Jump to content

Battle of Passchendaele Remembered 11 November 2017


BigJohn#3RD
 Share

Recommended Posts

America had just started sending troops to get accustomed to front-line operations this month in the quiet sectors of the Western Front. In the meantime, the other allied armies were fighting another battle of attrition in the third year of the Great War.
"The Battle of Passchendaele had just ended the day before; Official History, Brigadier-General J. E. Edmonds put British casualties at 244,897 and wrote that equivalent German figures were not available, estimating German losses at 400,000". (1)
"The Battle of Passchendaele is a vivid symbol of the mud, madness and the senseless slaughter of the First World War. In the late summer of 1917, the British launched a major offensive against German forces holding Passchendaele ridge, overlooking the city of Ypres, Belgium. The battlefield became a quagmire. Canadian forces entered the fray in October, capturing the ridge and Passchendaele village at [the] cost of 15,600 casualties — a high price for a piece of ground that would be vacated for the enemy the following year". (2)

From north of the border, Canadian Family reunited with medals of Great Uncle Killed 100 years ago in Passchendaele.

 

 

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele

 

(2) http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/battle-of-passchendaele/

 

From north of the border, Canadian Family reunited with medals of Great Uncle Killed 100 years ago.

 

ST. CLEMENTS —Frank McKinnon grew up poor and was orphaned before the enemy killed him in combat at 19. He has no grave.

A sister kept his war medals but they disappeared long ago. Now an extraordinary act of remembrance has reunited his family with the missing medals he never got to wear, while revealing something special about his death, 100 years later.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Don Haber, 89, the soldier’s nephew. His mother who lost the medals “would be so elated right now. She’d be in tears.”

How his medals came home and what it means to his family is a story of curious kin, online sleuthing, fortuitous timing and a stranger’s grace.

In November 1917 Frank McKinnon huddled in a trench at Passchendaele in Belgium, facing the German enemy on the Western Front. He’d been at the front for less than three months after reaching France in August.

The Allies threw Canadian soldiers into the Passchendaele offensive in October 1917 over the objections of Sir Arthur Currie, the Canadian commander. As Currie feared, Canada suffered 15,654 killed or wounded on a muddy battlefield that was little more than an open graveyard.

“They knew sending these guys in that they were sending them into a bloodbath,” said Bill Haber, 55, a retired Kitchener school principal who lives in St. Clements. McKinnon was his great uncle.

mckinnon.jpg.size.custom.crop.850x618.jp
Private Frank Angus McKinnon of the 102nd Battalion is circled in this photo. McKinnon enlisted in February 1917 days after turning 19. He was working as a machinist in Brantford, Ont. making artillery shells in a munitions factory.

McKinnon, an infantry private, enlisted in February 1917, days after turning 19. He was working as a machinist in Brantford, Ont. making artillery shells in a munitions factory.

A family photograph shows him standing in his uniform beside his girlfriend, Pearl. She’s despondent, dressed in black as if already in mourning.

McKinnon grew up poor in Brantford. He was orphaned by 10. Tuberculosis killed his mother. His father died in a workplace accident, buried alive when a trench collapsed.

What drove him to enlist? Was he a patriot? Was it the private’s pay at $1.10 per day? Was it the adventure? Bill Haber is uncertain after researching McKinnon’s hardscrabble life.

“At what point when he was over there did he realize this is a really, really horrible place to be?” Haber wonders.

The army put McKinnon in the 102nd infantry battalion. It had a supporting role at Passchendaele, spared the worst combat but never out of harm’s way.

When McKinnon got there it was wet and cold. The Germans shelled his battalion nightly and fired poison gas. Soldiers struggled to move in mud deep enough to swallow a man up to his armpits.

The Allies launched their offensive in July 1917. It sputtered to a close by Nov. 10, 1917, after Canadian troops captured the village of Passchendaele. The Allies moved the front slightly but failed to break through at a cost of almost 500,000 dead or wounded, counting both sides.

On Nov. 12 McKinnon’s battalion was ordered to a supporting area near the front line. Soldiers formed stretcher parties to search for dead and wounded. The enemy shelled them steadily. Enemy airplanes filled the skies, seemingly unopposed.

On Nov. 16 his battalion was sent into the front line to relieve another tired unit. The Germans shelled them heavily for two days, killing a dozen battalion troops on Nov. 17.

The morning of Nov. 18 found McKinnon in the trenches. A German shell exploded, killing him instantly when a piece of its casing tore into his head, a casualty record reveals. The same day, enemy bombs killed three comrades and wounded seven others.

Hours later the battalion withdrew from the front, relieved at 5 p.m. by a British unit. Sent to the rear, the troops enjoyed a hot meal and rum. The battalion’s daily war diary notes: “The 102nd battalion has the honour of being the last Canadian unit to leave Passchendaele.”

death_notice.jpg.size.custom.crop.488x65
The death notice that appeared in the Brantford Expositor for Frank Angus McKinnon. He was born Angus Frank McKinnon (Angus was his father's name) but was known and enlisted as Frank Angus McKinnon.

McKinnon’s hometown newspaper announced his death with few facts in five lines. He was 19, left two sisters and a brother, and worked in a munitions factory. “He had been in France but for two months before being killed,” the Brantford Expositor said.

His younger sister Ethel kept his service medals and rarely spoke of him. What relatives heard is that Ethel thought Frank was nice and that he did not survive long.

“She was very, very stiff upper lip when it came to talking about the past,” said Bill Haber, her grandson. He recalls asking his grandmother about her lost brother. “It was like pulling teeth out of an alligator.”

Eventually Ethel lost track of her brother’s medals. Family lore is that she loaned them to a cousin who did not return them. This might have happened in the 1940s.

Then Bill Haber made a startling discovery.

Searching online last February, he discovered an auction of military memorabilia out of London, Ont. There for the asking price of $200 he found the medals of Pte. F.A. McKinnon, 102nd Canadian infantry, killed in action Nov. 18, 1917. This stunned Haber. “I didn’t even know they existed,” he said.

For five years he’s been planning a pilgrimage to Passchendaele this November. He’s pondered the motivations of his great uncle, the controversial battle that killed him, the legacy of the Great War and the meaning of remembrance. And suddenly his great uncle’s long-missing medals resurface?

Startled, Haber contacted auctioneer Wendy Hoare to find that the medals put up for sale by one collector had already been sold to a different collector for $400. Hoare would not reveal the parties involved but agreed to forward a letter.

medals.jpg.size.custom.crop.708x650.jpg
Frank Angus McKinnon of the 102nd Battalion was killed at Passchendaele in 1917.

Haber wrote to the new owner in February asking to buy the medals. He explained that he planned to visit Passchendaele to honour Frank’s memory. He wrote that the family wants the medals “so they may be reunited with the little memory and artifacts we have on Frank’s life and to remain part of our family history for generations to come. I believe Frank would like that.”

Hearing nothing back, Haber reached out to the auctioneer again in October.

A letter arrived Nov. 1. In five handwritten pages the veteran collector said he was torn by Haber’s request in part because the McKinnon medals may be significant.

“I saw the possibility of him being the last Canadian killed at Passchendaele,” the collector wrote.

The collector wondered if the medals might be better placed with the Canadian War Museum, where they might be displayed, rather than returning to a family that might not cherish them. But after hearing from Haber again, “I am only too happy, in fact, very happy to GIFT the medals with my blessings to you and your family.”

The collector, who wants to remain anonymous, asked that Haber forward a video of his Passchendaele pilgrimage, and that he consider taking the medals to schools on Remembrance Day “for a show and tell of your experience and the importance of Frank’s journey through his short life.”

haber.jpg.size.custom.crop.831x650.jpg
Bill Haber, right, and his father Don, holding a photograph, Next of Kin Memorial Plaque, and a death certificate, related to the death of their ancestor, Private Frank Angus McKinnon.

Haber intends to do this. It seems spiritual to him that the medals found their way home days before the 100th anniversary of his great uncle’s death. “He never got to wear his medals,” he said.

It has long bothered Haber that his great uncle passed through the world so little noticed, poor, orphaned, and killed far from home with no grave. To know he was among the last Canadians killed at Passchendaele provides at least a small measure of historical recognition.

“I just want to give him a life,” Haber said. “It’s almost like he’s forgotten. For me I thought, he deserves better.”

Passchendaele is difficult to comprehend. The battle is widely regarded as proof of Great War futility. Five months after McKinnon died, the Germans recovered all the ground they lost there and more.

The 102nd battalion “gained no particular honour or glory there,” Sgt. Leonard Gould wrote after the war. “We had just done the little that we had been set to do, but had suffered casualties out of all proportion to our task, and that it is which makes the memory of Passchendaele a nightmare.”

It distresses Haber to think his great uncle’s life was wasted. He reasons instead that if Canada hadn’t joined the war and the Germans had won, Canadians might not know the same freedoms and opportunity. Passchendaele by this argument “was every bit as worthy as every other battle they fought.”

On Nov. 11 he will stand at Ypres in Belgium with the medals. He plans to lay a wreath at the Menin Gate Memorial where his great uncle is among more than 54,000 names on a wall.

Haber and his wife Lisa Rutherford have hired an expert guide to tour the Passchendaele battlefield. They want to know where Frank died.

There on Nov. 18, 100 years after he was killed, they will reflect on an impoverished orphan whose sacrifice was almost forgotten until curiosity and a stranger’s grace helped restore him in memory. “I want him to know we came back for him,” Haber said.

Frank McKinnon was lost and now is found.

Contact Jeff Outhit at [email protected] and on Twitter: @OuthitRecord

 

 

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/11/11/orphaned-at-10-killed-in-battle-at-19-soldier-who-died-at-passchendaele-never-got-to-wear-his-medals.html

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My great grandfather was at Passchendaele with the Canadians. He was exposed to mustard gas when his howitzer unit got shelled and he had to be medically discharged because of it. He never talked about the war or what he did and saw much but he never wore shorts or short sleeved shirts, even during the hot summers (my guess he didn't want others to see what the gas had done to him).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...