Nothing in recorded history impacted life in Nelson and settlements around Kootenay Lake more than the four years and three months of the First World War. Bad as the Second World War was, it is astounding to see almost four times as many names on the Nelson cenotaph for World War I than for World War II. Names on a Cenotaph is a remarkable achievement of rigorous research, thoughtful analysis and interpretation, and lively writing. The poignant stories of many of the soldiers are accompanied by hauntingly good studio photographs, which provide a good feel of who they were.

Sam McBride
President of the West Kootenay Family Historians Society

Sylvia Crooks puts faces to the names inscribed on the cenotaphs and memorials erected in memory of those ‘Kootenay Lakers’ who died during World War I. Her painstakingly researched narrative of their lives and families introduces a human touch to the cold statistics that record the war’s horrific losses. She has achieved her aim of bringing back the lives of her subjects in a sensitive and compelling manner. Names on a Cenotaph, together with her earlier book, Home & Battlefront: Nelson BC in World War II, adds another layer to the rich historiography of the Kootenays.

Lieutenant-Colonel (Retired) David S. Leslie
The Royal Canadian Regiment

Most of us have at some time come across a war memorial, glanced over the names listed there, and wondered who were these men with lives cut short? Sylvia gives us a remarkable opportunity to find out. Her vignettes of several hundred enlistees in World War I from British Columbia’s West Kootenays not only humanize this historic tragedy, but persuasively demonstrate how early-century British immigration to the province was truncated by virtue of the many family heads and sons who never came back. Names on a Cenotaph is a compelling and rewarding read.

Jean Barman
UBC Professor Emerita and BC historian

The book will give the reader a greater understanding of the Great War, a higher appreciation for the men who fought in it, as well as insight into the Kootenay region, and into British Columbia as a province, a century ago. By using the names on a cenotaph as a starting point, Crooks tells the story of the war and the devastating impact it had on the communities in the Kootenay. It is a fascinating book, yet also disturbing as we see a steady stream of brave young men fall in battle. Sadly, that’s what the war was all about.

Dave Obee
Editor-In-Chief, Times Colonist, Victoria

Thousands of immigrants to the Kootenays cut through virgin forests and mined gold and silver like it would never stop, building railroads and running steamboats in the lakes of the wilderness. Then the First World War shatters their dream world and we experience the euphoria of the recruit and the adoring communities who send their men off to France and Flanders. Combat on the Western Front, glorified in the media of the day, is a nightmare that never ends for the soldier and his family, even when the conflict ends. But finally the storm passes and we’re left shaken by their stories, but grateful for their service. They live on in this wonderful work.

Captain (Retired) Floyd Low
Canadian Armed Forces

Copyright © 2014 Sylvia Crooks

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, info@accesscopyright.ca.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Crooks, Sylvia, 1936–, author
Names on a cenotaph : Kootenay Lake men in World War I / Sylvia Crooks.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-926991-47-4 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-926991-55-9 (html)
1. World War, 1914-1918—Casualties—British Columbia—Kootenay Lake Region. 2. World War, 1914-1918—Registers of dead—British Columbia—Kootenay Lake Region. 3. World War, 1914-1918—Campaigns. 4. Soldiers—British Columbia—Kootenay Lake Region—Biography. 5. Kootenay Lake Region (B.C.)—Biography. I. Title.
FC3845.K7Z48 2014 940.4’6771162 C2014-902846-6
C2014-902847-4

Unless otherwise noted, the photographs are courtesy of the Shawn Lamb Archives, Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History.
Editor: Lois M. Bewley
Proofreader: Renate Preuss
Cover designer: Omar Gallegos

Granville Island Publishing Ltd.
212 – 1656 Duranleau St.
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6H 3S4
604-688-0320 / 1-877-688-0320
info@granvilleislandpublishing.com
www.granvilleislandpublishing.com

First published in May 2014

Contents

The revolutions, political re-alignments, military engagements and local unrest of the 19th century became passionate nationalism in Europe and the Americas in the 20th century. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire opened the Middle East to European exploitation, and to ethnic rivalries in the new Balkan states. Great Britain and Germany clashed in Africa in a race to expand their empires. The Russian people, desperate to free themselves from serfdom and the tyranny of the tsars, threatened the status quo and the Romanov dynasty. Spain and Portugal lost their colonies in the Americas. The United States continued to grow in wealth and in population, and to divorce itself from the entanglements of “the old world.”

In the years leading up to World War I, Great Britain and Germany accelerated their naval arms race — greater ships, bigger guns, and u-boats. Investment in military might was enormous. Germany maintained a standing army of two million men. France, Britain, Russia and Austria–Hungary each had armies of over one million men. Altogether, in 1914 the European powers had some 20 million men under arms, in standing armies and reserves.

Former alliances were shifting as the European powers sought economic and military superiority. Germany formed the Triple Alliance with Austria–Hungary and Italy. Russia and France had allied in the mid-1890s. France and Great Britain had come to a “friendly understanding” called the Entente Cordiale, and Russia and Britain created “a sphere of influence” over Persia, the Anglo–Russian Entente. The lines were drawn, the stage was set. It required only an incident, a spark to ignite a catastrophic explosion.

The spark was provided by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian rebel in Sarajevo in June 1914. Many hoped that existing diplomatic efforts to settle the ongoing Balkans wars would maintain a European peace. Diplomacy failed. Germany declared war on Serbia on July 28. Russia mobilized on the Eastern Front, and on August 1 Germany declared war on Russia, then France on August 3. At the same time Germany invaded neutral Belgium which had been promised protection by the British. Great Britain and her far-flung empire now had a legitimate pretext to join the fight, and declared war on Germany on August 4. In the following weeks Great Britain and France declared war on Austria–Hungary. Japan and Montenegro joined the Allies — France, Great Britain, Russia, Serbia and Belgium. The declining Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers — Germany and Austria–Hungary. A year later Italy would denounce the Triple Alliance and join the Allies.

The cataclysmic “war to end all wars” had begun.

War at any time is a tragedy. Every war has its own horrors. But none so much as World War I, what we call “The Great War.” The gates of hell opened and closed on some 16 million soldiers and civilians killed in the four-year slaughter. Another 20 million were wounded.1 Men who might have been our leaders in government, in the arts, in science, and in so many other ways, were consumed by the flames. We have all read of the sucking, hip-high mud of the battlefields and trenches, the marauding rats and ever-present lice, and the scalding, suffocating poison gas. It is hard to imagine that any man who survived came home without lasting nightmares and memories too horrible to ever share with their families.

Engraved on the cenotaph in the small city of Nelson, British Columbia, in the beautiful Kootenay Valley, are the names of 250 men of the almost 67,000 Canadians who lost their lives during World War I. Another 30 men are remembered on cenotaphs and memorials in small communities along Kootenay Lake. Many of the men were fruit ranchers, mostly British immigrants who settled on the shores of the lake, along the Kootenay River and in the Slocan Valley. They were miners, loggers and railway men. Among them were deckhands on the paddlewheelers that carried passengers and cargo on the lake. They were carpenters, mill hands, stonemasons and unskilled labourers. Some were mining engineers, bank clerks and businessmen, and some were students about to embark on promising careers.

For almost 90 years the people of Nelson and its surrounding communities have stood in silence on November 11 to remember their sacrifice. People who remembered them personally as vibrant young men, family members, lovers, friends or neighbours, have long since gone. While I was growing up in Nelson I too stood with bowed head to honour the names on the cenotaph. Even then I wondered, who were these men who went off to war together to die on desolate battlefields a continent away? Years later I gave myself the task of finding out.

This is a requiem. A requiem for those men who were willing to sacrifice their lives for what they believed to be a righteous cause. It is written out of respect for them, but also out of anger at the sacrifice of a generation in a futile war. To make some of these young men live again, to tell their stories, however briefly, is the aim of this book — to make them more than simply names on a cenotaph.

The Western Front and location of the major battles fought by the Kootenay men. Map by Jamie Blackmore Fischer

Chapter One | 1914

“England has declared war on Germany!” We were working on a pumphouse, on the Columbia River, at Trail, British Columbia, when these words were shouted at us from the door by the boss carpenter. . . . Every one stopped work, and for a full minute not a word was spoken. Then Hill, a British reservist who was my work-mate, laid down his hammer and put on his coat. . . . “I am quitting, George,” he said to the boss carpenter, as he pulled his cap down on his head and started up the bank. That night he began to drill us in the skating-rink.2

That was August 4, 1914. A year later 30-year-old Second Lieutenant William Henry Ostler Hill, fighting with the Yorkshire Regiment, would be dead. His name is one of the 250 names of World War I soldiers engraved on the cenotaph in the nearby city of Nelson.

With the outbreak of World War I, a patriotic hysteria consumed the western world. The major powers seemed eager to make use of their massive military forces, and their citizens believed that victory would be theirs, probably by Christmas. The small city of Nelson, tucked into the furrows of the Selkirk Mountains in southwestern British Columbia, was no exception. Not yet an independent country but part of the British Empire, Canada was now also at war. Men rushed to enlist in great numbers throughout the Kootenays, which had more recruits per capita than any area of British Columbia outside the West Coast.3

Nelson was a thriving little city of about 5,000 people in 1914, a commercial and government centre that served a district population of about 12,000.4 Mining, logging and fruit ranching were the main industries. The city became the recruitment centre for the area only a few days after war was declared. At the outbreak of war, British Army veteran and Boswell fruit-rancher Major Percy Rigby was among the first to enlist in Nelson, joining the 7th Battalion, the First British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own). He was put in charge of the West Kootenay–Boundary contingent.

On August 13, a week after Britain declared war on Germany, volunteer lists were opened at the Nelson Armories.

An enthusiastic crowd gathered at the armory last evening when the lists were opened for volunteers to serve both here and abroad in case Britain should become involved in hostilities. Volunteers to the number of 32 signed the list during the evening. . . . Among those who signed were a great many who had seen service at some time, and some had served in the militia, both in Canada and Britain.5

Ten days later some 60 recruits began drilling on the Nelson recreation grounds under the command of Major Rigby. The numbers had swollen to 175 by the time they left Nelson by boat for Kootenay Landing on the eastern shores of Kootenay Lake, and entrained for the Canadian mobilization centre in Valcartier, Quebec.

The war was only three weeks old on August 28 when thou-sands of Nelson citizens and people of all ages from surrounding farms, towns and villages gathered to give a rousing farewell to officers and men of the first Kootenay–Boundary contingent leaving Nelson for the war. Some of the recruits spoke of the “glory and satisfaction” of war; three-quarters of them were returning “home” to fight for the land of their birth in its hour of need.6 But as one of the recruits admitted, “I don’t suppose it was all patriotism. Part of it was the love of adventure, and a desire to see the world.”7

Reverend Father John Althoff, an immigrant from Belgium 36 years earlier, was alarmed at “the intoxication of praise and the glory of war” he was witnessing. Amid the clamour of the send-off, he warned of the “soberness and gravity of war.”8 Whether or not his stern message was heard on that August day, competing as it was with the call to defend the “prestige of the Empire,” it would not be many months before the brutal reality of war would shock the people of Nelson and other cities and towns of the Kootenays.

There was great excitement among the young recruits as they travelled to Valcartier, no doubt heightened by their exuberant send-off from Nelson. A group of the men set about carving a motto and their names on a train car table, using the knives given to them on their departure by the citizens of Nelson. When the table was later removed from the train and sent back to Nelson it was put on display in the window of the Thurman Brothers cigar store on Baker Street. The local newspaper described the souvenir:

[The table] is engraved with the names of a number of the men, the date, Aug. 14, 1914, the motto, “Kloshe Nanitch,”[a Chinook phrase, often used when leaving on a journey] of the company of 102nd Rocky Mountain Rangers which was formerly stationed in Nelson, and the words, “D---der Kaiser.” Among the men whose names are carved on the board are: A Neale, J. Hurst, George Pease, N.C.R. Merry, S. Waters, A.B. Bayley, A. Reese, B. Aylmer, J. Holland, E.E. Guille, A. Coomber, G. Beeston, F.H. Langhorne, Capt. Davies, Capt. P.J. Locke, G. Paterson, Sergt. Tennant, H. Broadwood, R. Mott, R. Royston, A. Anderson, H. Beaumont, G.K. Ashby, A. Blake, H.W. Thomas and E.C.E. [sic] Allen.9

Of the 26 men who carved their names in the table, 10 would die in the war. The table is now in the possession of the grandson of one of the volunteers.

CPR train table carved by men of the first contingent en route to war. Photo courtesy of Tony Holland

When on November 1 the second contingent of some 200 men from the Kootenay and Boundary country converged on Nelson to leave together for training in Victoria, they too were cheered by thousands who poured into the streets and jostled for a view of the parade of recruits marching to the CPR station. The local newspaper described the send-off:

As they reached the station platform they passed beneath an arch formed by the Boy Scouts from the flags of the allied nations and were greeted with prolonged cheers, interspersed with fireworks and the singing of popular war and patriotic airs. From the tops of the cars, from the roof of the depot and from every vantage point they were greeted and as they steamed away from the depot it was to the accompaniment of rousing cheers that could be heard for miles.10

The second contingent of men was sent to Victoria and trained at Willows Camp, converted for military use from the old agricultural fair grounds. There they were assigned to the newly authorized 30th Battalion which was to provide reinforcements for the Canadians in the field. There was more training at Valcartier before they embarked for Britain on February 23, 1915. Many of them were re-assigned from the 30th Battalion to the 16th Battalion, newly formed from four individual Scottish regiments. It was while they were in training on Salisbury Plain that the 16th Battalion was dubbed “The Canadian Scottish.”

The great majority of the earliest recruits were British-born, many with previous military experience. They had been lured to Canada by promises of cheap, fertile land, and a chance to start anew.

For numerous British people the hope of a new start in life on a colonial frontier was irresistible. Retired military officers were able to commute their pensions, which many did, to pay for their land and the cost of starting up. They could not afford to live on their pensions in England because if they wanted any kind of social life, they had to belong to a club — their living standards and their station in life had to be kept up — and this was impossible to do on their meagre pensions.11

Many of these British émigrés were also sons of the upper-class, if not the aristocracy — gentlemen, but not always men of wealth.

British Columbia’s appeal to gentlemen emigrants included its beauty, mild climate, and opportunities for fishing, hunting and shooting only dreamt of by middle- and upper-class Britons. In the Pacific province these pleasures were affordable, for, as one enthusiastic traveler reported home, “An Englishman can get more fun, sport and good living, for two hundred pounds per annum than he could get for a thousand pounds in a year in the old country.”12

On October 15, 1914, the Kootenay men of the first contingent were in England, as part of the 7th Battalion (1st British Columbia). The men were exuberant as they marched through Plymouth that night to entrain for camp on Salisbury Plain.

As the regiment marched through the darkened streets, the frivolous music hall songs, proverbial marching tunes of the British Army, were sung with such zest and enthusiasm that the windows and doors of every house were flung open as the inhabitants rushed to see Canada’s first contingent on its way.13

Among the songs they belted out was a rousing regimental song, “We Are the Boys From Canada.”14 It was evidence that nationalistic fervour existed even before it was firmly forged at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele.

We’re the boys from Canada,
Glad to serve Britannia!
Don’t you hear them?
Well then, cheer them!
Send a loyal, loud hurrah!

’Tis the Maple Leaf they wear,
Emblem of their country fair,
Proud to send them,
God defend them!
Boys from Canada.

For the next three cold and wet winter months the Kootenay men lived in tents with no floorboards at West South Down on Salisbury Plain. “We didn’t train, we were swimming about in mud most of the time,” said Nelson recruit Joe Holland.15 A precursor of what they were about to experience in the trenches of France and Flanders.

One third of the men in these first two Kootenay contingents would die on the bloody, mud-drenched battlefields; almost half of them within the first year of their departure from Nelson. The records show that four out of every five men who left Nelson with that first contingent in August 1914 were either killed, badly wounded or became prisoners of the Germans.

Young men were answering the call from all quarters. Only days after war was declared, eight mining engineers who were working in the Kootenays left Nelson together for the coast where they signed up in North Vancouver, six of them with the 6th Field Company, Canadian Engineers. Like the men who left Nelson with Major Rigby, they signed their attestation papers and underwent initial training at the military camp at Valcartier, Quebec. The two others went on to England to receive commissions in the British Army. Three of these promising young men would lose their lives in the war.

Several of the men who had immigrated to the Nelson area from Britain sped home to England to enlist in the first months of the war. Many were fruit ranchers who had only recently laboured to clear the land and plant their orchards. Many had served in the British Army or came from military families. And many of them would never return to the Kootenays.

Canadian-born young men living abroad were also returning home to enlist. But returning home to fight for the land of your birth was not always voluntary. When Italy entered the war on the Allied side in 1915, Italian-born men in Canada between the ages of 20 and 39, whether naturalized or not, were ordered to return to Italy for military duty. Failure to do so would result in jail sentences for desertion for any man who tried to return to Italy after the war. Generously, transportation to and from Italy was to be paid for by the Italian government.16

Italy was fighting on the side of the Allies. Many young men from enemy countries — Germany, the Austria–Hungarian Empire, the Ukraine, Turkey and Bulgaria — were interned in 24 camps set up across the country, six of them in British Columbia: in Vernon, Edgewood, Nanaimo, Field, Mara Lake and Morrissey, near Fernie. It was mandatory for “enemy aliens,” i.e., citizens of hostile nations, to register with the police. The Daily News on May 27, 1915 issued a warning: “Nelson Chief of Police has issued an order requiring all alien enemies to report themselves at his office in the city hall within five days of today; those who fail to report will be interned.” Most of the internment camps were closed down before the end of the war, but it was not until February 1920 that the last of the internees at Vernon was released.

The departure of the men from their farms and jobs caused great hardship on families, not only emotionally but also economically. Many wives, especially in the early days of the war when war-fever was at its height, exercised their right to refuse permission for their husbands to serve. With the war only two weeks old, the following news item from Ottawa appeared in the Nelson newspaper:

That many of the recruits for the Canadian overseas expeditionary forces are being withdrawn from the ranks of the units with which they have enlisted through the influence of their wives is the somewhat important announcement made this morning. The militia department has made it plain that no man who is married can go with the forces without the consent of his wife. Apparently this is being taken advantage of by Canadian women, for during the last few days the wives of officers in particular and also many of the men have been exercising the privilege in large numbers.17

But the pressures on men to enlist and high patriotic spirits were to prevail, so the great majority of wives supported their husband’s decision to serve, even though it must have placed many of them in desperate financial straits. In the summer of 1914 the Canadian Patriotic Fund, a private organization, was sanctioned and supported by the federal government. Its purpose was to “collect, administer and distribute a fund for the assistance in case of need of the wives, children and dependent relatives of officers and men, residents of Canada, who, during the present war, may be on active service with the naval and military forces of the British Empire and Great Britain’s allies.” On September 18 a committee was set up in Nelson to receive and distribute contributions to the fund. Families in need of assistance were asked to apply, and a list was kept of women wanting work.

By the end of 1914 the French and the British had suffered massive losses but had managed, just barely, to halt the German advance through Belgium and northern France, stopping the Germans on the outskirts of Paris and at Ypres in Belgium. The French had suffered a million casualties; the British had lost half their regular army. The Canadian Expeditionary Force and the men from the Kootenays had not yet been thrown into the fire. They would not have long to wait.

Chapter Two | 1915