71 The Royal Canadian Legion MANITOBA & NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO COMMAND www.mbnwo.ca William was born near Bagot, Manitoba on April 23, 1895. His family farmed there for a while before moving to farms in Rosedale and McDonald. William started school in 1901 at Harford School, and as he grew, he helped on the farm, continued his schooling, and also worked in the bush. While working on the McDonald farm with his father, there was a tragic accident involving William’s younger brother, Stan, who fell off a grain wagon containing 33 bags of barley and was crushed. The family then moved to Salem, south-east of Portage la Prairie, where the family bought a farm from Bill Charleton. When William’s father passed away in 1914, William continued to work the farm for another year. When William’s uncle Nate bought a farm on Ridge Road, William rented that farm from him, and also rented a farm near Burnside from a man by the name of Stevenson from Winnipeg. WWI William continued to run the two farms until his call to duty during World War I, when he enlisted on November 9, 1915 in the Canadian Expedition Force at Portage la Prairie, Manitoba in the 226th Overseas Battalion. The legal enlistment age during World War I was 21, so he needed his mother’s consent. His daily pay was 90 cents, and since his mother was a widow with young children, he was supporting the family and assigned her half of his pay. William trained at Camp Hughes in Shilo, Manitoba. In the fall of 1916, he went to Halifax and then sailed to England on SS Olympic on December 13, 1916 and arrived there on December 17, 1916. While in training in Southampton, England he managed to get into “the cookhouse” and his daily wage went up to $1 per day. Stuck in England and wanting to be in the action, he “paraded up to the Colonel and asked to go to France”. He went to France in April 1917 with the 14th Reserve, and the first battle he fought was at Vimy Ridge. William was promoted to Corporal at that time and was sent to Etaples for a break. He went into the reserve for two weeks and then back to the trenches again for about two months of training for the Battle of Hill 70. William describes the Battle of Hill 70 which he describes as ‘we had a hard time there and lost it, near the whole battalion and I won the MM there, the Military Medal’. William further describes his experience: “We went into the battle in front of Lenz and we had a hard time. We lost pretty near all the men we had and we come out and we went to a place called Bulle Granade. I stayed in Bulle Granade for about two weeks and had a rest because I hadn’t had a rest and then I went on training to go up through Ypres and into Passchendaele. I went into line at Passchendaele from Ypres. We took Passchendaele and I got a little scratch on me there, I had a hard time there but I…that was the first time I ever took a rum in my life. And I don’t like to tell you about it either. I hadn’t eaten for two days and I took a slug of rum when I got back down from Passchendaele and it knocked me right out of the tent. When I woke up in the morning, I was lying with my feet in the water so I never did drink or smoke after that. I never did before. Anyway we took Passchendaele and we come out… by this time the big push was going on…to finish the Germans off. We went over the top sometime about 8th of November and we went right through to the day CASE, William James WWI & WWII ➤
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