Nova Scotian Margaret Fraser, asked calmly what all must surely have been thinking “Sergeant, do you think there is any hope for us?” and equally as calmly accepted his bleak “No”. As No.5 was pulled finally into the whirlpool, it tipped on its side and all aboard tumbled into the frigid water. Knight surfaced three times, finally grabbing a piece of wreckage and survived. He did not see the women surface. Likely pulled down by the weight of their heavy skirts, none were able to save themselves. It was a dreadful end but no more so than for the others in the rest of the lifeboats. To disguise his crime, Brummer-Patzig ordered the U-86 to surface and ram the lifeboats, viciously mowing down any survivors with machine guns. Only one lifeboat and its passengers escaped. The survivors, including Arthur Knight, were picked up 36 hours later by the HMS Lysander. The bodies and wreckage were left to the sea. The HMS Morea passed through later but were unable to stop and recover any of the lost. Her Captain, Kenneth Cummins was devastated. He wrote:

“We were in the Bristol Channel, quite well out to sea, and suddenly we began going through corpses. We were not allowed to stop – we just had to go straight through. It was quite horrific, and my reaction was to vomit over the edge. It was something we could never have imagined … particularly the nurses: seeing these bodies of women and nurses, floating in the ocean, having been there some time. Huge aprons and skirts in billows, which looked almost like sails because they dried in the hot sun.”

In all, only 24 of the 258 aboard survived, making it the worst Canadian nautical disaster of the war. Canadian soldiers took up the cry “Llandovery Castle!” during the Last 100 Days offensive of 1918.

Anna is remembered on the Halifax Memorial to those lost at sea, at Point Pleasant Park overlooking the Halifax harbour, likely her last sight of land. The 12-metre-high Cross of Sacrifice names her, as well as the 13 other women who died with her: Matron Margaret Marjory (Pearl) Fraser, Carola Josephine Douglas, Alexina Dussault, Minnie Aenath Follette, Margaret Jane Fortescue, Minnie Katherine Gallaher, Jessie Mabel McDiarmid, Mary Agnes McKenzie, Christina Campbell, Rena McLean, Mary Belle Sampson, Gladys Irene Sare, and Jean Templeman.

Halt! Who Goes There?

Walter Scott Hamm

_{The magazines behind Fort Howe, from the collection of Miss S. F. Roberts. Accession number: SF-PHOTODOC-1 (Submitted by the New Brunswick Museum – Musée du Nouveau-Brunswick)}

2 April 2023

When the fog creeps into Saint John, it may not leave for weeks. As the summer heat rises in New Brunswick, the billows form on the cold Bay of Fundy and are swept in by the rushing tide. Swirling in the harbour, the fog creeps stealthily up Courtney Bay, past Partridge Island on guard at the river’s mouth. Swallowing first the West side, it sneaks tendrils along the uptown streets to the east. Finally, it wraps cold, wet arms over and around the ridge at the north end of the harbour where the tide sweeps west up through the river gorge. The ridge, a natural fortification as it stares majestically down at the length of the harbour, rises 140 feet above the water. It saw the arrival of American raiders in 1777, who were successfully repelled – twice. The ridge was soon crowned with a blockhouse, garrisons and eventually a palisade. It stood proudly unassailed during the War of 1812 and the Fenian raids of the 1860’s and bristled with guns during the First and Second World Wars. And on 4 July 1917, when the thick summer fog brought an early twilight, and Americans were celebrating their independence, this bastion of British Loyalists heard shots ring out in the dark.

In the middle years of the 1890’s, blacksmith William Hamm moved his growing family from the Mahone Bay area of Nova Scotia all the way across to the northern shore of the province. Eighty miles, through dense Acadian forest and the mountainous interior of the province, was a long journey in 1896. A region of rich farmland and orchards, the Annapolis Valley may have been a place to make a better life. Despite long roots in Nova Scotia – at least three generations – William and his children would be known as “German” or “Dutch” in the Canadian census’ in contrast to his “English” wife Viola. Not surprising though as his grandfather had spelled the name Heim.

William and Viola’s children arrived in quick succession and frequently; their boys, Ward, William, Edward, Walter, Charles and Francis, were joined by sisters Margaret and Kathleen, all before 1906. Little brother Henry died at a year old in 1909, and another sister barely survived two months in 1911 but they were followed by Lorne, Violet, Philip and Eugene. It may be no surprise then, given the crowded house, that the older boys soon flew the nest to make their own careers. Walter went a little farther than the others – all the way across the Bay to Saint John, where he worked as a baker while living with his maternal grandmother, Mrs. Rachel Moore.

No doubt he was champing at the bit when his older brothers enlisted in the great adventure happening in Europe. William signed up in December of 1915 and Edward the following March. Walter held out until the summer of 1916. He was only 17, but he claimed to be nine years older when he arrived at the recruiting office in Saint John. Recruiters, it turns out, did not have many scruples when it came to signing up boys.

Stories are so common as to almost seem apocryphal about volunteers being told to walk outside a recruiting office and “have another birthday” then come back in. Surely grown men – army officers and medical doctors – could not be so heartless as to knowingly accept teenagers? The truth was competition was fierce between battalions and warm bodies were so desperately needed in the later years of the war, that recruiters did indeed actively encourage young boys into lying about their age. While 18 (and later 19) was the lower age limit, the fact is an estimate 20,000 underage boys enlisted; 2000 of them were killed overseas. Determined young men, if turned away at one recruiting office, could easily try again elsewhere, seeing as there were no national records kept. In fact, with no real identification documents as we have now – driver’s licenses, birth certificates, etc. – it was easy to fake a birthdate or even a name. All Walter had to do was say he was 26 and was taken at his word.

Walter was a small boy – 5’ 2” tall and skinny as only teenagers are – he probably was not much more than 100 pounds. It is not likely anyone really believed that he was 26, so Walter was put to work on guard duty in the city. The busy west side docks, the Ordinance stores near the Armoury on Sydney St in the South end, and the magazines tucked in behind Fort Howe required the constant patrol of armed soldiers from the 62^nd Regiment. Of the 120 men stationed in Saint John, most were those deemed “unsuitable” for overseas duties and unfortunately many were injured, on leave waiting discharge or just not “smart” enough to follow orders. Walter, it seems, was a bright lad and educated, so was soon promoted to Lance-Corporal and put in charge of guards much older than himself, but Walter was still very much a teenage boy. For Walter and his friend, Private Hermenigilde Arseneault – Hermeni to his friends – the summer days of 1917 must have been halcyon. Paid well, their duties were not onerous, and the girls seemed to like a “man” in uniform. Strolling or lazing on the grassy slopes of Fort Howe, they would talk and flirt like teenagers of any time do. Sergeant Henry Ricketts, foreman of stores, Canadian Ordinance Corps, who happened to also live immediately next to the magazine, noted the shenanigans with disapproval and fussily, reported the boys on many occasions. Not only were they not paying attention to their duties, Ricketts knew that they were not allowed beyond the fence that enclosed the magazine buildings and the guard house. The Officer Commanding, Major James Frost, was short of able bodies and let slide the “fraternization” and the offense of being out of bounds with nothing much more than a scolding.

The magazines they guarded were nestled in on the north side of Fort Howe out of site from the harbour, down below the hill on what is now Magazine Street. One brick, one stone the buildings were surrounded by a rather rickety fence that did not seem capable of stopping anybody from wandering through. The gate was gone, “blown down” according to witnesses, in a storm. A photo from the 1920’s shows most of the fence gone, so its not likely it was repaired at any time during the war. The guards patrolled a “beat” inside this fence. They were allowed out only to use the latrine and to smoke but never more than a few yards away and always in sight. The exception to this is when a patrol went up and over the hill to inspect the drill shed on the south side of Fort Howe. However, on that foggy evening of 4 July 1917, Hamm and Arsenault were chatting up a couple of young women up on the hill, as they were accustomed to doing. Private Harold Garland who was on beat from 7:30 to 9:30pm saw them. The two boys came down off the hill at 9:30 as Arsenault had to relieve Garland. Garland remained outside the guard house for a time. It was still not quite fully dark, warm despite the fog, and there was not much to do, sitting around in the guard house.

The first shot fired that night came before 10pm. Another guard, Private Joseph Pinette was, at 31, much older than the rest and spoke little English. He’d gone back up the hill briefly and was challenged by Arsenault on the way back. Challenges were quite literally “Halt! Who goes there?” With an appropriate response of “Friend” or “Visiting patrol”, the person would be asked to “advance and be recognized”. Pinette did not halt or respond on that first challenge, nor on the second, and Arsenault fired his rifle. The exchange between the two must have been tense; Pinette demanded why Arsenault shot at him and Arsenault would later claim Hamm ordered him to. Fortunately, no harm was done… unlike moments later.

Walter Hamm was a fun-loving fellow, and friends with everyone, according to those he served with. He likely played jokes with his brothers and teased his younger sisters long before he arrived in Saint John. Despite being a good soldier and being given a promotion, he did not take his duties completely seriously, preferring to flirt with girls and treat Fort Howe as his personal playground. But then he’d only been a Lance-Corporal for three months.

Coming down the hill again sometime around 10 – had he gone back up to see the girls? Likely! – he was challenged by Arsenault. Responding “Corporal of the Guard”, Arsenault told Hamm to advance to be recognized, however Arsenault did not wait for an answer, and continued his beat. It was at that fateful moment that Hamm decided to dash into the enclosure and hide near the porch of the magazine to wait for his friend to come back. Arsenault noticed motion at the gate. Excited, he turned and followed where he saw the figure. As he closed in on the porch of the magazine, the “unknown man” came at him, he later claimed. From Hamm’s statements, he did indeed jump out at Arsenault from where he was hiding. “You can’t get me here!” Hamm called out. Arsenault, his rifle in the on-guard position, claimed not to know who was yelling and pulled his trigger for the second time that night. This time he hit his target.

The bullet punched through Hamm’s lower right abdomen, missing vital organs and major blood vessels, and blew a hole in his pelvis and back, the size of a walnut, on its way back out. In a heartbeat, Arsenault, Garland and Pinette (who were still standing in front of the guardhouse, witness to it all) watched Hamm fall and slowly begin to bleed out. Arsenault ran and got a blanket to place under his friend’s head. Garland immediately dashed up the military road, east toward William E. Pye’s general store where there was a telephone. William Coholan was a wounded veteran who knew the sound of rifle fire all too well. He’d been walking from Main St, up Barber St headed for home when he heard the shot and saw Garland running up the military road in a panic. Coholan took him to the store to call for an ambulance then rushed down to the magazine.

Sergeant Ricketts had been at the Star Theatre up on Main St, and was nearly home, when his son John found him. John blurted out a garbled story: the soldiers at the magazine were fighting and shooting each other. Someone was killed. Ricketts turned and raced to the police station on Main St. The first that the military heard of the incident was when a reporter from the Telegraph walked into Major Frost’s office at 10:30pm. By that time, Coholan had already taken charge. Ricketts gave him permission to enter the enclosure and Coholan immediately disarmed Arsenault. Checking the rifle, he found it empty. Sitting the young guard down, Coholan questioned him, but Arsenault began to cry. Through his tears all he could say was he didn’t know it was Hamm.

The first police officer on the scene found Walter Hamm lying on his stomach, his head on a blanket, one hand under his forehead. He was pale and moaned in pain, as the blood seeped in an ever-widening pool around him, yet still he insisted to all who approached him

“I am not shot so bad as you think I am.” Perhaps he was reassured by Ricketts, who he had asked “Do you think I am going to die?” to which Ricketts replied “No” Strangely, not one of the men who gathered, not the soldiers, nor the police, attempted any first aid to slow the bleeding.

Detective Patrick Biddiscombe arrived with the ambulance crew who had called him at the station up town. They raced over, driving 25 or 30 mph “where they could”. It still took them ten or fifteen minutes to get there, less than a mile as the crow flies. Hamm was pale but remained surprisingly cheerful.

“I feel alright,” he reassured the ambulance attendants. “I’m a brick. Do not be afraid to move me!” He spoke to Biddiscombe. “It was an accident. We were only fooling around.” Hamm said.

The ride to the General Public Hospital above City Road must have been horrifically uncomfortable for the boy though. Fifteen or twenty minutes passed from leaving the magazine to arriving at the hospital and still Hamm bled, soaking his uniform and the stretcher he rode on. At first a nurse and another man at the General insisted Hamm should be sent to the military hospital. At that point Hamm began to cry.

“For God’s sake, do not move me again” he moaned.

Dr. Albert Leatherbarrow, the resident, recognized the seriousness of the wound and called for Captain Albert Macauley, the medical officer for the 62^nd, who happened to be at the General.

Hamm was by this time – 11pm, an hour since the shooting – pale, weak and in considerable pain. But still he insisted it was not his friend’s fault.

“We were skylarking” he told Macauley. “It was my own fault.”

A magistrate had been called, to take down Hamm’s dying declaration, but the young man refused to acknowledge he was going to die. It would be another hour before any officer arrived at the hospital to check on their Lance-Corporal but by then Hamm was in surgery. At 1:05am the next morning, July 5^th, 1917, it was all over; 18-year-old Walter Scott Hamm was dead.

A military court of inquiry was hastily assembled on Monday, 9 July 1917 and continued for four days. On 9 August 1917, Major L. Tilley, Captain H Bennett and Lieutenant D MacKenrick returned their findings: Hamm had intended to play a joke on his friend when shot by Arsenault; that no medical aid was rendered to the injured young man before he got to the hospital, an action that might have saved his life had a doctor been summoned immediately; and that the defenses of the magazine were severely lacking due to the deteriorating fences, and insufficient personnel. The fourth finding was most damning: Hamm was far too young to be expected to command a guard patrol, and Arsenault was far too young to be a soldier, period.

Arsenault, it turned out had been turned away from two recruiting offices in 1916 for being only 14 years old. The 3^rd recruiting office in Moncton decided he could “pass” for 18 and signed him on. At the time of the shooting, Arsenault was only 15 years old. Despite this finding, the Canadian military did not release him for another 19 months. On 22 February 1918, after being handed his last payment of $8.60, Hermenigilde Arsenault was finally discharged for being underage.

One can only imagine the pain of the news received by the Hamm family in Nova Scotia. Of their three sons serving, Walter was likely the one they worried over the least. He was safe in Saint John with an easy job. His brother William had just been sent overseas a month before the shooting. Edward had already gone over in October 1916. Both these Hamms would suffer injuries similar to their younger brother’s, for both were shot. However, in an ironic twist, both Edward and William, at the front, would survive to come home to their family. Walter, safely on this side of the Atlantic did not.

The War That Won Me Over.

James William Johnstone III

2 April 2023

Until 2018, the First World War was to me ancient history, a sepia photo of
people and places that didn’t seem real. I knew the terms “Western Front and “trenches” but had no concept of where it was, what it meant and how it related to me as a Canadian. Sure, I had read as a teen the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour-winning novels of Donald Jack, The Bandy Papers. The series follows the hilarious exploits of the horse-faced and irritating young Bartholomew Bandy as he enlists in the Canadian Army in 1916, eventually becoming an unlikely flying Ace in the Royal Flying Corps. Ever since the idea of flying in a Sopwith Camel has been on my bucket list!

It was not, however, until the fall of 2018 and almost the 100th anniversary
of the Armistice, that the Great War took on a whole new and very personal
meaning, springing to colour with a relevance I had not imagined it could. That fall, I read for the first time a long series of letters from the adorably
charming young man in the picture above, James William Johnstone III, or Jim as he called himself (although he wouldn’t mind you calling him Jimmy). Jim was in love with my grandmother, Isobel, and apparently, she was with him (she kept his letters all her life!), although her letters to him are long gone. Jim wrote so eloquently, with so much zest for life and so much longing to return to his family, his beloved province of Nova Scotia and to her, his dearest girl, whom he had nicknamed – for a reason no longer known – Chiquita. Jim died in those filthy trenches I was soon to learn more about, but had he returned, it seems likely he, not my grandfather, would have held her heart. My life might never have happened. Those small wrinkles of fate could have changed everything I knew. It is a massive idea to roll around in your brain. Despite these thoughts, as I grew to knew Jim, how I wished he had lived, had children of his own, grown old. I grieved a young life that never really got to live, despite seeing and experiencing something no one should have had to.

And so, the book “Somewhere in Flanders: Letters from the Front” was born. Jim’s story was, I felt, important and should be shared so that he would not be forgotten. I spent the final months of 2018 and nearly all of 2019, reading everything I could on Canada in the FWW, from scholarly books to memoirs of those who were there, to primary sources such as battalion war diaries. I read the Canadian Expeditionary Force’s official history, buried myself in the smallest details of battles and troop movements. With Jim at my shoulder, I was able to trace his path through this horrific war, and in November of 2019, a year after I began, his book was published.

Ultimately, for me, it was the stories of the men, their experiences, and their
families’ experiences at home that became important. It is through this blog, that I will share the stories of other men and women who did not come home, who gave up their futures for ours. You will meet the people who experienced what we can only imagine but were just like us. First, and coming soon, a young man who never even left Canada: 18-year-old Walter Scott Hamm.

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Heather McBriarty

The Faces of WWI Blog

On The Wings of The Morning

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The Boys from Alberta

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A Tale of Two James

A Pilgrimage to the Sacred Lands

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To Live In The Hearts We Leave Behind Is Not To Die

Capturing the Hangstellung

Two Brothers, Three Telegrams

Follow Me to Hell

Absent Without Leave

Four Days in October

The Brothers Cameron

Everyone Behaved Splendidly

No Life Like It

A Tale of Two Brothers and a Ridge Called Vimy

Llandovery Castle!!!

Halt! Who Goes There?

The War That Won Me Over.

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