THE ROAD TO REMEMBRANCE
Spectator reporter Mark McNeil travelled with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry in August on a First and Second World War pilgrimage through northern France and Belgium where tens of thousands of Canadians, and thousands of Hamiltonians, gave their lives.
Even after all these years, the world wars of the last century still haunt us.
THE BRUTALITY OF SO MANY lives torn apart still aches through the generations and has forever twisted the Canadian psyche.
And while no soldier remains from the First World War to talk about the experience, and the number of survivors from the Second World War has severely declined, it has fallen on the rest of us to not only remember the sacrifice but to reflect on the capacity of humanity for inhumanity. How does such s catastrophe of carnage happen? Could forces be unleashed again to start another world war?
Maybe the best place to begin is a family collection of wartime memories. Perhaps tucked in a box of keepsakes is a connection to a departed grandfather who never told his war stories, or a great uncle who didn’t make it back. What about the brave aunt who served as a nurse, trying to mend bloodied soldiers while artillery fire shook the makeshift hospital?
War has certainly touched my family. I would not be here without the First World War.
My grandmother’s first husband, William Reid, was killed in the Battle of Amiens, an Allied offensive in August 1918 that ultimately led to the end of the First World War in November of that year. She remarried a young man named John Gilbertson and they had a daughter named Hazel, who became my mother. They also had a son named Jack who would be killed in the Second World War.
WE DON’T HAVE much to remember William, other than records acquired from Veterans Affairs Canada and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. We don’t even have a photograph. He was a sergeant, killed in action on Aug. 9, 1918, at the age of 25. He was the son of Mark Brandon Reid and Margaret Jane Reid, who lived at 23 Chestnut Ave. in Hamilton.
“During the attack on Beaufort and Rouvroy-en-Santerre, he was struck by a machine gun bullet and instantly killed,” the official record says.
We have a box of keepsakes from Sgt. Jack Gilbertson — his kit bag with his name embroidered on it, a pay book, dog tags, all kinds of family letters held together by an elastic band and many photos of a forever young skinny kid in an RCAF uniform. He was only 19 when the Halifax bomber he was in crashed in Yorkshire, England, during a training mission that killed all seven on board. Back in the 1980s, my wife Linda and I travelled there to find his grave and the landing field where the plane went down.
I think the visit brought some closure to my mother — who passed away in 2007 — knowing that someone from the family was finally able to visit the grave. She never got there herself. For me it kindled a lifelong curiosity about the Second World War, which led to an interest in the First, and a deep respect for Canadian veterans. The statistics are staggering:
First World War
620,000 Canadians enlisted. 61,000 died. 1,748 Hamiltonians died.
Second World War
1 million Canadians served. 44,000 died. 1,663 Hamiltonians died.
THE LAST CANADIAN survivor of the First World War was John Babcock, who died in February 2010 at the age of 109. He grew up on a farm near Kingston and was only 15 years old when he enlisted.
When it comes to the Second World War, Veterans Affairs says the average age is 92 and as of March 2017, an estimated 50,300 remain (seven per cent of those who took part), a good many of them with failing memories of the experience.
Clearly, we are reaching a point that there will not be any living witnesses from the carnage of the Second World War.
But there is a way to explore the stories and better understand the sacrifice — to actually travel to where the epic battles took place in Europe.
In August, The Spectator sent me with a group of officers, soldiers and associates of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry on a whirlwind, 10day tour of cemeteries and battlefields in northern France and Belgium.
The primary purpose was to attend 75th anniversary commemoration ceremonies in the City of Dieppe, where the “Rileys” lost nearly 200 regimental brothers who died in the ill-conceived Second World War raid on Aug. 19, 1942. But in addition to that, the Riley bus would pull up to key cemeteries and battlefields from Canadian military history such as Vimy Ridge, Ypres and Passchendaele from the First World War as well as Juno Beach, Caen and Dunkirk from the Second.
As RHLI Hon. Col. Peter Young said, “we wanted to provide a context to the raid at Dieppe.”
Anyone who has sat through a high school 20th century war history class knows the experience of both wars went a long way in helping Canada break its colonial roots and establishing itself as an independent country. The First World War part of the trip focused on northern France and Belgium around the City of Ypres.
Paris
AFTER THE OVERNIGHT Toronto-to-Paris flight landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport, we are herded onto a gleaming 60-passenger bus.
The 55 people on the trip include RHLI officers and soldiers. They are part-time reservists who have other jobs and can be called upon for military service and peacekeeping duties as well as to help out with emergency assistance. The commanding officer is Lt.-Col. J.P. Hoekstra. He joined the RHLI as a private in March 1981 and has served in Iraq, Afghanistan and South Sudan among other places. He works as a high school history teacher in Mississauga for his day job.
Peter Young began with the Rileys in 1962 as a cadet and worked his way up to commanding officer. He was a police officer in his civilian life, rising in the ranks with the Peel Regional Police before finishing his career as chief of the New Westminster Police Department. Young and his wife Liz were the main organizers of the itinerary that included a side trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, for senior officers to meet with Prince Philip, who is colonel-in-chief of the Rileys.
The back rows of the bus are taken up by the youngest of the Rileys. They’re soldiers in their 20s or early 30s. Beyond that, there are family members of RHLI veterans from the Dieppe raid. They’ve come because they want to see the rocky beach that was such a painful memory in the lives of their now deceased fathers.
One family, the McFarlands, carried the ashes of patriarch Jack McFarland in their luggage to honour his wishes of spreading the remains where he landed 75 years before. McFarland, who died in February 2016, was one of Hamilton’s most well known Riley Dieppe veterans and was the key person in building the Dieppe Memorial on the Beach Strip.
There is no one on board who served overseas at Dieppe or anywhere else during the Second World War. RHLI pilgrimages to Dieppe have tended to happen every five years. And 2017 is the first year that no RHLI vet of the raid will be among them to make the journey during a major visit. The two known survivors — Fred Engelbrecht, 97, and Ken Curry, 95 — were not well enough for an overseas journey and would attend ceremonies in Hamilton instead.
The RHLI has a history that goes back to 1862, when the regiment then known as the 13th Battalion was formed by Isaac Buchanan (18101883), one of Hamilton’s most wellknown citizens. The Battle of Ridgeway in 1866 saw the regiment’s first battle, and first casualties. Since then, the regiment has received dozens of battle honours through both world wars as well as the Boer War.
They call themselves Rileys because Royal Hamilton Light Infantry is such a mouthful.
First stop on our journey Canadian Memorial at Courcelette
The memorial honours Canada’s role in the horrific Somme offensive (from September 15 till November 1916), of which the Battle of Courcelette in France was one of the engagements.
Courcelette saw the first use of tanks in battle by the British Commonwealth Forces, although they were not very effective, being easily stuck in the mud.
Inscription
The Canadian corps bore a valiant part in forcing back the Germans on these slopes during the battles of the Somme Sept. 3rd — Nov. 18, 1916.
TEN VARIETIES of maple trees sway in the breeze around the rectangular, stone monument at the Courcelette memorial, near the French city of the same name. But maples are more suited to the climate in Canada and a closer look reveals many are under stress with gnarled branches and withered leaves.
Yet the trees hang on, just like the Canadian soldiers did a century before, watching over the monument that remembers 24,000 Canadian casualties lost in various battles of the Somme. Richard Moll, a Riley historian, recalls Lt. John Chilton Mewburn, who was born in Hamilton and worked at the Bank of Nova Scotia in the city before the war. Despite being wounded during fierce fighting on Sept. 15, 1916, outside Courcelette, he pushed on leading his men until they had “consolidated their position.”
“He then left to go to a dressing station, but while on the way he was instantly killed by the explosion of an enemy shell,” according to Veterans Affairs records.
Some others from the Hamilton area who took part in the Battle of Courcelette include:
Stanley Frederick Smith
A lineman in Burlington. He enlisted in November 1914 and was assigned to 20th Battalion, also known as the Halton Rifles, of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Receiving $1.10 a day as a private, he shipped out to France on Sept. 14, 1915, and a year later found himself walking with tanks and facing a full frontal assault by howitzers and field guns in Courcelette. Eleven days later, on Sept. 25, he was struck in the chest by gunfire. He was taken to a “casualty clearing station” and died eight days later.
Frederick Walsh
From Milton, his name, like Smith’s, is on the cenotaph beside Burlington City Hall. He received the Military Medal for Bravery for “bravery and conspicuous devotion to duty near Courcelette on 16th and 17 September, 1916. In addition to carrying out his work as linesman in a most devoted manner under constant shell fire, he voluntarily undertook three hazardous trips to the front line and at one critical point ... secured rifles and for a time held a piece of the front line trench.” Sadly, the document notes in red pen that he was “Killed in Action 27.10.16.” That was less than six weeks later.
Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme
A memorial to 72,246 British and South African servicemen who died at the Battles of the Somme from 1915 to 1918 and have no known grave.
It has been described as “the greatest executed British work of monumental architecture of the 20th century.”
Inscription
Here are recorded names of officers and men of the British Armies who fell on the Somme battlefields July 1915-February 1918 but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death.
JUST BEFORE making the long walk up the hill to the giant brown and white Thiepval Memorial, I notice my first cluster of poppies flashing red in the dull grass by the side of a road. Then suddenly there was an-
Yet the trees hang on, just like the Canadian soldiers did a century before, watching over the monument that remembers 24,000 Canadian casualties lost in various battles of the Somme.
other, followed by another. The bursts of red seem to erupt across the field.
It reminds me of the great antiwar song about the Great War by Australian folksinger Eric Bogle called “No Man’s Land” that contrasts the present with the past.
... Well the sun now it shines on the green fields of France There’s a warm summer breeze it makes the red poppies dance And look how the sun shines from under the clouds There’s no gas, no barbed wire, there’s no gun firing now.
The brown 45-metre high memorial stands as a reminder of the incredible killing field of 100 years ago around it. There were more than one million casualties from all sides on the western front. The memorial focuses on a portion of them who have no known grave. Behind the monument — because there are never enough places for graves — is Thiepval Anglo-French Cemetery that holds the remains of 300 Commonwealth servicemen and 300 French servicemen. Most died during the Battle of the Somme.
Beaumont Hamel Memorial Park
A memorial site in France that remembers Dominion of Newfoundland servicemen who died in the First World War.
The park is a National Historic Site of Canada that preserves the battlefield where 814 Newfoundlanders died on July 1, 1916, during an ill-conceived attack on German forces. It became one of the biggest bloodbaths of the war. It was the largest military engagement by the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, reminiscent of the inexperienced RHLI with other Canadian regiments being sent into Dieppe more than 25 years later.
Inscription
To the Glory of God and in perpetual remembrance of those officers and men of the Newfoundland Forces who gave their lives by Land and Sea in the Great War and who have no known graves.
ONE FEATURE at the immaculately kept park is the Danger Tree. The battered and twisted petrified tree in what used to be No Man’s Land marks a site of horrendous Newfoundland casualties. The tree — albeit a replacement at this point in time at Beaumont Hamel — became a symbol of the slaughter of a generation and the utter devastation in the landscape.
Hamilton-born author David Macfarlane in his family biography “The Danger Tree” wrote, “It was an old apple tree, left from the orchard that had once been there. Somehow it had survived the barrages and it rose like a skeleton from the lip of a shell hole. It was a landmark the Newfoundlanders used to mark the beginning of No Man’s Land. They called it the Danger Tree.”
The ill-prepared poor young men, Macfarlane wrote, “Instinctively ... tucked their chins into an advanced shoulder, as they had so often done when fighting their way home against a blizzard in some little outport in far-off Newfoundland.”
The Canadian National Vimy Memorial
Unveiled in 1936, to remember the more than 60,000 members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force who were killed during the Great War. The memorial lists the inscribed names of more than 11,000 Canadians with no known resting place.
The memorial is built on a section of the ridge called Hill 145, the highest point of the ridge — about as high as Hamilton Mountain relative to the lower city — where Canadian infantry took part in a stunning victory April 9, 1917 to April 12, 1917.
Inscription
To the valour of their countrymen in the Great War and in memory of their sixty thousand dead this monument is raised by the people of Canada.
I’VE SEEN COUNTLESS photographs of the Vimy Memorial but nothing prepares you for the real thing. The 110-metre twin pylons, one representing Canada, the other France, are almost surreal next to barren fields around it. Only an event of biblical proportions would prompt someone to build something so incredible to memorialize it.
A closer look reveals the intricate sculptures throughout. They commemorate virtues such as charity, peace, knowledge and the spirit of sacrifice, among others things. But the most striking is a giant figure of a “Canada Bereft,” a mother who is mourning her fallen sons.
Then finally there is the wall of names, each one a Canadian life extinguished a long way from home, each connected to a family somewhere in Canada that was never the same. There are no graves for each name. But every name has a story.
J.M. Franklin made the front page of The Spectator in 1916 with his photo and a story that said a “wellknown local messenger boy” was missing in action. Later it was confirmed Franklin died on Oct. 8, 1916 during the Battle of the Ancre Heights, part of the Battle of the Somme and his remains were never recovered.
It is believed that Franklin was the first black North American to die in the First World War. He was born in Whitaker, Miss., but as a young boy moved to Hamilton with his family. Prior to enlisting, he worked at Parke and Parke drugstore in downtown Hamilton, a business known for its big, round thermometer out front before it was demolished to make way for the Jackson Square plaza.
Records are unclear about Franklin’s age. He was either a few days short of his 17th birthday (lying about his age when he enlisted) or as old as 19 when he died.
There were an estimated 500 black soldiers from Canada — mostly from Nova Scotia — who took part in the Great War, a fact that is sometimes overlooked. Eventually, thousands of black soldiers from the United States would take part after that country joined the Allied effort in April 1917.
Another interesting detail about the First World War is that more than 300 members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force were from the Six Nations Reserve (more than 4,000 Indigenous Canadians in all took part). One of the most well known among them was Cameron Dee Brant, from Six Nations Reserve, who was a great-great-grandson of the Mohawk and military leader Joseph Brant. Cameron died in the Second battle of Ypres on either April 23 or April 24, 1915. A poet once said of him:
By the old Mohawk the Chieftain lies beneath the Pine His noble son sleeps within sound of the River Rhine.
AS WE’RE PULLING out from Vimy, tour guide Dan Bailey points to the dozens of sheep that run freely through the cratered fields amid a sign that says “Danger. No entry. Undetonated explosives.”
“That’s how they keep the grass cut — with sheep,” he says.
We pass a newly opened visitor centre, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Numerous trenches and tunnels on the property are preserved. It’s inconceivable how close the Canadian trenches were to the German ones. In one section they are less than 50 metres apart.
Out on the open road, we drive by numerous cemeteries, some small, some large, without stopping. There are just too many. They pop out of farmers’ fields like quaint shrines of ordered stone. Many are being encroached upon by growing villages. And wind turbines are usually spinning behind them.
Occasionally we come upon fenced-off areas with warning signs about undetonated explosives with
Then finally there is the wall of names, each one a Canadian life extinguished a long way from home, each connected to a family somewhere in Canada that was never the same.
It’s inconceivable how close the Canadian trenches were to the German ones. In one section they are less than 50 metres apart.
inexplicable brown metal twisted posts sticking up from the ground. They held tangles of barbed wire from a century ago that have since been removed. Interestingly, in some urban areas of northern France and Belgium, barbed wire is back in vogue. It’s being used around some transportation depot yards and bridges to try to halt refugees from stowing away on trucks and trains.
Menin Gate Memorial
A memorial to the missing in Ypres, Belgium, dedicated to Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres Salient and whose graves are unknown.
In the First World War, tens of thousands of men passed through the original gate, and never returned. After the war it was transformed into a monument to commemorate those who died in battle but had no final resting place. More than 54,000 names are listed.
Inscription
To the armies of the British Empire who stood here from 1914 to 1918 and to those of their dead who have no known grave.
EVERY NIGHT since 1928 — except during the Second World War — a moving “Last Post” ceremony takes place at the Menin Gate. The 7 p.m. service usually includes three buglers from the local fire brigade in black uniforms.
However, on this evening a special arrangement has been made to allow RHLI bugler Cpl. Brian Vautour to join them. There is no mistaking him in his red tunic and Wolseley pith helmet.
Afterwards I talked to Rick Vendekerckhove, who is not only head of the bugler reserve, but also head of the entire brigade. He’s been coming out for 35 years, one week on, the next week off.
The fire brigade, he says, ended up doing the bugling duties because the local military didn’t have buglers.
“It is important to keep this memory alive,” he says. “It’s the best we can do for the fallen and the families.”
He says he tries not to think of all the pain and suffering each ceremony commemorates by focusing attention on the music.
“We think about what we must play and we have to concentrate. It is awful what has happened, but we have to concentrate.”
Three of the names, among the 54,000, on the Menin Gate are from the Burlington area. Albert Oakes, 22, Robert Reese, 26, and Robert Saunders, 25, died in the Second Battle of Ypres on April 22 or 23, 1915, after the Germans unleashed a deadly cloud of 160 tons of chlorine gas. It was the first use of chemical warfare in the war, and likely the first in history.
The three soldiers are also remembered — although not by name at this location — at the St. Julien Canadian Memorial, which is called The Brooding Soldier. The inscription reads “This column marks the battlefield where 18,000 Canadians on the British left withstood the first German gas attacks of the 22nd-24th of April, 1915.”
Another name at Menin Gate is Arthur John Groves, who was a former employee of the Burlington Gazette. They used to say printing ink ran in his veins. He was in a “support trench (on Oct. 13, 1915) in the vicinity of Kemmel during a bombardment by the enemy and was instantly killed by a high explosive shell,” his military record says.
Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery
It is a burial ground for First World War dead in the Ypres Salient in Belgium and the largest cemetery for Commonwealth forces in the world. It has a total of 11,965 graves of which 8,369 are unnamed.
The massive cemetery outside of Passchendaele, near Zonnebeke in Belgium, is staggering. Depending on where you stand, the rows of stone appear to go on forever. In the centre of the cemetery is a Cross of Sacrifice built on top of a former German pill box. King George V said during a visit in May 1922 that “I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon Earth through the years to come, than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.”
One grave remembers Roy Brant Smith, 28, who a long time ago and far away was once a happy-go-lucky student at Burlington Central Elementary School. Like many of his friends back in southern Ontario, he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force and shipped out to England for training in 1916. Records give few details but somehow he found himself among those fighting in Passchendaele in November 1917. He was one of the 4,000 Canadians killed.
INCREDIBLY, THERE ARE more than 700 graveyards in France and Belgium with at least one Canadian soldier’s grave. Each one has a register box in front that lists all of the graves and there is a visitors’ book for people to sign.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission decided after the First World War that all servicemen and women would be treated equally regardless of rank, military achievement or social class. The fallen were to be buried near where they fell. Remains were not to be sent home.
The Commonwealth stones would all be the same — 76 cm tall and rounded at the top, 38 cm wide and 7.6 cm thick. Most are made from Portland stone and every one I saw overseas was immaculately kept.
The top front is reserved for a national emblem. Canada’s is an offcentred maple leaf followed by the person’s name, rank and regiment. An age is usually included along with the date of death and details about rank and regiment.
The family then can decide on a symbol. It could be religious, say a crucifix or a Star of David. Others might feature a Victoria Cross if the person was a recipient. Some have no symbol.
At the bottom the family can choose an epitaph.
Here are some of the ones I came upon:
“Sunshine fades and shadows fall but sweet, remembrance outlasts all”
“He answered his country’s call He did his best and gave his all” “A loving son and a true soldier.” “In ever loving memory of our only dear child. Our loss. His glory.”
“Not gone from memory or from love, but to the eternal home above.”
One stone, for an RHLI soldier who died at Dieppe in the Second World War, was very specific. “Beloved son of Harry and Mabel Smith 5 Walnut Street South Hamilton Canada.”
An incredible number have no name at all:
“A soldier of the Great War” or “Known unto God” is seen very frequently. One I came upon said, “Eight soldiers of the great war. Known unto God.”
Sometimes a headstone will remember a serviceman whose remains could not be distinguished from his fallen comrades.
George Orme McNair, of Hamilton — who died on May 1, 1916, in Ypres in Belgium is remembered by saying “Known to be buried in this cemetery.”
Other times the regiment is known, but not the name of the soldier.
For nearly a century there was a grave in Villers Bretonneux Military Cemetery, about 30 kilometres east of Amiens, that said “Unknown Corporal of the 19th Battalion.”
Then a group called the Canadian Expeditionary Force Study Group took a harder look. Using digitized records they were able to show the grave could be no one other than Cpl. Martin Carroll of Hamilton.
He died on Aug. 8, 1918, during the Battle of Amiens. The volunteer researchers, who included Richard Laughton of Milton, presented their findings to the war graves commission, which agreed with their conclusions that “A review of all of the available information provides clear evidence that this is the remains of Corporal Martin Carroll #55818 who was killed in action near Marcelcave, France on that date.”
A new stone with Carroll’s name on it was ordered and last December a rededication ceremony took place at the graveside.
The family decided to inscribe on the bottom of the stone “I once was lost but now I’m found. Never Forgotten.”
Laughton, 65, says there are thousands of graves without names that researchers are trying to identify.
“In 1919, they didn’t have computers. So they couldn’t go through thousands of records in 30 seconds. But we can today. So in an hour I can look through five cemeteries.”
Laughton says he developed an interest in First World War history through his grandfathers who were both veterans of the war.
“The people who do this tend to be grandsons and granddaughters of people who fought,” he said. “But the next generation probably won’t care. We’re trying to do what we can before we’re gone.”
BACK IN HAMILTON, at the far north end of the sprawling Hamilton Cemetery, there is a section where the nearby Highway 403 is a constant drone. In it is a cluster of three dozen First World War graves.
Unlike military graves in France and Belgium, there is thick lichen on the stones. They’re haphazardly organized — rather than being in neat rows — and the grounds are nice, but less than pristine.
It’s not clear how the service people came to be there because bodies were not repatriated from Europe. Perhaps they died during training in the Hamilton area. Maybe some were sent home wounded and later died. They are mostly men in their 20s who passed on during the war years.
But one stone stands out from the rest, all alone, maybe 10 metres from the rest.
It belongs to a man named Nassau Briggs. Incredibly, according to the war graves commission, he was the last Canadian serviceman to die in the Great War.
A little research will tell you that Briggs was the last of 61,000 Canadians to die in the Great War.
Briggs, 40, suffered health problems from being gassed overseas. After the armistice in November of 1918, he returned home and died nearly three years later on Aug. 31, 1921, technically the last day of the war.
Although Nov. 11, 1918, is understood by most to be the final day, it actually was only an armistice at that point.
Full ratification with peace treaties were still needed to officially end the war.
And that took two years and 10 months.
So — in the eyes of the war graves commission — someone who died from wounds or illness up until the end of August 1921 was still technically counted as war dead.
And Briggs, a labourer in civilian life, turned out to be the last Canadian, according to Dominique Boulais of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Canadian Agency.
The online “war diary” of Briggs says he served with the 18th Battalion. He was the son of John Thomas Briggs in Yorkshire, England. He was married to Florence Briggs with an address listed as 3151 Mary St. in Hamilton.
His stone says he was “Called to a higher service.”