LEST WE FORGET 253 NEWTON, John Lewis “Jack” WWI 4th Canadian Mounted Regiment #109529 B Squadron 2nd Brigade Signal Corp Canadian Army Corps, B.E.F. (British Expeditionary Force), France John “Jack” Lewis Newton was born in England in 1885, arriving in Canada by ship in 1904. He purchased a homestead in 1905 on NE 16-21-5W3 which is six miles west of Central Butte (five miles south of Lawson). When World War I broke out, he went back to England and enlisted with the English Army. His first duty there was to deliver messages to the front line on a motorcycle. He transferred to the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles. John told his children that even though he enlisted with a mounted regiment, they were never given horses. When the war was over, he returned and married Jane McEwen (Jean) on December 27, 1918 and together they raised eight children (four boys, four girls). In 1946, he leased his land to his sons and retired on Vancouver Island. John and Jean returned to Central Butte in 1970 where he died in 1972. Four of John’s children served in World War II and luckily, they all came home safe. By John’s youngest son, W.A. (Bill) Newton. Below is a letter Jack wrote to his brother Cam while servicing in the trenches in World War I. France Dec. 7th, 1915 Dear Cam Thanks for your letter of Nov 15th which reached me yesterday. Yes, we are getting now, what we have been waiting for, for almost a year, we have been into it on three different occasions. Trench fighting is no picnic at this time of the year, one is plastered with mud from head to foot all the time. The mud is more than knee deep in lots of places. We just got the dugouts & parapets*(picture) nicely fixed up when Fritz* gets wild and knocks them all down again. I would certainly like to have a look at the German trenches, our artillery put over about ten times as many shells as they do, & I think their trenches must be a devil of a mess. Quite a few of our fellows have been knocked out already. We don’t see much of the Germans but the trenches are so close together we can hear them talking quite plainly, some places they are only 40 yds. Rats are just about as plentiful as mosquitos in Saskatchewan, they crawl into bed with one in the dugouts and sit up on the parapet right beside you & just wink when a rifle is fired. We are oblidged to store our rations in tin boxes, the first time I went in ¾ of a loaf of bread mysteriously disappeared. We are action about half the time, the balance of the time we stay in a cow barn a few miles from firing line. The most ticklish part of this job is the listening post on nobodies land between the trenches, one has to remain perfectly silent & give the signal if necessary of any movement Fritz may be making & all of a sudden one finds himself staring right into the eyes of a big squareheaded German crawling through the grass on the same duty. The listening post carries a rifle & ammunition but has orders not to fire unless absolutely necessary, so we don’t stop to argue the point, by the way there is generally an extra ration of rum on this post, which helps considerably. One is just given enough to cultivate the fighting mood but some fellows say it makes them feel like going over to Fritz & shaking hands. I think Lance is at Marseille now, he was about thirty miles from here until just lately. He is in a far better branch of the service than this, we are supposed to be a mounted regiment but are doing just the same work as infantry. We have broken in two lots of horses & had them taken away from us again. There is only one squadron of mounted Canadians who have been allowed to keep their mounts out here. My address is Trooper J L Newton #109529 B Squadron 4th CMR 2nd Brigade Canadian Mounted Regiment, Canadian Army Corps, B.E.F. (British Expeditionary Force), France. continued
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