The only other possible direction was to look through the Commonwealth War Graves Registry. So -- off to another site I went. Again, with the searching for the correct war and year, I was faced with another alphabetical listing of Canadian war dead. I held my breath as I scrolled through the volumes and I'm sure I let out a cheer of sorts when the W surnames link existed. Here, I had to go page by page through the digitized pages of the original documents. Would there be one for my family member? Miraculously, he was there -- both pages of the casualty report intact. Here was the first surprise. The date of death was October 2, 1918 not the November date recorded by family members sometime in the past 100 years. Interesting. Perhaps notification took a month. We may never know. The document clearly noted he was killed in action and didn't die of earlier wounds. The handwritten information for the unconfirmed and confirmed burial reports showed the same location. Each had different abbreviations for the town in the area, which did help to decipher where this grave would be -- that and the two different handwriting styles <smile>. The next step was to figure out where the town cited was or if it still existed. It is a small village outside a larger town. Looking for war cemeteries produced two possibilities. Scrolling through a list that was neither chronological or alphabetical, nor was it listed by cemetery section, took some time. Sadly the man in question was not listed. So, on to the next cemetery. These listings were alphabetical, so I could begin near the end of the alphabet and not have to scroll or click through hundreds of other pages. I did find a listing for this relative. The link to his grave information still had the same section, row and grave number as on the other document. I read the information listed as what was on the grave marker. It was him. Then, I realized that what I thought was a photo to pretty up the page was actually a photo of his grave marker!
My next search took me to figure out during which battle he might have died. It was part of the Hundred Day Offensive (Canada's 100 Days) which included the larger group of battles called Battle of Amiens. The timing and location of his death fits with the five day battle of Canal du Nord, where Canadians gained the high ground east of Tilloy-lez-Canbrai where he is buried. While I began this search thinking he had died 8 days before the armistice, it was still sad to see he died at the end of the battle just hours before the First Division moved back to reserve while other Divisions moved forward to the front. He was so close to making it home -- on day 56 of the Hundred Days when allied forces were moving through the push to Mons. These final battles came under criticism of Arthur Currie's reasons for continuing as an armistice was inevitable. Was it strategic or symbolic? Battles had begun the war near Mons, so heading back could hold great symbolism -- but was that the main reason for the tens of thousands of dead just on the allied side? I'm not sure those questions brought much peace to those involved in the process or their families.
The song I chose for today came when I looked closely at the grave marker photo. There was a rose growing beside the stone. The northeastern area of France where he fought and died had been in the region of Picardy. Those two items left only one song in the running. This operatic trained singer does an amazing job with this lovely popular melody. Enjoy!
Roses of Picardy -- Mario Lanza
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