418485 Private Edmond Blanchard
(also served as Edmond Beauchamp)
D Company, 42nd Battalion (Royal Highlanders of Canada)
"The Black Watch"
1914-15 Star
(also entitled to British War Medal and Victory Medal)
FAMILY
Edmond was a Roman Catholic French Canadian from Montreal, Quebec. Like a huge number of inhabitants of Quebec, he was bi-lingual. Because of this, some names and language is somewhat mixed in his service records, such as shortened names and place names, which the records generally use in their English form.
He was born on 1st November 1894, and his parents were Lea and Geo (Georges) Blanchard, who lived on Grant Street, St.John (Saint-Jean—Iberville), Quebec. Today St.John is called “Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu” and is just to the South-East of Montreal.
20 year-old Edmond enlisted in the Canadian Infantry on 18th March 1915. His particulars mention his height as 5ft 5 ½in, and his complexion as “dark,” with brown hair and eyes. He gave his occupation as “labourer.” It is not clear why, but he initially joined up under an alias surname of “Beauchamp.”
Edmond had previously served for two years in the 85th Regiment (Le Régiment de Maisonneuve). The 85th Regiment was a reserve-force regiment based in Montreal. It went on to provide men for three drafts of replacements to the European Western Front and also Bermuda during the Great War. It’s remaining men were eventually absorbed into the 167th Battalion in Canada, and disbanded on 1st August 1918 (although it was re-established after the war).
To Europe
Edmond sailed from Montreal as part of the 42th Battalion (Royal Highlanders of Canada) on 10th June 1915 aboard the RHS Hesperian, which docked in Liverpool, England, nine days later. The troops were moved down to be stationed at Shorncliffe Garrison, in Kent. Eleven weeks after Edmond’s crossing, the Hesperian was torpedoed and sunk by the German U-Boat U-20.
Around this time, on 28th September 1915, Edmond tore out a page from his paybook and wrote his will, leaving all his possessions and effects to his father. More importantly, he finally admitted to his real identity, which was duly amended in his records in March the following year.
Whilst in the full service records, a stamp has been added to verify the handwriting matches his signature in his paybook, I think it may have been written by another soldier, as there are some obvious errors that are explained by mis-hearing the details when dictated, rather than just poor literacy. His father in fact lived at 28 Grant Street, not 20A, and the town was Saint-Jean (or St.John) — Iberville (perhaps d’Iberville), not Dibberville. Another minor point of interest is the use of Peleton (sic), rather than platoon. In French “peloton” is indeed used in place of “platoon,” but in armoured and cavalry units. Infantry platoons and generally called “section.”
His time at Shorncliffe was a mixed bag, with some disciplinary issues which included forfeiture of 2 days pay for being absent from parade, and even 15 days detention (imprisonment) for insubordination. He appears to have missed out on crossing the Channel with the rest of his battalion, so after very briefly being transferred to the 17th Battalion (Nova Scotia Highlanders), he was sent back to the 42nd Battalion after himself arriving in France on 1st November.
The 42nd Battalion war diary is very clear and detailed for this period, so much of the following information comes directly from it. I have kept the notes brief, but it makes for interesting reading and is far more detailed than most units kept!
November – December 1915
On 2nd November 42nd Battalion moved in a heavy downpour to billets, huts and tents on the Neuve-Eglise Romarin Road. The first 10 days there involved work parties of 580 men on rotation to repairing, draining and digging out the nearby second line trenches that had collapsed. The men were frequently working in mud upto their knees. Far from safe duties, they were frequently shelled and exposed to machine gun fire, particularly at night. In this short period, three men of the battalion were killed, with a further five admitted to hospital.
They next moved to a tent encampment in Dranoutere (Dranouter – 12 km South-East of Poperinge). By the end of November, the work party sizes had reduced, so the battalion spent time making themselves comfortable in their accommodation. There was also a drastic change in their uniform, with sporrans, kilts and hose tops collected up and sent to Paris for cleaning and repairs, and to be stored until the Spring. Each man was then issued with trousers, a fur coat, a second blanket, and a pair or woolen mittens. The other big change was the exchange of their glengarry caps for balmoral bonnets. It isn’t specified in the diary, but in all likelihood they exchanged khaki caps. The Canadian highland battalions had a mixture of blue and khaki headress, but khaki was generally used in battle dress.
Some training was carried out with rifles, gas helmets, machine guns and bombs (grenades), and a permanent grenade section was formed. The four weeks at Dranoutre were casualty-free except a piper was accidentally killed during an inspection of arms. The battalions horses, however suffered from being outside, and the mud got steadily worse around the camp.
December went by much the same, with rifle and gas training and formal drill, and only the prospect of being called upon in the manning of the Kemmel Defences, where a German attack was expected. A tremendous artillery bombardment had opened up nearby, and the 42nd Battalion stood-by, but the shelling turned out to be from friendly batteries, after the Germans had used gas against the defences, but in the event the wind changed, and the Germans cancelled their attack.
January 1916
The 8th January saw the battalion finally being used to hold front line trenches. They were not in a good state, owing to the poor weather in the previous weeks. They did three, “four day tours” in a section of trench line referenced as D-3 to E-4 near Dranoutre, manning reserve trenches in-between. During their time, they would repair and reinforce the trenches the best they could.
They could frequently also hear the enemy work parties during the hours of darkness, and did their best to disperse them wherever possible. Otherwise, enemy activity was quiet, but snipers were still very active, and there were numerous contacts involving rifle grenades, with the battalion taking casualties, including in a friendly fire incident when one of their own grenades dropped into their own trench and wounded six sleeping men.
The end of the month saw them relocated to the rear at Westoutre (Westouter) in comfortable billets. The battalion had lost 6 men killed, 39 wounded over the course of the month.
February 1916
The battalion moved up to take over front line trenches E1 to F5 three times during the month. 11th-15th, 19th–23rd, and finally on 28th February – 3rd March. The front was mostly quiet except for a few incidents with German patrols throwing stick bombs, frequent gas alerts, and calls to “stand to” for a German attack which never materialised. The sentries also manage to kill two Germans who had exposed their positions. They did however, lose two men killed, and seven more wounded, two of whom remained on duty.
March 1916 – Wounded and Punished
Much of March consisted of more work parties, and some enemy shell fire. On one occasion, while moving from Kemmel Shelters back to the division reserve, they took some enemy shell fire along the Dranoutre-Locre Road, wounding two men, one of whom was Edmond, who (it is noted on his service records) remained on duty.
The battalion also received two drafts of replacements which totalled over a hundred men, finally bringing the battalion up to full strength.
On the 21st, they were relocated further North to the Ypres Salient, where conditions would be tougher fighting and their conditions more uncomfortable. They occupied front line trenches A4-A10, finding them in good order, but with a lack of dugouts. They then set about finding out what was happening across no-man’s land.
They sent a patrol across on three consecutive nights, even managing to enter the enemy trench and found it very sparsely occupied, only hearing Germans 50 yards further along. The enemy trench was found to by soggy with mud with no duck-boards or reinforment, only around 3ft deep, with uneven walls and about 18 inches of soil thrown above at the front and back. There were no sandbags, no dugouts or machine gun emplacements, and no regular sentries. Upon returning, one sergeant even pulled out and recovered a loop-hole plate (a kind of steel protective plate with a slit used as protection and camouflage by snipers).
They were relieved on the 25th March, but not before enduring some heavy shelling, causing some casualties, including wounding 6 men of Edmond’s D Company. Relief was completed after midnight, and they made a long and tiring march back to camp at the Renninghelst-Vlamertinghe Road.
On 31st March Edmond was sentenced to 14 days Field Punishment No1 for disobeying an order – namely, failing to properly unload his rifle prior to cleaning.
Field Punishment No1 was a humiliating form of punishment which saw the soldier in question attached standing full-length to a fixed object – either a post or a gun wheel – for up to two hours a day (often one hour in the morning and another in the afternoon).
Unlike imprisonment, regular duties could still be carried out in-between, and the field unit would not lose a man. Sometimes tied in a crucifix position. Stories abound of soldiers positioned to face the enemy lines, invariably out of range of enemy fire but allegedly not always so. If exposed to the sunshine this form of punishment proved ever more discomforting, quite aside from the constant problem of trench lice. If the soldier in question started to sag while attached to the post he would often be checked by military police.
Similar stories persisted of commanding officers who abused regulations governing such punishment by tying soldiers’ hands behind their back and suspending them by a rope tied around their wrists, their feet barely touching the ground. Such was the concern of abuse of the punishment, the War Office issued advisory orders to ensure the correct regulations were adhered to, this order, plus a representitive image of the punishment are shown below (click to enlarge).
April 1916
On the 1st April the Battalion held a grenade-throwing competition between teams of five per platoon. On the 4th, during a march through Ypres to take up positions at the front, they endured some shelling. Once occupying the front line trench, they were rushed by a German raiding party and endured some shelling.
Jumping ahead to the night of 12th-13th April, Edmond and the rest of D company moved to trenches in a position know as “Belgian Chateau.” The eight days they spent there was described in the war diary as “most depressing.” They endured constant bad weather and intermittent shelling. After this they marched, in wet conditions, to a camp to the South-East of Poperinge, and thankfully avoided any shelling on the route. They lost one killed and eight wounded during their time at Belgian Chateau.
On 28th April the battalion was inspected by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig.
May 1916
The battalion was again in the front line trenches for another stint starting on 29th April. The were stood to during a German gas attack, and again when the trenches in an area to their left was attacked by a raiding party following some “lively” artillery fire.
They were relieved on 7th May having lost 4 killed, 11 wounded. On the 9th – they were reissued their kilts and received new balmoral caps. It is noted in the diary that this did much to improve the appearance of the men.
The rest of the month consisted of training and drill, until they once again took up positions in the front line, from the 22nd to 30th May. This time the conditions were less than comfortable, and were vividly described in the diary.
“We were fortunate enough to have good weather … in this sector where living conditions in the front line were exceptionally poor. The left company frontage consisted of eight isolated posts, inaccessible by daylight, the intervening space being both open to view and waist deep in water and slime. The right company frontage consisted of a wet trench whose parapet had been badly knocked about in places by shell fire, with a long dilapidated exposed communication trench running to it. There were practically no dugouts in either area and previous heavy fighting on this site had left the ground in a very foul condition. The enemy was no specially (sic) active although were were shelled intermittently.”
The battalion lost 3 killed and 26 wounded. One loss was a very well liked senior NCO who had led numerous patrols. The stretcher bearers and snipers were singled out for praise in the diaries for this period.
Battle of Mont Sorrel
On the 2nd June, the whole 42nd Battalion were called upon as reserves to hold trenches in advance of a huge German attack which was expected all along the front from Hooge in the North to past Mont Sorrel in the south, bordering the East side of Ypres. The companies were all dispatched separately to various sectors, but our story will remain with Edmond and D Company. The events that followed became known as the Battle of Mont Sorrel.
The Germans detonated six huge mines along the front and attacked at approximately 1pm with six full battalions, with a further eleven following up in support and reserve.
D company were dispatched to once again hold secondary trenches at Belgian Chateau, the area North of Sanctuary Wood. The trenches here were named after the Hooge Chateaux which had been totally destroyed in previous battles (shown on map). B company arrived in position at 3.20pm, with D company joining up with them two hours later, to find the line only “thinly held.” They were under constant threat from artillery, and even their commander, Captain G.H. Blackader, was wounded on the way to the front. They sustained artillery bombardement throughout the afternoon and into the night.
At approximately 2am (now 3rd June), word was received that three other Canadian battalions were planning to counter attack, but B and D company saw men coming towards their reserve trench, who turned out to be from 2 Company, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, evacuating back from their front line trench. Around 60 men in total managed to escape the German onslaught, reporting they had been surrounded.
The counter attack was temporarily suspended, but after a night of confused messages back and forth, the Canadians attempted a counter attack in the sector, with B and D company of the 42nd remaining in what was now the front line to hold it, whilst the 60th Battalion passed through in order to counter the Germans in their previous front line. The 52nd arrived to help B & D coy 42nd hold the current line.
No progress was made throughout the day, with the 60th returning back to their line at 7pm, drawing heavy artillery fire along with them, much to the protests of Edmond’s comrades. An hour later the front line itself was heavily shelled, followed up with a German attack, which the Canadians managed to repel.
The war diary is quite clinical with its statements of simple facts, but it is obvious the battle would have been a fairly terrifying ordeal, with artillery bursting all around, and the constant threat of snipers and other small arms fire, with hand thrown bombs and rifle grenades besides.
Based on in his service records and the travelling time rearwards to the western side of Ypres, it is likely this is when Edmond was wounded, and subsequently taken back to the 10th Casualty Clearing Station in Remy Siding near Lijssenthoek.
In the next few days the Germans managed to push the Canadians back all across the front. A huge effort from the Canadian artillery and counter attacks resulted in finally recapturing most of their old positions. In 10 days, the two sides ended up roughly where they started. The Germans lost 5,765 men, with the Canadians as a whole taking losses of 8,430. Of these, the 42nd Battalion Royal Highlanders of Canada losses (including officers) were listed in the diary as follows: 31 killed, 236 wounded, 30 missing. It is noted that these numbers would change as reports filtered back.
Edmond arrived at the casualty clearing station where little could be done for such serious wounds, and he died at 2.45am on 4th June 1916.
He was buried in the nearby cemetery, today know as Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, near Poperinge, where he is remembered today, with honour, alongside 9,900 other Commonwealth servicemen of the Great War, and 883 from other countries, mostly French and German.
Some of the trench system near Hooge crater can still be seen today. The area of the Chateau is now a theme park very close by.
- Full photo of B Coy, 42nd CEF - Example uniforms prior to France
- Full Service Records (PDF)
- CEF Burial Register Document
- CEF Burial Register Document 2
- Memorial Certificate (PDF)
- Cemetery Register
- Grave Registration
- Headstone Schedule
- Headstone Schedule 2
- Complete War Diaries - 42nd Royal Highlanders of Canada (32 MB PDF)
