LEST WE FORGET 377 WILSON, Melville Earl WWII Melville was born in Consul, Saskatchewan in 1918. He joined the Army on February 1, 1941 and took truck driver training at Camp Borden, Ontario before sailing on the Sterling Castle from Halifax to Greenock, Scotland. He went on to Borden Camp, England, where he met Mabel Darvill, a member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, whom he married on June 3, 1944. After eight months, he was transferred to the Scouts and Snipers with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and sent to Italy. He then served in Leghorn and Marseille, France, then Antwerp, Belgium, followed by Harrlem and Delshen, Holland until the end of the war. Melville went back to Aldershot, England and was loaded on the New Amsterdam with 1,800 troops enroute for Halifax. He then rode the train to Winnipeg and was home in Napinka on July 3, 1945. Melville was a member of The Royal Canadian Legion Souris Branch 60 before he died in 2008. WILSON, Samuel Earl WWI Samuel Earl Wilson enlisted in the 13th Battalion of the Canadian Light Infantry in Moose Jaw on July 6, 1915. He was eighteen years old and living in Conquest as a farmer at the time. He identified his next of kin as his brother John Wilson and his time and place of birth to be March 12, 1897 in Per th, Ontario. (The Bir th Cer tificate was sworn by his brother John who was 16 years older and living in Conquest.) Samuel sailed from Halifax aboard the Lapland on October 23, 1915. He served in France with the 13th Battalion during the Battle of the Somme, a struggle described by historian R. C. Feathestonhaugh as “a conflict unprecedented in history. Trenches were captured, recaptured and captured again, while the whole face of the earth for miles was so torn by concentrated artillery as to render familiar scenes unrecognizable.” Amid the carnage, Samuel Wilson was diagnosed with both trench fever and enteritis before he suffered gunshot wounds to his right arm and foot on September 19, 1916. He recuperated in a hospital in Manchester. Samuel Earl Wilson was officially discharged on August 5, 1919 in Regina. He indicated his intention to return to Conquest, but later moved to British Columbia. He and his wife had three daughters and one son, Bryan who was a member of the RCAF and died in 1997. Samuel was a member of Branch 44 of the Royal Canadian Legion in Vancouver. Samuel Earl Wilson died in Saanich, BC on May 18, 1968 at the age of 70, and is buried in the Veterans Cemetery.
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