Until the Shadows Flee: The death of Private Harry Phillips

During a recent casualty search in relation to the recent post about an action the 18th Battalion was involved in near Telegraph Hill in the Arras Sector the list of Canadian soldiers killed on July 18th, 1918 had one soldiers place of burial stand out.

Switzerland.

How, during the First World War did a Canadian soldier end up being interned in Switzerland?

An agreement was made during the war that allowed prisoners of war from the belligerent nations to be repatriated through Switzerland in the case where their wounds would restrict them from further participation in the conflict, or in the cases of illness, the ability of those soldiers suffering medical conditions that would be a burden to the belligerent nation would offer such soldiers internment in Switzerland where their medical care would not be a drain on the economy of the nation hosting the prisoner.

It is not clear how Private Phillips, reg. no. 46878, came to be a prisoner of war. The 13th Battalion records several instances of were their members became prisoners, but only officers are named, so the circumstances that led to Private Phillips capture and internment are, as yet unknown.

What ever the case, Private Phillips was to die of pneumonia near Couvet, Switzerland and was interned in a cemetery in that locale until he was moved to Vevey (St. Martin’s) Cemetery and re-interned on February 24, 1922.

As the CWGC site states:

In the year 1916, agreements were made between the Swiss Government and the French, British and German Governments under which a certain number of wounded prisoners of war were interned in Switzerland. The first British prisoners arrived on Swiss soil at the end of May, 1916; and the average number under treatment during the remainder of the war was 2,000. Of these, 61 died before repatriation; and, including other casualties, 88 British and Dominion sailors, soldiers and airmen, fallen in the Great War, are buried in Swiss soil.

Source

It must of been impossible for Private Phillips, born in England, and late of 1483 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, to imagine as he enlisted in Valcartier, Quebec, that he would become a prisoner of war interned in Switzerland and to die there.

His headstone bears the inscription: “Until the Shadows Flee,” a sentiment left in his memory by his mother.

He is not alone. He is buried along with 11 other Canadian service personnel.