Monday, February 15, 2016

Vimy Remembered - Part 1

In late 1915, 17 year old Edgar Harold, my grandfather, tried to enlist. He was unsuccessful. He later tried twice more but was also refused. On February 8, 1916, when not quite 18, he was accepted along with three boyhood friends into the 19th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF).

Many years later my grandfather was asked by my uncle, Jack Pickell, editor of the Paris Star, in the book At the Forks of the Grand* why he was so eager to enlist. He replied that he thought his motives were pretty good. He went on to say there was quite an attempt to educate people on the causes of the war and he said he felt that he and his friends were fighting for what was right. Being brought up on Boys’ Own Annual and Chums and novels like Henty and Ballantyne, Edgar looked at joining as an adventure.

He was also asked if he could have imagined how terrifying an artillery bombardment or being under machine-gun fire could be. He replied, “Well, we knew it as well as one could from a distance. I talked to Am Fraser, and he gave me a pretty good run down on it. It didn’t sound all that good… I was prepared for it in a sense, that’s all. When you get pitched into it, you find it’s something you really couldn’t imagine." 

The following is from the same interview in 1978 in At the Forks of the Grand*:

My first experience in the line was probably the most devastating… It was on April 16, 1917 - the night we first went up to the line. We had just started down the hill on the other side of Vimy Ridge when shells began to fall - gas shells, quite a lot of them. We were choking, but just had to stay in line. Finally, still in line, we reached the trenches The water was up to our knees and deeper in places, and all kinds of wounded and dead were lying there in the mud because they couldn’t be evacuated… We landed in a sunken road and were told to spread out, so I took part in the spreading out and then put myself up against a parapet and dug a little funk hole with my entrenching tool. I then got my groundsheet and fastened to the top of the hole with with some bullets pulled through it… Finally I slid in and lay there exhausted - completely worn out.

continued…



*Credit Note: from At the Forks of the Grand, Vol. 2, D. A. Smith, Paris Public Library Board