There is a plaque along the west wall of St Thomas Anglican church in Millbrook “In loving memory of William Henry Bateson…. killed at Passchendaele Nov 6th, 1917”.
His name is not on our local cenotaph and I have wondered about this over the years.
Sergeant Bateson was the son of William and Sarah Bateson. He was born in Millbrook in 1875 and was raised there. His father was the builder who won the contract to construct the town hall, now the Nexicom building.
In 1914, when he enlisted into the Canadian Army, he was married to Mary Warren Bateson; they had no children. They were living on Gladstone Avenue in Toronto, a pleasant middle class neighbourhood. He was employed as a printer, a respectable trade. At 39 years of age, he was middle aged for the time.
Why would a settled middle aged man enlist to fight in an overseas war? It must be remembered that Canada was a different place at this time. The English speaking middle class had strong ties to Britain; to God, King and Country. Most likely he felt it was his patriotic duty to serve the Motherland. In any case, he was posted to the 5th Canadian Field Ambulance (CFA). This was a front line unit whose task was to bring the wounded away from the battlefield, perform initial treatment and dressing of wounds, then transport those still alive to a general hospital beyond the range of the guns for further treatment. Their work was done while well within the range of enemy gunfire.
In early November 1917, the Canadians were embroiled in the battle of Passchendaele, one of the bloodiest and most futile efforts of the entire war. The History of the 5th CFA describes how “It all seems like one long, weird, and terrible nightmare of water-filled trenches, zigzagging duckwalks, foul slime-filled shell holes, half buried bodies of dead men, horses and mules, cement pillboxes, twisted wire, shrieking shells, flying humming metal, crashing aerial bombs, stinking mud, water-logged and blood-soaked stretchers… we moved about like dazed automatons… almost too stunned to care whether we lived or died.” “On November 6th, Captain Colbeck, Frank O’Leary, Harry Rowley, Jack Burrill and George Mulligan were wounded; and Bill Bateson, Percy Moyer, Harry Thurston, Max Odessky and Jimmy Blackwood were killed”.
Sergeant Bateson’s body is buried in the Ypres Reservoir Cemetery. The epigraph is “He Giveth His Beloved Sleep”.
11,285 fallen Canadians have no known burial site. Their names are inscribed in the Vimy Memorial.
The “War to End All Wars” had an immense impact on Canadian society. Over 1/3 of the eligible male population served in the Armed Forces. 67,000 died and 170,000 were wounded, not including those who suffered or later died after the war as a result of their wounds, both physical and psychological. Thousands of memorials such as the Millbrook cenotaph were made in memory of those lost overseas and November 11th became a solemn civic holiday.
Nowadays, there are none left who served in the First World War and not many who knew them directly. This is true to a lesser extent of those who served in the Second World War and Korea. Perhaps then, Remembrance Day can serve to honour all those who have sacrificed for their country and fellow man, regardless of who they were or whether we knew them. After all, the desire for remembrance of those who have passed away seems to be innate to the human character. Formal ceremonies in recognition of this still serve a purpose, even in today’s distracted culture.
Now and Then By Dan Bourgeois