One of the primary objectives of this blog is to list the soldiers found in the 18th Battalion War Diary. As research shows that the private soldier (or "other ranks") where rarely mentioned in the War Diary of the 18th Battalion the research has been expanded to list any soldier found during research for this... Continue Reading →
City of Sarnia Honours the Fallen
The City of Sarnia with work by Tom Slater are updating and revising the The Remembrance Project: A Record of Fallen Soldiers according to this article in the The Observer. The current version is available at several sites and this link will take you to the Lambton County Library version in PDF format. This resource... Continue Reading →
A Young Girl Remembers into Adulthood
Anges McVittie was a young girl when Alfred Steggles boarded with her family before he joined the CEF and the 186 Overseas Battalion on March 13, 1916. Eventually assigned to the 18th Battalion he was to be killed in action exactly one year before the Great War's end. He was one of 154 Canadian soldiers... Continue Reading →
Anniversary
Today marks the 100th anniversary of my Grandfather's enlistment into the 18th Battalion, Western Ontario, Regiment, CEF.
The Goss Family
As often happens in research one soldier's research leads to another. During the research into Private Percy Lemmon one of the news articles shared with me shows another soldier who served in the 18th Battalion, George Goss. George Goss had two other family members who served in the C.E.F.. His father served in the 18th... Continue Reading →
New Soldiers Listed
One of the major endeavors of this blog is to list every soldier I find through researching the 18th Battalion. There is a Nominal Roll (1915) available digitally but the efforts focused at this blog is to do the research of the War Diaries and list those soldiers that are named in the War Diary.... Continue Reading →
Found: A friend of my Grandfather who served with him.
One of the opportunities for researching soldiers is the fact that many soldiers that enlisted often enlisted with their "chums" at the same enlistment office. In an article about researching soldiers it pointed out that since the service numbers were often assigned sequentially then if someone checked the proceeding and preceding service numbers and they... Continue Reading →
August 21st, 1917: A Brutal Day and a Horrific Month
Thanks to a reader of this blog I was made aware of a member of the 18th Battalion, C.E.F. Private Percy William Lemmon, 880420 served with the Battalion and was severly wounded on this date. More biographical information will follow but War Diary entry on this date is a stark and relevant reminder as we... Continue Reading →
The Regimetal System of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces
Christopher J. Harvie's excellent blog has a wealth of information and a recent post helps us understand the Canadian Expeditionary Force's Regimental System. “In Canada, the regiment is a formation of one or more units; existing almost exclusively for reasons of heritage, the continuance of battle honours and esprit de corps." Source: Link to Blog As an example,... Continue Reading →
“… he was probably the youngest major in the Canadian army.”
So says the Toronto World newspaper on March 10th, 1917 just 5 days after acting Major George Vincent Nelson was killed. He joined the 18th Battalion on May 6, 1916 as a reinforcement after originally joining the 83rd Overseas Battalion on September 4, 1914. During his duty with the 18th Battalion, which spanned less than... Continue Reading →
Rank Last Name Initials KIA Service No. Family Information Private BASS J 02/03/1916 '406252' Private GAGEBY R 02/03/1916 '406719' SON OF ROBERT GAGEBY, OF 45, BROOKHILL AVENUE, BELFAST, IRELAND. Sergeant GARDNER H S 02/03/1916 '54020' SON OF JOHN AND JANE GARDNER, OF 112, ABBEY FOREGATE, SHREWSBURY. NATIVE OF SALOP, ENGLAND. Private HILLSON J 02/03/1916 '54227'... Continue Reading →
War Diary of the 18th Battalion: March 1916
PlaceDateHourSummary of Events and Information 1 Battn in SP trenches. Operation orders for cooperation in attacks on INTERNATIONAL trench on our left (attached). Bombardment commenced 5 pm until 5.30 pm. This was kept up during the night of March ½ becoming very intense about 2.30 A.M. 20th Can Bn was on our right and East Yorks (Imp)... Continue Reading →
Lieutentant R. D. Jeffreys Military Cross
Lieutenant R.D. Jeffreys began life as a private soldier with the 1st Cambridgeshire Regiment and later earned a battlefield commission and the Military Cross. I am in possession of a typed copy of the diary and will be transcribing it for this blog. Though the primary focus of this blog is the 18th Battalion, C.E.F.... Continue Reading →
Update on Blog
Some updates... February 1916 War Diary Entry Taking a more measured and thorough approach I am doing soldier research before I transcribe the war diary. An Excel database has been created to better organize the work that has been done to help track the research and prevent duplication of effort. One of the big jobs... Continue Reading →
Lieutenant Ewen McLachlin
During the search for soldiers of the 18th Battalion I found Lieutenant Thayer Vincent Milford a site was found referring to him as belonging to the Western Ontario Regiment on the West Carlton Honour Roll. As I perused the site I noticed an entry for a Lieutenant Ewen McLachlin. Having a connection through relatives to... Continue Reading →
Curious Grave Marker
The We Are The Dead ( @WeAreTheDead ) Twitter account unfailingly posts the names of Canadian Service Men and Women who gave the ultimate sacrifice. One such tweet got my attention as I check any of the tweets with Western Ontario Regiment to see if any of these soldier commemorated are from the 18th. In... Continue Reading →
Christmas Truces: “…our German friends were quite friendly.”
A recent viewing of the movie Joyeux Noël made me curious as to the involvement of Canadian troops in the Christmas truces that sprung up after the well documented truces that occurred in 1914. Since the First Canadian Contingent did not arrive in the theater of operations until February 1915 they were not involved in... Continue Reading →
Update
This blog has been working to add soldiers to the Soldiers's Pages from the research and transcription of the war diaries and from other sources. Currently I have 7 soldiers with initial research started and 23 soldiers, mostly officers, that have been listed and have no research done. One of the challenges of doing this... Continue Reading →
Serving His Country Twice
There are 2 inscriptions at the Zivy Crater Memorial, Thelus in the Pas de Calais region that bear witness to an interesting story. A soldier, Private George Symonds, 18th Battalion, who died on April 9, 1917 on the first day of the Vimy Battle that Canadian's memorialize every year, was not Private George Symonds at... Continue Reading →
History of the 18th Battalion CEF, "The Fighting Eighteenth" 