- Home
- Welcome to From the West Coast to the Western Front
- Contents
- From Our Listeners
- About
- Using From the West Coast to the Western Front
- A Message from the Canadian Letters and Images Project
- For Further Reading
- Acknowledgements
Chapter Eleven
Tales the Cenotaphs Tell: Sacrifice, Remembrance and Commemoration
Just about everywhere you go in British Columbia, you’ll find cenotaphs. They are often the centre point in a community, a visual reminder of the people who gave their lives for us. Sometimes the people who built these monuments got the names wrong or didn’t have all the names of those who were killed. But behind every name on those monuments there is a story. Our listeners helped us tell some of them.
When the cenotaphs were built just after the war, the names were familiar. Then, with the passing of years, the details were lost, buried in old newspapers and not easy to track down. Today, with the power of the internet, we can stand in front of a cenotaph, power up a cellphone and google a name. Attestation papers pop up; family stories and photographs appear. We can see a face, piece together a story. One hundred years after the cataclysm, we can reimagine what it was like for those who went overseas and never came home.
Contents
The Story of One Cenotaph
The Olivers: Father and Son Killed on the Same Day
The Glossop Cousins: Sons of Empire
Captain Jack Tuzo: Killed in East Africa
The Phoenix Cenotaph
Grand Forks and the Hendersons
Article: Remembrance at Fort Langley Cemetery
Article: Charlie’s Tree: A Veteran’s Remembrance
A Great War Time Capsule in Nelson
Private Jack Peters (1892–1915)
Lieutenant Gerald Peters (1894–1916)
Private Noel Peters (1894–1964)
Captain Fritz Peters, VC, DSO, DSC and Bar, DSC (US), RN (1889–1942)
The Cenotaphs of Hedley, Penticton, Prince George, and Nanaimo
Sidebar: From Our Listeners
The Kettle Valley Cenotaph east of Osoyoos sits beside Highway 3 along the Kettle River. It serves as a monument for the whole Boundary country, from Bridesville in the west to Greenwood and Phoenix in the east. In the 1920s after the war was over, community members came up with a pyramid design, brought in horse teams with local rock and started to build. Picnic food was laid out and the job got done.
The cenotaph still stands not far from a grove of Ponderosa pines. It’s a good place for a walk. Even in winter, you can stop and brush off the snow and look at the names.
The first thing you may notice is that some last names appear twice or even three times. There are three Olivers, two Glossops, two Caves. The war took an enormous toll on some families.
The Olivers: Father and Son Killed on the Same Day
It seems unimaginable. Receiving a telegram that a son has died in battle. One day in the early summer of 1915, Sophia Oliver received a wire informing her that her husband, Sidney Oliver, and son William were both killed on the same day at Ypres: April 24, 1915. The shock of losing both a husband and a son at the same time must have been inconceivable.
Sidney was a forty-four-year-old miner when he signed up in September 1914, one of the first from the district to go overseas. His son William was twenty-one years old, a rancher by trade. They joined the 7th Battalion; their service numbers are consecutive so they must have signed up at the same time. The war was going to be over by Christmas, and Sidney, whose parents were in Buxton, might have thought the war was a good opportunity to see the folks at home. He had served with a unit of the Dragoon Guards in England so military practice was familiar and he entered service as a lance corporal. But Ypres was a bloodbath, a finger in the Western Front that was exposed to enemy fire on three sides. When Sidney and William were killed, word spread fast through the small town of Greenwood.
Sophia later moved to Trail. Another son, James, enlisted in June 1916 after the death of his father and brother. He was a horseman by trade and was just nineteen when he was killed at Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917.
The Glossop Cousins: Sons of Empire
Told with help from Sue Dahlo and Lorri Harpur from the Boundary country
Major Walter Herbert Newland Glossop was one of many retired imperial army and navy officers who came to British Columbia in the early 1900s and attached themselves to real estate and investment schemes intended to lure more English investment to the province.
After a stint with the Indian Army, Major Glossop emigrated to Rock Creek in 1905 and was one of the prominent men behind the Kettle Valley Irrigated Fruit Lands Company. Ted Gane of Kaleden wrote a lot about the venture. The company got a lot of ink in 1906 and 1907 and was capitalized at about a hundred thousand dollars. Two thousand acres were purchased, and flumes and ditches were built. But because the soil and climate was unfavourable for fruit growing, the project was abandoned after the Great War. By that time, Glossop and his cousin, Naval Commander Henry Anthony Pownall Glossop, were both dead.
Major Glossop was active in military organizing in the Boundary country and was in command of the 102nd Rocky Mountain Rangers. He married locally and started a family in mid-life. But in April 1916, he made the abrupt decision to re-enlist with the 225th Battalion. Perhaps the fruit land scheme was collapsing or perhaps he was drawn by the desperate situation on the Western Front.
Not much is known about the Glossop cousins’ wartime service. But both men died in England in 1918 and their deaths may have been war related. Herbert’s son, who never really knew his father, was killed in World War II.
At least one other name on the cenotaph seems to be related to the Glossops. Thomas Cave was an English-born law student living in Grand Forks when he enlisted in January 1916. He drilled with the Independent Rifle Company there. The Grand Forks Sun reported that he was killed in France while rescuing an officer in late 1916.
One of Walter Glossop’s brothers had married a Cave—in fact, a sister of Lord Cave, Prime Minister Lloyd George’s home secretary. Thomas Cave
was a nephew and so he may have been attracted to the Boundary country by the Glossop connection. The other Cave on the cenotaph does not seem to be related.
Captain Jack Tuzo: Killed in East Africa
There’s a Tuzo Creek along the Kettle Valley Railway cycling trail. Captain Jack Tuzo was the only son of Dr. Henry Tuzo, who first came to British Columbia in 1853 and served with Governor James Douglas. His sister Henrietta was a charter member of the Alpine Club of Canada. Jack Tuzo was educated in England, where he studied engineering and worked for railway companies. He came to the Boundary country to be assistant chief engineer on the construction of the Kettle Valley Railway. On completion of the section between Midway and Penticton, he returned to England and enlisted with the Royal Sussex Regiment. He was stationed for a time in Bangalore, India, and then posted to East Africa, to help reconstruct railways destroyed there by the Germans.
Diseases were as much of a threat as attacks from the enemy in those parts and Tuzo contracted blackwater fever and died in a military hospital in Dar es Salaam in April 1918.
An obituary in the Journal of the Engineering Institute of Canada said: “Captain Tuzo was keenly interested in the development of southern British Columbia and was one of the pioneers in that district. He was a strong believer in the future and had many interests there. His sad death, occurring so soon after the opening of the railway through that section will be a great loss.”
Tuzo’s nephew, John Tuzo Wilson, became a renowned Canadian geophysicist who achieved acclaim for his contributions to the theory of plate tectonics. Tuzo’s son, born in India in 1917, went on to command forces in Northern Ireland during the troubles.
The Phoenix Cenotaph
The Kettle Valley Cenotaph also includes the names of the men listed on the Phoenix Cenotaph, at the old mining camp of Phoenix, high in the mountains between Greenwood and Grand Forks. The Phoenix Cenotaph is about all that is left of the once-booming mountain city. But it can be hard to get to on November 11 because of the weather, so a plaque was added to combine the ceremonies at Ingram Flat.
Nelson journalist Greg Nesteroff told us that nearly fifty Phoenix men volunteered after the war broke out. The names of fifteen men who were killed are on the cenotaph. Over twenty more were wounded.
When the war ended, the city began considering a memorial to its fallen sons. But before anything was decided, the Granby Company pulled out of Phoenix, spelling doom for the town. Many buildings were sold for salvage, including the city’s skating and curling rink. The Phoenix Rink Company, which owned the arena, met with stockholders and decided proceeds from the sale would be put toward a war memorial that would outlast the town.
The rink’s sale raised twelve hundred dollars, enough to pay for the war monument, with four hundred dollars left over to donate to the Royal Canadian Legion in Grand Forks to ensure its care (more on the famous Phoenix Hockey team in Chapter 15).
The inscription on the cenotaph includes a line from the Roman poet Horace: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, which roughly translates as “It is sweet and right to die for your country.”
Grand Forks and the Hendersons
With help from John Henderson
When we spotted three Hendersons on the Grand Forks Cenotaph, we wondered if our CBC Vancouver colleague John Henderson might know more. It turned out he was related to the brothers who were killed. Here they are, three Henderson brothers who went to France and never came home.
The first to be killed was Arthur, who died at the Regina Trench on November 18, 1916. He was the oldest son. Arthur left behind his wife, Elizabeth, and a growing family.
Harold died a year after Arthur, on November 6, 1917. He went overseas with the 29th Battalion, the famous Tobin’s Tigers. He served as a scout and died after he was hit in the head by shrapnel.
John Jr., or Jack, was killed at Amiens on August 17, 1918. He was a prospector by trade and his middle name was Baptist. He was the last brother to die. On August 30, the Grand Forks Sun reported:
On Monday, news reached this city that Jack Henderson, son of J.B. Henderson, had been killed in action in France. Deceased was raised in this city but he enlisted at Calgary. The casualty list has dealt severely with the Henderson family. Two other of Henderson’s sons, Arthur and Harold, were killed in action some time ago. A nephew, Arthur Henderson of Chilliwack, and son-in-law Chris Coughlan, have also fallen on the battlefield. Mr. Henderson’s only living son, Herwood, is now in service in England.
Herwood, or Herb as he was known, survived the war and moved to Powell River. He worked for BC Hydro and lived until 1968.
The other cousin, Captain Richard “Hendy” Henderson from Chilliwack, was killed by a shell on April 11, 1917. Hendy enlisted at age forty and went overseas with the Canadian Engineers. He was consolidating the ground at Vimy Ridge when he was hit.
[Click here for Remembrance at Fort Langley Cemetary]
[Click here for Charlie's Tree]
A Great War Time Capsule in Nelson
By Greg Nesteroff, Nelson
In the fall of 2011, a time capsule was removed from the cornerstone of Nelson’s Anglican church hall, ahead of the building’s sale. One of the most intriguing items in the tin box, entombed in 1922, was an honour roll listing 222 church members who enlisted in World War I.
Entitled “Whose Debtors We Are,” the small card gives surnames and first initials, along with red crosses next to those who were killed, and notations for those who received military medals and crosses. Church historian Greg Scott sent the names to Sylvia Crooks, chronicler of Nelson’s wartime history, who created mini-biographies of each. Although she came up blank on twenty-eight of them, she found at least basic information on the rest. In 2005, Crooks published Homefront and Battlefront: Nelson BC in World War II, which profiled every local man killed in that war. For the local archives she also compiled two loose-leaf binders detailing those who died in World War I—in all, some four hundred pages—and referred to that information.
“Some of it I had at my fingertips,” she says. “Certainly any of the men who were killed in the war, because I’d already done those volumes for the archives. Some of the others I didn’t go as far afield.”
The list of 222 Anglican Church members that was among the unique items in the time capsule opened in 2011 included:
- Captain Cyril E. (Buster) Armbrister, who received the Military Medal for “conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in operations.” Just before the war ended, “with the greatest courage [he] rushed across the front in full view of the enemy guns, [and] gained a small bank from which he bombed the enemy’s only means of escape.” After the war, he became a Hollywood radio and film writer and director.
- Private Percival Charles Bland of the 27th Battalion CEF, an accountant at the Hudson’s Bay Company, who was reported missing at the Somme in 1916. His commanding officer wrote: “He was loved by all the officers of his platoon, and all men thought so much of him throughout his regiment.”
- Captain William Garland Foster, former editor and manager of the Nelson Daily News. He already had military training in Ottawa and went overseas as quartermaster of the 54th Battalion. Shortly before the war ended, he was injured in the Battle of Cambrai and later died, age thirty-nine. His wife, Annie Garland Foster, served overseas as a nurse but had returned to Canada by the time of his death.
- James Hurst, a Boer War veteran who worked as a deckhand and purser on the Kootenay Lake sternwheelers. Captured after a gas attack at Ypres in 1915, he spent the rest of the war in a German prison camp. He returned home to Crawford Bay and his job on the steamers. He was also an organist and choirmaster for the church, leading Christmas carollers around town.
- Three nursing sisters, including Jessie Robina Gilchrist, who enlisted with the army medical corps in 1917.
Lots of prominent Kootenay family names are also on the list, including Attree, Grizzelle, Horswill and Mawdsley.
Crooks says she gathered the information simply because she thought the church might like a more detailed record of the people and stories attached to each name.
“I got interested in some of the men who were in the war but survived,” she says. “I thought I’d like to try to get a picture of all those who went off, not just the ones who were killed.”
The card itself is now in the Touchstones Nelson archives.
Private Jack Peters (1892–1915)
In a letter to Gerald Peters dated March 11, 1915, Jack wrote:
You remember Boggs who used to command the High School cadets. He was killed by a sniper a few weeks ago. He was a lieutenant in E Company. Pretty hard luck so early in the war.
I’m writing this letter in the actual firing trench. Shells whistle over me every minute and now and again a bullet hits the parapet above. Sounds exciting but it isn’t. Just a little monotonous. We go out for a rest tonight to our billets, which are generally barns. We get plenty of freedom and can go to the villages to buy what we can—which isn’t much because they only give us three francs a month. I’ve got nearly $50 to my credit now which I cannot draw. If I were you I’d have some pay assigned because it’s so easy to fritter it away in England.
I suppose you know about Fritz winning the DSO and being mentioned in dispatches. Won’t
Father and Mother be tickled to death!
(Lieutenant Herbert Boggs of Victoria, BC, died February 26, 1915, in the Ypres Salient. He was the first BC boy, and one of the first Canadian officers, to die in the war.)
Fritz had received the Distinguished Service Order medal, second in rank only to the Victoria Cross, for valour in the Battle of Dogger Bank on January 24, 1915, in the war’s first confrontation between the British and German fleets in the North Sea. After the Meteor’s engine room was hit by a German shell, Fritz coolly braved flames and scalding water to save the lives of two ratings and prevent further explosions.
Jack was an easygoing, happy-go-lucky fellow who was content to leave the heroics to older brother Fritz. To ease his mother’s anxiety, he said in a letter to her dated January 27, 1915, “You needn’t worry about me because I don’t intend to put my head up above the trench to shoot the Germans. Me for where the earth is thickest and highest.” Hearing that his mother planned to travel to England, Jack wrote, “I hope you’ll be able to make it in the summer. Just about the time when I am invalided back to England.”
However, in the chaos of the Second Battle of Ypres on April 24, 1915, when Germans used poison chlorine gas for the first time in an offensive against Canadian troops, Jack, serving with the 4th Company of the 7th Battalion, disappeared in the vicinity of the village of St. Julien. With no other protection against the gas, Jack may have been one of the Canadians who famously held urine-soaked handkerchiefs against their nose and mouth to keep functioning. The stout defence by the courageous Canadians that day prevented a German breakthrough at Ypres that would have had dire consequences for the Allies. Jack was officially listed as “missing,” but his family believed a rumour that he was at German prison camp in Hanover.
In a letter to his mother dated April 20, 1916, a year after the Ypres battle, Fritz said, “I think it is now quite certain that the end of the war will see Jack on his way home.” However, a month later, in late May 1916, the Red Cross confirmed that Jack was not among the prisoners of war, so Canadian authorities declared he had died “on or after April 24, 1915,” with no identified remains.
Lieutenant Gerald Peters (1894–1916)
Longing to be close to her boys serving in the war—particularly her favourite child, Gerald— Bertha Gray Peters arrived in England in June 1915 and stayed there with relatives or in rented quarters for the next year and a half. Gerald and his mother were best friends and soulmates who shared a love of literature and theatre.
Gerald arrived in France in September 1915 with the Victoria Rifles and was in trench action in the Ypres Salient through the fall and early winter. In early 1916 he was thrilled to be called back to England for officer training. Writing to sister Helen in a letter dated February 16, 1916, Gerald said:
No doubt Mother has told you already about my amazing luck. The right amount of pull has succeeded in getting me a commission and I am back in dear old England and out of that Blasted Bloody Belgium. You can’t imagine how glorious it is to be back. It was simply miserable over there, no glamour or glory of war, just unending work and nothing to do if you did get any spare time. It isn’t hard to look back on, but at the time there was little fun in lying in ditches while their horrible machine guns swept over you, pattering everywhere…I had a periscope shot to pieces in my hand a few days back. It gave me a horrible shock and nearly knocked me down. The same instant a fellow near me had his brains blown out by the same machine gun. I left Belgium without any sorrow…
Mother came down yesterday, and joined me here…I do hope she will be able to take a little cottage near here while I am training, it would be so lovely for both of us.
I rather dread going back as an officer. It is a real responsibility—even a junior officer—as he has control of a platoon, about 50 men, and perhaps a big extent of trench. Fancy having to take out wiring parties to within 40 yards of the Germans and work for three hours in the open. It’s bad enough to be on these parties, let alone commanding them. However, it will be better in most ways, and I will have a glorious time in England first. If you ever hear a man say he wants to get back to the firing line again, you can tell him he is a darned liar.
Gerald transferred to the 7th Battalion as a lieutenant. Writing to Bertha on May 24, 1916, he was caught up with the enthusiasm among the Canadian soldiers preparing for a massive summer offensive to defeat the Germans:
I can’t tell you how splendid this battalion is. The spirit of all the officers and men is wonderful. The C.O. seems to be thought the world of by everyone. He is right there every time, keeps the battalion on the go…Harris seemed really delighted I had come, and introduced me to the others as one of his “oldest chums.” Rather decent of him. He talked a lot of poor old Jack. He said he had never met a man so cheerful and optimistic always. He often saw him at Salisbury, and Jack was one of the ones who never kicked then. You can’t think how glad I am to have him. I know he will help me a lot when he comes back next week.
It will reassure you to hear that we are going in to a pretty civilized part of the line. The method in the battalion is to give the Germans complete hell the first time in a trench, and then secure the upper hand at once. The men seem to be beyond compare.
On June 2, 1916, the Germans surprised the Allies by capturing Mount Sorrel, about ten kilometres southeast of St. Julien in the Ypres Salient. Standard practice in the war was to immediately launch a counteroffensive, before the enemy could establish themselves in the captured territory. The following morning, on June 3, 1916, Gerald and his unit (No. 3 Company of No. 11 Platoon, 7th Battalion) were sent out on a charge that lacked coordination and had no chance of success.
Writing to Gerald’s father, Frederick Peters, from a London hospital in August 1916, Sergeant Major Dawson said:
I have just got your address, and I thought I should like to let you know your son died just like a hero…
We got orders to advance from our present front line, which was really our old support line, as the Huns were occupying our front trench. Well, Sir, we had about 700 yards to go, and the rain of machine gun bullets was just like hail stones, but the boys just went over to their death with a mighty cheer. I saw Gerald drop, and the last words I heard him say were “Keep on boys, right after them.” I shall always remember him, he was the coolest boy I think I have ever seen, and he seemed so young. He dropped just about 60 yards outside our parapet, and that is the last I saw of him…
I know how it must have upset you all, over Gerald’s death, but I am glad I can console you a little with the story of how he died, as game as a lion and as gentle as a lamb. His life was short but, by God, he was a man. It quite upset me when I heard he was killed.
Gerald was listed as missing until his death was confirmed in early July. Writing her sister Margaret on July 5, 1916, Bertha said, “It has crushed my soul. I cannot write about it.” She begged Fritz to go to Ypres to investigate Gerald’s death, and what was being done with his remains. Fritz learned that Gerald crawled into a shell hole for safety after being hit by bullets, and later was found dead at a different spot. Gerald was buried in a nearby cemetery which was destroyed by shelling later in the war, so Gerald joined Jack among the thousands of Canadian dead at Ypres with no identified remains. Both their names are on the Menin Gate Memorial.
Private Noel Peters (1894–1964)
Unable to serve in the army, Noel suffered a serious nervous breakdown in the spring of 1915 because of relentless bullying and harassment from gangs and individuals who assumed he was shirking his duty. In May 1917 he was finally accepted for service in the Canadian Forestry Corps and went overseas for logging work in Allied countries. He survived the war but was estranged from his mother, who resented that he was alive and Gerald wasn’t. Noel lived on the fringes of society in Vancouver and died at Shaughnessy Veterans Hospital in 1964.
Captain Fritz Peters, VC, DSO, DSC and Bar, DSC (US), RN (1889–1942)
Fritz received another medal for valour, the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC), in March 1918 for his attacks on enemy U-boats. Retiring from the navy in 1920, he returned at age fifty in 1939 to serve in World War II. In July 1940 he was awarded a Bar to his DSC after a trawler force under his command sank two U-boats. He earned the Victoria Cross and the US Distinguished Service Cross for valour in the attack on the harbour of Oran, Algeria, on November 8, 1942, in the Allied invasion of North Africa. Tragically, Fritz died five days later when the flying boat transporting him back to England crashed into Plymouth Sound.
Years later, Helen Peters Dewdney, who died in Trail in 1976 at age eighty-nine, was often asked about her brother Fritz who won all the medals. While she was proud of Fritz’s accomplishments, she could not reflect on him without also talking about brothers Jack and Gerald, who died with scant recognition early in the Great War.
The Cenotaphs of Hedley, Penticton, Prince George, and Nanaimo
From Our Listeners
The Story of Edward Greenwood Christensen: Eddy grew up in a large family of nine children and, like all pioneer children, had to be tough, daring and self-reliant to survive. These attributes were later absolutely necessary to survive the horrible conditions in the mud and mire of France. [Read more]
William Philip of the Canadian Engineers: He enlisted and left his wife at home with two very small daughters. Nancy was just two years old and Flora only two months old. His family was living with his father in North Vancouver, and while he was gone, his wife and daughters suffered from the Spanish influenza. [Read more]
Prince Rupert and the Peters Boys: Jack and Gerald both worked as bank clerks, but Noel was unable to find employment due to a moderate, but noticeable, mental disability. All three of the younger brothers trained with the Earl Grey’s Own Rifles militia but, unlike Fritz, would not have chosen a military career in normal circumstances. [Read more]
A Cool Head in the Trenches: The mud and the rain is the worst we have to contend with and is certainly hell. There isn’t much to write about from here, and we can’t say anything about the country. We are out for a rest now and we sure need it. It will take a week to scrape the mud off our clothes. [Read more]
Quesnel, the Centre of Sacrifice in the Central Interior: Several men left town to make their individual contributions, but it was not until May of 1915 that there was any organized recruitment in the interior of the province. Until then, men who wished to enlist had to travel to Vancouver or Victoria as there were no military units operating outside the major centres. [Read more]
My Grandfather Alfred James Nash (1893–1988): Alf’s father went to the Boer War after the Black Week in 1899 and did not return. Alf’s older brother, Phil, had been given a one-way ticket to Saskatchewan in 1907. After the mum died, Alf at fifteen was also given a one-way ticket to Saskatchewan. He left the train at Portage and Main and found work. [Read more]
Albert Leslie Knight: On Sunday, March 24, 1918 (less than eight months before the war ended), Great-uncle Leslie was killed in action during the German offensive near Nestle, France, at the age of just nineteen years. Leslie’s parents were initially informed that their son was reported wounded and missing in action. [Read more]
He Never Knew His Father: What possessed twenty-eight-year-old John to enlist in 1916 is unknown as he would have been exempt as a married man until at least the Military Service Act of 1917. After training, he was drafted to the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles (CMR) and in France, he reported on May 31, 1916, in the Ypres sector of Flanders as one of 160 replacements. [Read more]