Walter John Hallam, #476612, Canadian Field Artillery

Robert Hallam dropped off a thick envelope here at CBC containing photocopies of various documents, with a chronology and commentary connected to his father’s Great War experiences. Walter John Hallam first enlisted with the militia at Fort Rodd Hill near Victoria in 1914. The following year he volunteered with the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Esquimalt. His attestation papers indicate that he was a blacksmith by trade, with a scar on his left index finger and on the right forearm. He was twenty-three years, seven months old.

Robert writes: “He arrived at the front probably in April 1916 and saw limited action at the Somme. While sitting there on the bank of the river with two others, the middle soldier was shot dead in the mouth by a sniper. This is about the time he gave his stripes back. He said, ‘There was no sense in getting killed for fifteen cents.’”

Walter John Hallam. Courtesy of Robert Hallam

Assigned to the 10th Battery 1st Division Canadian Field Artillery, Walter delivered ammunition to the eighteen-pound guns near the front by a team of horses and caisson (two-wheeled carts). Robert writes this was “an extremely dangerous job, especially never before having been on a horse.” His battery moved on to the Vimy Ridge assault and was among the first to reach the top on the first morning of the attack.

The mud and horrors of Passchendaele began for the Canadians later that fall, as Robert says, “Not his idea of a good time.” Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson’s The Gunners of Canada points to a sky-high attrition rate: “Casualties began occurring in the first 24 hours and mounted steadily during the next four weeks. The 10th Battery CFA was to suffer casualties of 200 per cent during the Passchendaele battle.” Walter survived.

Then in April 1918 a shell exploded near him and his horse. The animal reared, landed on him and in the process injured Walter’s leg. He thought this could be the ticket back to England, but it was not to be. He was sent to hospital at Etaples. “The British had a supply dump next to the Canadian hospital at Etaples. The Germans bombed; they got the hospital, too. On return to the hospital after running to the fields, he saw that everything had been destroyed.”

After Walter was patched up he was sent back to the battery to cook in the trailer kitchen. Robert picks up the story: “Sounds good, all is well. Not so. On July 18, 1918, after leaving his post in the trailer to relieve himself, a 5.9-inch shell blew up the trailer; on his return it was gone.

“Shortly after, in October 1918 my dad saw Raymond Brewster of Victoria coming up the road. Remember Victoria was then a relatively small town and he knew the premier’s son well. ‘Why the hell are you here?’ Dad asked. Freshfrom a bombproof job in London, Brewster wanted to be able to say he had been at the front. Dad liked telling the story, always getting from me the comment ‘That’s terrible.’ He would then say, ‘Well, Brewster gave his life for his country.’ On November 1, 1918, while in an observation tower, Brewster was hit and the tower blown to pieces.”

The toll was terribly high for Walter’s 10th Battery; by the end of the war they had suffered a 180 percent casualty rate. When he returned home he hit the road for a dozen years. He gold-panned on the Rogue River in Oregon and explored the western states. As he told his son, “You can’t run away from your trouble; eventually you just get tired.” When Pierre Berton phoned to ask about his war experiences, Walter didn’t mince words: “We all volunteered, the horses did not.” And that was that.

Robert concludes: “In the end there was something special about the relationship between the men he served with. Lieutenant Thomas Grantham Norris, a childhood friend, was one of those. The two men were from different worlds. Norris was a Supreme Court judge and Dad was an industrial blacksmith but on his deathbed Norris wanted to talk to Dad. They had been part of the most feared army on the Western Front...My dad died in 1990 at the age of ninety-eight a happy man. He held his end up.”

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