A Tale of Two Brothers: Canadians on the Western Front

Introduction

Amongst many other things, one of the joys of being married is that one inherits a new family, complete with its own cast of characters and family lore. Having been greatly moved by the Canadian memorials at Vimy Ridge and Beaumont Hamel this week, I thought my next point of call would be to examine my husband’s paternal family’s contribution to the Great War. After all, I was curious to know whether I had indeed been stepping on earth trodden by my husband’s Canadian forbears whilst in France and Belgium this week.

Trenches at Vimy Ridge (16/02/2016)

Memorial at Vimy Ridge (16/02/2016)

I was already aware that Levi’s great grandfather, Alfred Ambrose Roach had fought in the First World War. Family lore has it that he suffered some kind of chronic lung disease following a gas attack somewhere on the Western Front. Furthermore, I have since found out that his older brother, John Gilmore Roach, also served. And so, though no family photos are currently accessible, through source work, I hope to begin to reconstruct this narrative of a tale of two brothers on the Western Front. There is still a lot of further work to do on them, but this has been a good start.

Canadian WW1 recruitment poster

Childhood in Puslinch

It is perhaps worth mentioning to begin with that the Roach family have an uncanny knack of changing their details from source to source. They frequently flick between Christian and middle names and even their birth dates fluctuate on occasion. For clarity, I will refer to Alfred Ambrose as Ambrose throughout the piece as this is the name he most often went by. His brother is simply John.

Puslinch Resident, Mr Ramsay, cutting oats in 1910 (c) Puslinch Historical Society

Map of Puslinch Township (c) http://www.puslinchhistorical.ca

Ambrose Roach was born either on the 23rd April 1888 or the 19th April 1889 (the former appears to be the most commonly used, including on his attestation papers) in Aberfoyle, in Puslinch, Ontario. He was a second generation Canadian, born the ninth child (and fifth son) of Joseph Roach and Margaret Gilmore. The family were Roman Catholics and ethnically Irish on both sides; Ambrose’s grandfather having arrived in Ontario in the 1820s as one of the Peter Robinson Settlers. His brother, John, was around twelve years older and likely born on the 26th July 1876 in Puslinch.

Original Pioneer Houses in Puslinch (c) Puslinch Historical Society

Puslinch as a settlement was still fairly new at this point – around forty years old. Joseph, their father, must have been among one of the first children born in the area – he was born in the township in 1846. According to the censuses between 1881 and 1901, he was a blacksmith and was married to their mother, Margaret Gilmore on the 5th July 1870 in Wellington, Ontario.

Aberfoyle Mill built in 1862 (c) http://www.puslinchhistorical.ca

One might think that late nineteenth-century Puslinch would be a quiet backwater of the Empire, but in fact the township where the two brothers grew up appears to have enjoyed great expansion during their youth. According to the ‘Annals of Puslinch’ written in 1950, the township was made up of approximately sixty thousand acres with a terrain 'quite rolling with short, sharp hills and many ponds'. The majority of the earliest settlers originated from Kintyre, Ayrshire, Perthshire and Inverness in Scotland. They were invariably Gaelic speakers (indeed the language was used in church services in the area until 1854) though many could read and write English. Ambrose’s future wife, Ethel, would descend from some of these Scottish settlers (namely the McDermids). Further settlers soon arrived; in particular some Irish and German families and though Gaelic could still be heard until the beginning of the twentieth century, English soon prevailed as the lingua franca of the township.

Township Hall in Aberfoyle, built 1867 (c) Puslinch Historical Society

By the 1860s, Puslinch boasted ‘a rather imposing’ 2.5 storey flour mill, a number of hotels (the district was said to be ‘well supplied’) and the annals also make mention of one Joseph Roach (presumably Ambrose and John’s father) who was ‘the blacksmith, east of the hotel’. By the 1870s, when John was a small child, there was also a wagon and carriage ship located on the west side of the Brock Road owned by a James Leadman and by the 1880s, a sawmill owned by Allen McIntyre. A school house, several churches and a post office complete the picture of a bustling township.

Post Office, Puslinch (c) Puslinch Historical Society

Due to the twelve year age gap, the two brothers only appear in one census together. In 1891, they were living with their parents, Joseph the blacksmith and Margaret, aged 40 and 45 respectively. John was 15 and Ambrose, 3. Their elder sister, Mary, was 19 and working as a woollen factory hand and the other five siblings, Ellen (18), William (12), Josephine (7) and twins Richard and Frank (5) were living together at home. By the 1901 census, it is clear that a number of the other children had moved out. Only Ambrose is left, aged 13, joined by a younger brother called Andrew, aged 9.

1891 census return for Joseph Roach and his family. John was 15 and Ambrose was 3

By 1911, it is clear from the census record that Joseph had  died and the family had moved thirty kilometres southwest to the bustling metropolis of Hamilton. Margaret, then aged 58, was the householder, still living with Ambrose (aged 23) and Andrew (here named Carroll) aged 19 – a presser in a shop. Two further children had returned to the family home: Richard aged 26 and Josephine aged 27. No occupations are listed for either of them.

City Hall, Hamilton in 1910 around the time that Ambrose was living there with his mother (c) Virtual Reference Library Canada

Less than a year later, Ambrose left the family home for good and married a machinist, named Ethel Yates (daughter of William Harry Yates and Christina McDermid) on the 16th September 1911. Both Ambrose and his new father-in-law are listed as being ‘bridge workers’. One is tempted to imagine that this connection might explain how the young couple came together. A single child was born to Ambrose and Ethel. Their son, Carl Gordon Ambrose Roach, was born at 152, Hess Street North, on the 18th April 1912. The birth was registered by the child’s grandmother, Margaret, then living at 133, Napier Street.

A view of Hamilton, Ontario in 1910 (c) Virtual Reference Library Canada

The Two Brothers enlist

Enlistment poster for Ambrose's Regiment the 173rd Canadian Highlanders

Regardless of this, all changed in 1916 when both Ambrose and his elder brother John decided to enlist. On the 25th March, Ambrose went through the enlistment process in Hamilton, ON where he was now living. His attestation papers describe him as Roman Catholic, ruddy complexioned with blue eyes and dark brown hair. At 27 years and 11 months he was reportedly 5’7” tall with a waist measurement of 37 ½ inches and an aquiline nose. The excruciating detail on the attestation papers in this regard is highly impressive and in the absence of family photographs, give you a glimpse of the man behind the records.

Ambrose's Attestation Papers from 1916

According to his attestation paper, Ambrose had already served 7 years in the reserve military; he had been in the 13th Regiment and records show he was paid $26.40 for his reserve work between July 19th and the 27th 1908 – approximately £537 today. His formal occupation on his papers, however, is that of ‘machine hand’ and he was enlisted into the 173rd Battalion of the Canadian Highlanders.

Cap badge for the 173rd Canadian Highlanders

On the 17th December his elder brother, John, enlisted at nearby Guelph (some seventeen kilometres from Puslinch). His census records up until this point have been somewhat sketchy. In 1901 he was a labourer, living in Puslinch with his wife, Eliza. Yet, by 1911, he was a factory hand, a lodger in the home of ‘hotel keeper’ Thomas Condon and his wife Esabel. Eliza at this point in time is absent from the scene though there is very good evidence to suggest that the couple were not estranged. Perhaps, he had been lodging in town for work, though such speculation is entirely unsubstantiated. Regardless of the precise ins and outs of the couple’s marital situation, Eliza appears on the attestation papers as his spouse. In these papers, John is depicted as being ‘fresh complexioned’ with blue eyes and grey hair. At 40 and 4 months, he was 5’6 ¼” and his distinguishing features include a red 1”mole on the inner side of his left scapula, which a quick google search has revealed to be the shoulder blade.

John Roach's attestation papers from 1916

Like his brother, he also had military experience. The enlistment record shows that he had spent four years as a driver for the 16th Field Howitzer Battery and so he was enlisted into the 64th Depot of the Canadian Field Artillery.

64th Depot Battery Cap Badge

Muddy Waters

So far, the historical narrative of the two brothers is fairly straight forward. Two Canadians who had grown up in a small but bustling town in eastern Canada, with wives and children and who had held down a number of manual jobs as well as having served in the reserves. Their lives were not atypical to those of many young Canadian men in the early 1900s. The brothers’ actual military service on the Western Front, however, is much more elusive and further research is required.

What is clear, is that the 173rd Battalion Highlanders, of which Ambrose was now a member, set sail to England on the 14th November 1916 on the RMS Olympic, the sister ship to the ill-fated Titanic that had sunk nearly five years before. It carried 32 officers and 950 others, 741 of which were of the 173rd Battalion Highlanders.

RMS Olympic which took Ambrose to England in 1916

On the 17th January 1917, the regiment arrived at Bramshott, Hants. The official war diary from Bramshott records their arrival and how two days later, the 173rd were absorbed into the 2nd Reserve Battalion of the 6th Reserve Brigade. In that respect, the 17rd never saw action as an entire unit, but rather were used to provide troops on the front line when and where they were needed.

Bramcott War Diary recording the arrival of the 173rd Highlanders in January 1917

Uniform of the 173rd Canadian Highlanders (c) McCaster University and Local History Archives, Hamilton

Various members of the 173rd Highlanders saw action all over the Western Front, including at Aras, Hill 70 and Vimy in 1917 and Passchendaele, Canal du Nord and Scarpe in 1918. It is hard to say where Ambrose fits in to this narrative. As for the family legend, that Ambrose was gassed in the Great War, it is still very probable. The battle for Hill 70 on the 15th August 1917 saw the first use of mustard gas against Canadian troops. It was commonplace in subsequent battles where members of the 173rd Highlanders were involved.

Canadian Soldiers at Hill 70, just 100 yards from German lines (c) Archives of Ontario

An American solider chokes in the midst of a gas attack having failed to put on his gas mask in time - taken 1917

 Mustard gas attacks could be devastating. Those who came into contact with it could be quite debilitated if they survived the experience at all. First the soldier would suffer with itchy eyes and vomit. From then on his bronchial membranes would be stripped away and he would suffer from internal bleeding. It could take several weeks for the himto die. As Wilfred Owen describes in his poem, 'Dulce et Decorum est' mustard gas exposure involved 'guttering, choking, drowning,' and resulted in 'froth-corrupted lungs'.

The gas moved slowly and silently, and so soldiers had around twenty seconds to affix their gas masks. Though 6,000 deaths in the Great War were attributed to gas attacks, it was a major cause of injury. Some 185,000 British and Empire troops were classified as gas casualties by the end of the war. I have good reason (see below) to believe that Ambrose was among that number.

Gas Mask in the 'In Flanders Field Museum' Ypres, Belgium (14/02/2016)

Detail from John Singer Sargent's Painting of Gas attack survivors painted in 1918

As for big brother John, it is equally difficult to pinpoint him in a time or place. The 64th Battalion also saw action at Vimy Ridge between the 9th and the 14th April 1917 as well as at Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele, Amiens, Arras, Cambrai and Mons. As a survivor of the Great War, it is quite possible that he saw action at a number of these battles.

A Canadian Soldier at Passchendaele (c) Chronicle Herald

The Battle of Vimy Ridge, a painting by Richard Jack (c) Canadian War Museum

Afterword

Both brothers survived the Great War and returned to their native Canada. John is harder to find, but records suggest that he died in 1968 at the ripe old age of 92. His headstone in the United Stone Church Cemetry in Eramosa Township in Wellington, Ontario, proudly proclaims him as ‘gunner’ for the Canadian Field Artillery.

John's Gravestone in Wellington, ON

As for Ambrose, the family legend of his lung damage sustained in a gas attack might well have some truth to it. The 1921 census depicts him living at 60, Edinboro Avenue, Hamilton with Ethel and his son, Carl, then aged 9 years old. Ambrose’s occupation is very difficult to make out, but one word is clear: Disabled. Whether or not this disability was down to gas, one cannot say with any certainty. Nonetheless, though he lived until 1958, it is clear then, that the Great War had a lasting legacy for Ambrose.

Ambrose's occupation is given as 'disabled' in the 1921 Canadian Census

As for the township of Puslinch where the two brothers came from, its inhabitants erected The Soldier’s Memorial Monument which was unveiled on June 3, 1920. It still stands today as a testament to its lost sons.

War memorial, Puslinch, ON (c) Puslinch Historical Society

References

'A brief history of the Canadian Expeditionary Force' available online

'Annals of Puslinch 1850-1950' reproduced online by the Puslinch Historical Society (1950)

"Gas Attack, 1916," EyeWitness to History, available online (1999)
 'How deadly was the poison gas of WW1?' by Marek Pruszewicz, online BBC article (2015)

'War Diaries - 6th Canadian Infantry Reserve Brigade' - available here