Stewart Edward Brown

When Stewart Edward Brown was born on March 25, 1890, in Port Stanley, Ontario, Canada, his father, John, was 23 and his mother, Carra, was 23. He was the oldest of his seven siblings; Mary, Ken, Greta, Percy, Elizabeth and Bessie.

Port Stanley 1890-1900

By 1901 the family moved from Port Stanley to Chatham. They attended the Chatham St Andrews Church of England congregation.

St Andrews

Chatham Central School

He married Charlotte Lougheed on May 24, 1913 and settled in Detroit. They lived at 176 Merrick Street near the Detroit Institute of Arts and Stewart was working as a motor mechanic. Stewart was 5’3″ with brown eyes and brown hair. Stewart registered with the U. S. Armed Services in June 2017. He was working as a chauffer for E. Walton & Company.

Stewart enlisted in Canadian Railway Construction troops on February 18, 1918. Stewart sailed on the S.S, Mileta arrived in England on April 18, 1918.

By June he was in France with the 1st Canadian Railway Troops, 7th Field Company. The 1st Canadian Construction Battalion arrived in France in October 1916 where effective November 11th was converted and designated as the 1st Canadian Railway Construction Battalion. In February 1917 the designation was changed to the 1st Battalion Canadian Railway Troops. This unit being disbanded under General Order 196 of 1920. Stewart held the rank of Driver/Private (Dvr), his brother Kenneth also served in France with the motor pool. Stewart became ill with the flu and was given a 10 day Sick Furlough to London in February 1919 afterward to report to the Knotty Ash Camp in Liverpool where his rank was switched to Sapper/Private (Spr). He was pronounced Fit for Duty in April 2019 and was discharged on October 2, 1919. He was in France for 11 months and received $575 for his service.

After the war, the couple settled at 6035 Fourteenth St in Detroit. Stewart worked as an auto repairman. He died on June 21, 1961, at the age of 71.

James Grant & the Battle of Ypres

James Grant, born in 1896 was an adopted son of Joseph Grant and Mary Stout (daughter of Elizabeth Dornan) grew up in Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada.

On September 22, 1914, at the age of 18 and 4 months he enlisted with the 1st Battalion, Machine Gun Division, Canadian Expeditionary Overseas Forces (C.E.F) as an active militia member of the 1st Hussars of Canada. the 1st Hussars motto was HODIE NON CRAS (Today not tomorrow).  He was 5’5″ with grey eyes and light brown hair.

He trained at CFB Valcartier Quebec which was originally erected as a military training camp in August 1914 as part of the mobilization of the Canadian Expeditionary Force at the onset of World War I.[1]  The name Valcartier comes from the town of Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier, of which a large section was expropriated in order to create the military training camp. Due to its proximity to the Port of Quebec, Valcartier became the largest military camp on Canadian soil, including some 32,000 men and 8,000 horses.

According to his military papers, James served in Canada, England, France and Belgium.  He had shrapnel in his right shoulder which impacted movement and bullets to his right arm and back.  He received no medals or decorations for his service though he was granted the right to wear two stripes and a gold braid.  He was wounded in both battles at Ypres  on April 22, 1915 and June 13, 1916.

During World War I, the Battle of Ypres 1915 (2nd Battle of Ypres) was fought from 22 April – 25 May 1915 for control of the strategic Flemish town of Ypres in western Belgium.3  Therefore, James was wounded on the 1st day of the Battle of Gravenstafel Ridge.

Men Under Gas Illustration by J. Matanic (?) (bottom left) From p. 57 of The Times History of the War Illustrated, Volume 4. (1915)

The Battle of Ypres was the first mass use by Germany of poison Chlorine gas on the Western Front. It also marked the first time a former colonial force (the 1st Canadian Division) defeated a European power.  German chemists proposed to Colonel Max Bauer that the Germans could empty the opposing trenches by a surprise attack with tear gas. After a field test a decision was made to use heavier than air chlorine gas. The chemical attack was launched on 22 April 1915 shortly after 17:00; French troops in the path of the gas cloud sustained about 6,000 casualties. Many died within ten minutes and others were blinded.

An officer described the scene: Dusk was falling when from the German trenches in front of the French line rose that strange green cloud of death. The light north-easterly breeze wafted it toward them, and in a moment death had them by the throat. One cannot blame them that they broke and fled. In the gathering dark of that awful night they fought with the terror, running blindly in the gas-cloud, and dropping with breasts heaving in agony and the slow poison of suffocation mantling their dark faces. Hundreds of them fell and died; others lay helpless, froth upon their agonized lips and their racked bodies powerfully sick, with tearing nausea at short intervals. They too would die later – a slow and lingering death of agony unspeakable. The whole air was tainted with the acrid smell of chlorine that caught at the back of men’s throats and filled their mouths with its metallic taste.
— Captain Alfred Oliver Pollard, The Memoirs of a VC (1932)[4]

After the war, German casualties from 21 April to 30 May 1915 were recorded as 34,933 by the official historians of the Reichsarchiv. In the British Official History, J. E. Edmonds and G. C. Wynne recorded British losses of 59,275 casualties, the French about 18,000 casualties on 22 April and another 3,973 from 26–29 April. Canadian casualties from 22 April to 3 May were 5,975, of whom about 1,000 men were killed. The worst day was 24 April, when 3,058 casualties were suffered during infantry attacks, artillery bombardments and gas discharges.

Canadian participation in the Battle of Gravenstafel is commemorated on the Saint Julien Memorial in the village. The village of Saint Julien and a section of forested land called Saint Julien Wood was the junction between the British and French sectors of responsibility. James Grant’s Canadian First Division was assigned the most northern section of the British line and to their left, the 45th (Algerian) Division held the southernmost end of the French line. The German Army had brought forward 168 tons of chlorine gas deployed in 5,730 cylinders buried in front of their trenches, opposite Langemark-Poelkapelle, north of Ypres.[6]

The Canadians, who had been moved into their positions only a few days earlier were manning the lines for several hundred meters along a front to the southwest of St. Julien when the German Army unleashed the first poison gas attack on the Western Front on 22 April 1915. James was advancing when he was shot in the right arm and shoulder.  He was given 3 months light duty after his wounds were deemed healed.

Pushed towards the Allied lines by a wind from the north, the initial gas attack largely drifted to the north and west of the Canadian lines, into the trenches of the French colonial troops of the French 45th (Algerian) and 87th (Territorial) Divisions, of 26th Reserve Corps.[2] The gas drifted across positions largely held French colonial troops who broke ranks and abandoned their trenches after witnessing the early casualties, creating an 8,000 yard (7 km) gap in the Allied line.

The German infantry were also wary of the gas and, lacking reinforcements, failed to exploit the break before the First Canadian Division and assorted French troops reformed the line in scattered, hastily prepared positions 1,000 to 3,000 yards apart.[3] In actions at Kitcheners Wood, Mauser Ridge, Pilkem Ridge and Gravenstafel Ridge the Canadians held the line and prevented a German breakthrough until they were relieved by reinforcements on the 24 April. In the 48 crucial hours that they held the line, 6,035 Canadians – or one man in every three who went into battle – became casualties; of that number, approximately 2,000 (or one man in every nine) were killed.

The diary entry of Canadian soldier A. T. Hunter about the first use of chlorine gas as a weapon in WWI.
The French troops “saw none of this installation of premeditated murder. Looking across to the German trenches at about five in the afternoon, they saw a series of sharp puffs of white smoke and then trundling along with the wind came the queer greenish-yellow fog that seemed strangely out of place in the bright atmosphere of that clear April day. It reached the parapet, paused, gathered itself like a wave and ponderously lapped over into the trenches.
“Then passive curiosity turned to active torment – a burning sensation in the head, red-hot needles in the lungs, the throat seized as by a strangler. Many fell and died on the spot. The others, gasping, stumbling with faces contorted, hands wildly gesticulating, and uttering hoarse cries of pain, fled madly through the villages and farms and through Ypres itself, carrying panic to the remnants of the civilian population and filling the roads with fugitives of both sexes and all ages.”
— A.T. Hunter, Canadian Soldier, who witnessed the first chlorine gas attack. Excerpt from “Canada in the Great World War” (1919), The Second Battle of Ypres.[7]

During the Second Battle of Ypres, Lt. Col. John McCrae M.D. of Guelph wrote In Flanders Fields in the voice of those who perished in the war. Published in Punch 8 December 1915, the poem is still recited on Remembrance Day and Memorial Day.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead: Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields!
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

James’ second wounding on June 13, 1916  the last day in the Battle of Mont Sorrel (2–13 June 1916) took place south of Ypres with the 20th Division (XIV Corps) and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Canadian divisions of the Canadian Corps.[8] The main thrust of the German attack principally came from two divisions of the German XIII (Württemberger) Corps, which launched a sudden artillery bombardment, followed by an infantry attack on 2 June at 13.07 hours towards British encampment on  high ground. The German Army’s aim was for a limited attack to clear the British Army off this advantageous high ground, the only high ground with dominating views for observation over the German sector that it possessed at this time.[9] The German artillery barrage at the start of the German attack and the committed  defense by the Canadians resulted in many Canadian casualties and the high ground of the Canadian positions from Mount Sorrel to Hill 62 (Tor Top) was captured. A Canadian counter-attack on 3 June was unsuccessful and the fighting continued for another ten days.

On 13 June, the day James was wounded for a second time,  the Canadians were again in possession of their old Front Line area and the German gains of 2 June had for the most part been reinstated. Some attempts by the Germans in the early hours of 14 June to make counter-attacks were not successful and the battle drew to a close. The Canadian casualties by the end of the 13 days of fighting were just under 8,500; 1,000 men were killed and another 1,900 were missing. German casualties were estimated to have been approximately 5,700.[10]

He was released and sent back to Canada on the SS Megantic then discharged at Woolsey Barracks, the rank of private, as medically unfit in August 1918 at London, Ontario.

He complained of pain from his injuries to his shoulder including weakness and partial loss of function, partial loss of function and numbing on the right thigh, arm and back.  The scar tissue from the shrapnel would was adhering to surrounding tissue making movement lessened and painful.  Plus the impact on his body from his right leg “being buried” at Ypres. His leg’s burial by a shell as documented in his military papers was in June of 1916 during the Battle of Mount Sorrel where German pioneers detonated four mines near the Canadian forward trenches, before the Germans attacked with six battalions, five more battalions in support and an additional six in reserve. His discharge papers document his consistent turns in the hospital for cough, loss of appetite, stomach ailments, headaches, vomits easily and constant pain.  He also complained of dizzy spells.  He was furloughed in August of 1915 for 7 days but overstayed that furlough by 4 months so he served 61 days in detention.  The C.E.F. made sure to dock his pay.  His papers state that the permanent disability and all the other symptoms remarkedly did not add up to James being hampered in earning a living it would just be done with “lessened efficiency”.

The pace and intensity of industrialized warfare had profound effects on the human mind and body that were not related to wounds or physical injury. Poorly understood at the time and for many years afterwards, the crying, fear, paralysis, or insanity of soldiers exposed to the stress and horror of the trenches was often held by medical professionals to be a “bad attitude”, cowardice, and the result of physical damage to the brain by the shock of exploding shells. Military authorities often saw its symptoms as expressions of cowardice or lack of moral character. Its true cause, prolonged exposure to the stress of combat, would not be fully understood or effectively treated during the war.[11] Doctors diagnosed almost 10,000 Canadians with shellshock during the war. Medical treatment ranged from the gentle to the cruel. Freudian techniques of talk and physical therapy helped many victims, while more extreme methods involved electric shock therapy. During the latter, patients were electrocuted in the hope of stimulating paralyzed nerves, vocal chords, or limbs. Shock therapy was more effective than Freudian techniques in returning soldiers to the front, with about two-thirds of all patients returned to the front. It is unknown how many relapsed when they re-entered combat and eventually civilian life.

Civilian life did not far well with James.  He married Lilly Saville shortly after his return in 1918 but they divorced in 1924.  By the age of 22 he was  in prison,  and had been hauled into court in a inheritance dispute with his step mother and lost the fortune his father had left him, disappeared while on parole to address the inheritance dispute in court.

He was in Kingston Penitentiary and escaped parole in 1931.  Kingston, now a Canadian National Historic Site, was a maximum security prison located in Kingston, Ontario on the east side of Portsmouth Harbor.[12] Charles Dickens visited Kingston in 1842 and commented in his American Notes, “There is an admirable jail here, well and wisely governed, and excellently regulated, in every respect. The men were employed as shoemakers, ropemakers, blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters, and stonecutters; and in building a new prison, which was pretty far advanced towards completion. The female prisoners were occupied in needlework.”[3] Dickens obviously was not aware of the child prisoners who were regularly flogged.  Much of Alias Grace is set in Kingston Penitentiary where the real life Grace Marks was imprisoned. Most of Canada’s more notorious inmates have been held at Kingston Penitentiary over the years.  [13] When a riot broke out in 1932, Communist Party of Canada general secretary Tim Buck was in a KP cell serving time for sedition. While guards were ordered to fire shots through the peep-hole of cells where and when they detected a commotion, they also fired seven shots into Buck’s cell, which the government later admitted was just “to frighten him.” [14]

We do not know where James landed but next step is to check with the Petitionary. https://www.penitentiarymuseum.ca/

 

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFB_Valcartier
2. By Unknown – This image is available from Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec under the reference number P547S1SS1SSS1D513P019R, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8443689
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Ypres
4.  “2nd Battle of Ypres”, Spartacus Educational
5. Van der Kloot, W. (2004). April 1915: Five future Nobel prize-winners inaugurate weapons of mass destruction and the academic-industrial-military complex. Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 58: 149–160, 2004/
6. Simkins, Peter (2003). The First World War: The War to End All Wars. Osprey Publishing. p. 57. ISBN 978-1-84176-738-3.
7. http://chemicalweapons.cenmag.org/first-hand-accounts-of-the-first-chlorine-gas-attack/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Ypres
9. http://www.greatwar.co.uk/battles/ypres-salient/1916-battles-ypres-salient.htm
10. http://www.greatwar.co.uk/battles/ypres-salient/1916-battles-ypres-salient.htm
11. https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/life-at-the-front/trench-conditions/shellshock/
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Penitentiary
13. http://www.unitedwaykfla.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/KP-history-from-Dave-Johnston.pdf
14. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kingston-pen-7-things-to-know-about-canada-s-notorious-prison-1.1865605

Bernard Dornan Forever Soldier-Ireland to India to Red River to the Civil War

Bernard Dornan was born on November 1, 1802 in the Parish of Ardclinis, near the town of Glenarm, in the County of Antrim.  Glenarm (from Irish Gleann Arma, meaning ‘valley of the army’) is a village in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It lies on the North Channel coast north of the town of Larne and the village of Ballygalley, and south of the village of Carnlough. It is situated in the civil parish of Tickmacrevan and the historic barony of Glenarm Lower. Dating back to Norman times, the village is the family seat of the MacDonnells, who once occupied Dunluce Castle on the north coast. During the Great Irish Famine, the Glens of Antrim did not fare as poorly as the rest of Ireland. The Earl of Antrim, now resident in Glenarm, and the Marquess of Londonderry organised relief schemes of food and money for their tenants and built soup kitchens throughout the Glens. Glenarm’s soup kitchen is believed to have been to the rear of Altmore Street, along the river. The only other major historical event to occur in Glenarm during this period was in 1854, when a cholera epidemic afflicted the town. The epidemic began in the Bridge End Tavern and rapidly spread from house to house. A large percentage of the population eventually succumbed to the disease and was buried in a mass grave near the back wall of the graveyard of St. Patrick’s Church.

Bernard, a weaver by trade, served in the 47th Lancashire Foot Infantry from 24 Nov 1826- 16 Apr 1849, his regiment number was 446 and piece number was 613.  He was 5’6″ with Brown hair and hazel eyes and enlisted himself for a bounty of 3 pounds to serve his majesty King George the 4th.  He received the sum of 2 shillings and 6 pence upon taking the Oath of Fidelity to serve until he was legally discharged according to his papers.  He was warned in his paperwork regarding the 3rd and 4th Articles of Service  that any act of mutiny or sedition or does not suppress mutiny or sedition could lead to the penalty of death or other such punishment.

The 47th Foot Regiment was sent to Burma for service in the First Anglo-Burmese War.  The 47th sailed for Rangoon, where they joined the army which fought its way up the River Irrawaddy to Ava, near Mandalay.1  The Regiment distinguished itself in the capture of successive Burmese strongpoints, including the fort at Syrian, near Rangoon, and stockades at Donubyu, Prome and Malun, earning the Battle Honour ‘Ava’. The 47th Foot Regiment advanced up the River Irrawaddy to the Kingdom of Ava before returning to India in 1826 and embarking for England in 1829. 2

According to his British discharge papers, Bernard received a pension at the age of 42 in 1849 while at the  Royal Hospital, Kilmainham: Pension Admissions for disease of the lungs and impaired constitution.  His final tally of service in the 47th Foot was 22 years and 144 days.  He served almost 10 years abroad, in the Mediterranean, in the West Indies and British Guinea. His discharge papers indicate he was a good and faithful soldier, sober and trustworthy.  Discharged at Limerick, he was headed to Barrack Hill, Armagh, Ireland.

Armagh has been referred to as “the city of saints and scholars”. The educational tradition led to the foundation of the Royal School in 1608, St Patrick’s College in 1834 and the Armagh Observatory in 1790.3  Even though he was honorably discharged his papers show a few infractions over his  22 years career including many absent from parade or drill and irregular conduct in the bunks.  1835-1836 were especially hard with many citations of drunk on duty or drunk in the barracks. 1839 saw an infraction for taking his boots to the shoemaker without permission.  1841 was another year of drunk infractions and one beating his wife on May 1st. His final infraction of all 27 was “Sending a boy out of barracks for liquor”.  Amazing to discover that much detail 170 years later!!!

He married Mary Ann McMullen on January 31, 1830, in Belfast, Antrim, Northern Ireland.  They had 14 children but only 5 came to America. Their daughter Elizabeth (1840-1883) was born in Barbados West Indies  where Bernard was stationed. Son William (1843-1881) was born in England. After coming to America, Bernard spent 3 years at Red River Settlement near Amherstburg where John Edward (1860- ) was born.  It is not documented but Bernard must have been helping with the ” border management” at  Fort Amherstburg now known as Fort Malden. About 350 individual army pensioners, along with their families, occupied Amherstburg as part of the Pensioner Scheme. They were offered homes and small land grants in accordance with the Ordnance Reserves where in exchange they were employed by the Province to act as police and an interim military force. The Scheme at Fort Malden was considered to be very successful, not only for the pensioners but also the development of the town. Remaining either continually employed or receiving a full military pension, the retired soldiers were important financial assets to Amherstburg’s local economy. Additionally, the pensioners, many being Irish Catholic, added to the cultural development of Amherstburg, maintaining a strong presence until about the 1890s.10

New arrivals to Red River were Protestant and members of the Orange Order, an anti-French, anti-Catholic movement. Q. Why would this lead to conflict with the Metis? Economic problems – crop failures, bison hunts less successful than in earlier years. Canada Purchases Rupert’s Land. Soon after confederation (1867), the Canadian government and the HBC began to negotiations for the sale of Rupert’s Land. The HBC did not consult those living in Red River – government surveyors arrived in the Red River Valley; they assumed that the riverside farms of the Metis were not legally owned. By the 1860s, the fur trade and the influence of the HBC had declined. Yet, it was the arrival of new colonists – especially those from the Canadas – that had the greatest impact.

The Red River settlement in the 1860s brought crop failures and bison disappearing from the prairies. It was first settled by French-Canadian fur trappers who came to the area to trap beaver for pelts. These trappers married First Nations women and established the first true “Métis” culture (part native and part French-Canadian) in North America. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, Hudson Bay Company (HBC) traders established fur posts inland from Hudson Bay to compete with the North West Company that operated out of Montreal. The establishment at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers of a colony of displaced Scottish highlanders by Lord Selkirk, a shareholder in the HBC, was intended to gain control of this crucial river junction from the rival Nor’Westers. However, within a few decades Red River had become a predominantly Métis settlement of both French and English speakers.8

Canada bought Rupert’s Land part of the Northwest Territories from the Hudson Bay Company (HBC), doubling in size receiving 2.8 million hectares of farmland and the rights to continue fur trade.  The argument was to continue that the Red River Valley was part of New France with the French occupying the Territory. In 1857, a detachment of Royal Canadian Rifles (approx. 100 men) arrives “sent out at the request of the HBC to buttress its authority among the residents of Red River as well as to counter Sioux movements to the south and American troops stationed at Pembina.5  Settlers were unhappy by the show of force under HBC command. An anonymous letter-writer to the Toronto Globe complains that “arbitrary acts on the part of the Company’s people, give us just grounds of alarm at seeing military power in their hands … we would feel under the greatest obligations to you for giving publicity to our fears on the subject. … And at the same time we would feel obliged to any person who will … point out to us the object for which the troops are coming here.” [“Letter from the Red River,” The Daily Globe, news section (24 July 1857).By the 1860s, as Ontarian immigrants began to arrive in the settlement, pressures grew for annexation of the colony by Canada. Land disputes and cultural conflicts between the settlement’s Métis inhabitants and the growing Anglo elite were exacerbated by Canada’s 1869 annexation of Rupert’s Land. 9  The 1861 Canadian census showed Bernard, Mary, William, Elizabeth and John Edward living in Amherstburg with Bernard relaying on his military pension.  Elizabeth was working as a servant and William as a laborer.

Forever the soldier, Bernard enlisted in Detroit in the Union Army in 1862 under the alias of William Dowling as a Corporal in Company G 19 U.S. Infantry and honorably discharged  out of Lookout Mountain, TN on July 28, 1865. The story is that William Dowling of Wyandotte, Mi was paid by Samuel Belles of Macomb, Michigan to enlist in his place. William then paid Bernard Dornan of Amherstburg, Ontario to take his place. The discharge papers state that “He enlisted as a 23 year old but is at least 59.  He has been in a broken down condition since his enlistment.”  Bernard’s medical review at discharge indicated he had asthma and a debilitated condition due to age.

Bernard and Mary were provided a cottage with a Fort Malden redo.  The 1871 Census shows Bernard aged 68 and his wife, Mary aged 48  in Amherstburg with Elizabeth aged 19, William aged 17 and John Edward aged 9.  Bernard died on 20 December of 1883 of tuberculosis–that “asthma” he had during the Civil War was undoubtedly a precursor.

 

1. http://www.lancashireinfantrymuseum.org.uk/the-47th-lancashire-regiment-of-foot/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/47th_(Lancashire)_Regiment_of_Foot
3. By The Equalizer – OpenMap – This is a derivative work of an Open Street Map, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. The underlying map is © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75587441
4. https://prezi.com/eizouxglwkko/changes-to-the-red-river-settlement-1860-1870/
5. https://hallnjean2.wordpress.com/before-continues-1856-1865/
6. https://hallnjean2.wordpress.com/the-red-river-resistence/red-river-censuses/
7. http://firstpeoplesofcanada.com/fp_metis/fp_metis_background.html
8. http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/72/redrivervalley.shtml
9. http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/72/redrivervalley.shtml
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Malden

Edward Dornan

When Edward William Joseph Dornan was born on July 29, 1888, in Detroit, Michigan, his father, John, was 27 and his mother, Frances, was 30.   At age 12, Ed and his sister, Mary, were living with Mary and Joseph Grant, his Aunt and Uncle in Amherstburg. Ed’s father, John,  had passed of tuberculosis in 1897 and mother, Fanny Powers, in 1891.  John Sr and Fanny had a Candies, Canned Goods, Cigars and Tobacco store. JOhn Sr was also a volunteer and original member  of the Essex Scottish, an infantry regiment of the Canadian Army founded in 1885 as the 21st Battalion, Essex Fusiliers; 1900 – 21st Regiment, Essex Fusiliers; 1920 – The Essex Fusiliers, acquiring its present title in 1927.

 

He married Marie Mabell Theoret and they had six children together. He died on October 18, 1951, in Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada, at the age of 63.

Edward had worked on the Panama Canal as a rock barge drill runner 1914-1917; then worked for 25 years on the Detroit Street Railways. Department of Street Railways (DSR) in 1922 after the acquisition of the privately owned Detroit United Railway (DUR), which had controlled much of Detroit’s mass transit operations since its incorporation in 1901.[7] The DSR added bus service when it created the Motorbus Division in 1925. At the height of its operation in 1941, the DSR operated 20 streetcar lines with 910 streetcars.[8] By 1952, only four streetcar lines remained: Woodward, Gratiot, Michigan and Jefferson. Streetcar services was discontinued in April 1956 with the decommissioning of the Woodward line. 1905 worked or mariners, this area between Stony Island and Boblo Island was once a treacherous shallows known as Lime Kiln Crossing. Since at least the 1880s dredging work has been attempted there in order to improve conditions for shipping, but in about 1907 Dunbar & Sullivan participated in a major rock cut project through the area to provide the deep …

 

Ed and Mable, along with their daughter Dorothy and her husband Wayne Gruebner took care of Patricia A. and Donna C. Dornan while his son, Don, was a soldier with the Essex Scottish Regiment and eventually a POW,

Donald Dornan-WWII POW

First Communion

When Donald Marwood Dornan was born on October 5, 1912, in Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada, his father, Edward, was 24 and his mother, Mable Theoret, was 20. Edward had worked on the Panama Canal as a rock barge drill runner 1914-1917;  then worked for 25 years on the Detroit Street Railways. In 1905, Edward worked on dredging the Detroit River between Stony Island and Boblo Island,  a treacherous shallows at that time known as Lime Kiln Crossing.

Amherstburg was a favorite stop for many families (including the Brusseau family on the Atkinson maternal side) as it was a port to Boblo Island Amusement Park. Amherstburg was incorporated as a town in 1878. The town is named after Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, commander of the British forces and first British Governor General of the Province of Quebec (1760).  It is also the location of where Eliza from Uncle Tom’s Cabin found shelter after crossing the ice on the Detroit River.

In Amherstburg, Don had 4 sisters and a brother, Jack.  Two sisters, Bille and Catherine died very young while Don outlived his older sisters Murial and Dorothy.  In 1928, the family had moved to 9075 Crane Ave on Detroit’s East side near Van Dyke and I-94.  As a 16 year old, Don was working as a carpenter in Detroit.  His daughter, Patricia, was born in Detroit on 1931 while Don married her mother, Alice Bentley, in 1932 when Alice came of age.  Alice and Don met in Detroit; the Bentley’s lived 2 miles from the Dornan family. Don and Alice were married in Amherstburg where Don was working as a Dairyman.  Alice and Don would have 2 more children, Donna (1933) and Wayne (1935), but ended their relationship before Don’s enlistment in the Canadian Army at the start of WWII, 1939.

Don in England

Name: D M Dornan
Rank: Sgt.
Army Number: A21907
Regiment: E.S.R.

Don with sister Dorothy

Don with Father, Ed, and Mother, Mable

Don was recognized as captured on August 19, 1943 after the raid on Dieppe.The Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942, known as Operation Jubilee, was among the worst single disasters to befall Allied armies during the World War II. The casualty rate of this attempt to breach Hitler’s Atlantic Wall by temporarily seizing a Channel port, equaled or exceeded those in any First World War battle. A 6,000-strong force of Canadian and British troops lost 4,131 men killed, wounded or captured in just six hours and 106 RAF aircraft were destroyed along with the destroyer HMS Berkeley. The Germans were baffled as to their enemy’s motives.3

remembrance day

New research suggests the real intent of the historic raid on Dieppe in 1942 was to steal a machine that would help crack top-secret German codes. Military historian David O’Keefe spent 15 years searching through the once-classified and ultra-secret war files and says the real purpose behind the Dieppe operation-which cost hundreds of Canadian soldiers their lives – was to capture advanced coding technology from the German headquarters near the French beach.4  According to O’Keefe’s research, British naval officers used Operation Jubilee to target the German-made Enigma code machine, an electro-mechanical piece of equipment that used a series of rotors for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Several months after the failed operation in Dieppe, the minds at Bletchley Park broke the code of the four-rotor Enigma machine.

As a member of the Essex Scottish regiment, Don Dornan would have been with the Red and White Assault as shown on the Dieppe Conflict map above, of the main beach by two Canadian infantry battalions, the Essex Scottish Regiment and the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry. Of the 5,000 Canadians who landed at Dieppe, 907 were killed, 586 wounded and about 2,000 were taken prisoner.

Don Dornan’s POW data indicated below:

POW Number: 25412
Camp Type: Stalag
Camp Number: 357
Camp Location: Oerbke Nr Fallingbostel, Germany located just to the east of the town of Fallingbostel in Lower Saxony, in north-western Germany.
Section: Canadian Army: Officers and Other Ranks

In September 1944   Stalag 357 was moved from Thorn in Poland to the site of the former Stalag XI-D, with construction being carried out by the Italian POW from XI-B. This new camp was used to house mostly British and Commonwealth POWs. In November 1944 British paratroops captured at the Arnhem arrived at Stalag 357, led by the formidable RSM John C. Lord of 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, they set about raising the standards of the camp. Lord insisted on proper military discipline with regular exercise and parades. At that time 17,000 POW; mostly British/Canadian, but also Russian, Polish, Yugoslav, French, and American prisoners were crammed into the camp causing severe overcrowding. Each hut contained 400 men, though it had bunks for only 150. By February 1945 the POW of XI-B and 357 were suffering from lack of food and medical supplies exacerbated by the influx of several hundred American POW captured in the Battle of the Bulge and Operation Nordwind. These newer arrivals found themselves accommodated in tents. Conditions began to deteriorate with hygiene a major problem as the camps’ village waterworks was overstretched. Conditions were made worse by the removal of mattresses and bed boards as a reprisal for alleged poor treatment of German POW in Egypt by the allies.2

Stalag 357 was a well run camp-although some tension existed between the British army POW and the RAF POW, as to the nature of activities within the camp. The RAF had an escape and intelligence committee that helped POW attempt to escape. It also supplied information to the allies on certain German activities. The army however was much more concerned with causing as little trouble as possible so arguments did ensue. Eventually a vote was held to decide on an overall policy and an overall head of operations, spokesman. The vote was carried overwhelmingly in favour of a RAF Pilot James “Dixie” Deans, who was to become 357s answer to RSM Lord, who led the Canadian & British camp from 1943-1944.

In early April 1945, Sergeant Pilot James ‘Dixie’ Deans RAF, the camp leader of Stalag 357, was informed by the German Commandant Oberst Hermann Ostmann that 12,000 British POW were being evacuated from the camp in the face of the Allied advance. RSM Lord had also been selected to leave, but hid under the floor of a hut for five days in order to avoid it. The men marched from the camp in columns of 2,000. After 10 days they arrived at Gresse, east of the Elbe. There they were issued with Red Cross parcels, but were then unfortunately strafed by British Typhoon fighter-bombers, mistaking them for German troops. Sixty POW were killed and many wounded.

Deans confronted Oberst Ostmann and bluntly gave him a choice, to be captured by the Russians or the British. Ostman provided Deans with a pass and a German guard, and Deans headed west to contact the advancing British troops. On 1 May Deans and his German guard were sheltering in a house east of Lauenberg when they heard over the radio the news of the death of Adolf Hitler. The next morning the house was overrun by troops of the British 6th Airborne. Deans was taken to the commander of VIII Corps and explained the situation. He was given a captured Mercedes car and drove back to Gresse. Two days later, May 4, 1945, the POW column marched back across the British lines. In total around 30,000 Soviet POWs died in Stalag XI-B and XI-D. Another 734 POW from the United States, Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, South Africa, Canada, Holland, Poland and Slovakia died in XI-B and 357. The Soviet POW and the remains of 273 others are buried at the “Cemetery of the Nameless” in Oerbke. By the war’s end, the Essex Scottish Regiment had suffered over 550 war dead; its 2,500 casualties were the most of any unit in the Canadian army during the Second World War. 5

Don returned to Amhertsburg a hero.  He then married Greta May Gibb and they had five children together, Murray, Judith, Lynn and Margo.  He died on August 18, 1996, in St Clair Shores, Michigan, at the age of 83.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_XI-B
2. https://fallingbostelmilitarymuseum.jimdo.com/stalag-xib-357/
3. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9483651/The-Dieppe-Raid-the-forgotton-D-Day.html
4. https://globalnews.ca/news/274605/breaking-german-codes-real-reason-for-1942-dieppe-raid-historian/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Essex_Scottish_Regiment