Roger Nason has been researching the lives of Grand Manan natives and residents who served in World War I, and the following stories, excerpted from his writings, cause one to reflect on Remembrance Day, November 11.

Samuel Greenlaw
     It seems that Samuel Melville Greenlaw was always unconventional, and so it was when he joined the Kilties, or 236th Battalion, on October 13, 1916, in Fredericton at age 19. Sam had been born on September 25, 1898, to Melvin and Susan (Cronk) Greenlaw, but by the time he was three his father had died and the family moved in with his grandfather Samuel Cronk in North Head.
      Greenlaw's battalion was soon shipped off to England where he was reassigned to the 42nd Battalion, the Royal Highlanders of Canada, Black Watch and for the next two years was exposed to some of the hardest fighting of the war.
     After being attached to the 42nd, Greenlaw was elevated from infantry soldier to sniper. One day his battalion faced a dire situation when ammunition was running low and had to be rationed. He and fellow snipers in the battalion were issued a challenge to score as many enemy kills as possible with only three bullets apiece. Away they went into No Man's Land, where Greenlaw eventually emerged victorious. Whether it was this event or not, on September 13, 1918, he earned the Military Medal.
     While both humourous and tragic at the same, one event that took place during Passchendaele demonstrated the circumstances facing soldiers at the sharp end of battle. It seems Greenlaw was sent out on night patrol, which was not uncommon for sniper teams. When crossing through No Man's Land between the combatants, he and others came under devastating machine gun fire. In his effort to make it back to friendly lines, he entangled himself in barbed wire tearing away his clothes and forcing him to cut himself loose from his kilt -- which the Black Watch were famous for wearing without anything underneath -- and racing in the darkness towards the protection of his trench. Unfortunately, a diligent Canadian sentry called into question his identity when a nearly naked soldier came running towards him in a shower of mud and challenged Greenlaw for a password which he could not recall. It was not unknown for Germans to pretend to be a friendly ally in order to penetrate their lines. Luckily, the guard accepted his identity because no one could imagine an enemy would come running towards them naked in the night.
     As one can image, these young soldiers yearned for remembrances of home especially after the terrific battles that Canadian battalions faced in the trenches across Belgium and France, exposure to gas warfare, and witnessing the loss of countless comrades. Greenlaw, his family reports, carried two photos close to his person at all times throughout the war -- one of his family including his mother and siblings, and one of Swallowtail Light to remind of his island home.
     Following the armistice in November 1918, Greenlaw returned home and began practicing carpentry. After different ventures and work out west he and his family returned to Grand Manan in 1962. After returning to the family homestead on the Dock Hill Road, he continued carpentry and general farming until his death on September 28, 1976.
George Dalzell
     George Dalzell was born in 1883 to George Y. and Susan Dalzell of North Head. He had the urge for adventure as early as 1900, at the age of 17. He travelled to Saint John to take the steamboat to New York and shipped on a steamer for South America, where he engaged in one of the many revolutions occurring at that time in Latin America. After being wounded in Antofagasta in northern Chile, he became disillusioned and returned to New York.
     In short order, the spirit of adventure struck him again and he signed on a voyage to India. From there he travelled to Demerara in the Caribbean and eventually to England. By the spring of 1902, he had enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery and served as a gunner in South Africa during the Zulu uprising of 1906, where he was wounded. Shortly afterward, his unit shipped off to India, serving under Lord Kitchener and Sir O'Moore Creagh for the next two years.      With his service concluded, he returned to Canada in 1911, only to wander to Prince Rupert, B.C., where he engaged in commercial fishing.
     When war erupted in 1914, he made his way to Quebec and left to rejoin his regiment in the British Army. The Royal Field Artillery was one of the first to see action in September near Nantes, France. Dalzell sustained two broken legs when a team of horses hauling gunnery supplies bolted. By 1915, he was back with his regiment near St. Eloi, France, where he fought alongside other Canadians at the battle of Ypres. His valor and courage earned him a mention in dispatches to General Sir John French, commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force.
     Even after receiving head wounds he stayed active for several weeks during the assault on Ypres. During that action he was gassed and wounded in the stomach by shrapnel. Subsequently, Dalzell was transferred to a hospital in England where he spent four months recovering. Once discharged from the hospital, he was made sergeant instructor in Kitchener's army recruiting and training program. After several weeks carrying out this duty, he was released and returned to Canada where he continued the recruitment program.
     Dalzell successfully attracted at least seven new recruits from Grand Manan, who followed him to Saint John to enlist. Once again he donned the uniform with the 115th Battalion under Colonel F.V. Wedderburn and soon found himself in England with the rank of sergeant major. He attained a commission as lieutenant and was posted to Scotland with the Canadian Forestry Corps in Inverness‑shire.
     It was there he met and married Ella McDonald on December 1, 1917. With the close of the war they sailed for Saint John, and Dalzell returned to civilian life on Grand Manan as a clerk in a fish canning factory in North Head. His dedication to the military did not stop there. With his intimate knowledge of the various regiments raised in southwestern New Brunswick for the war effort, he immediately joined the cause of returning soldiers through the formation of the Great War Veterans Association of Canada. This organization evolved into what is now the Canadian Legion.
In March 1920 he died from tuberculosis.

Thomas Morgan
     Thomas William Morgan was born on July 31, 1891, in Bristol, England, son of William and Margaret (Birkmyre) Morgan. When conscription became a fact of life for eligible young men in 1917, Morgan stepped forward. He indicated that he already had served four weeks in the 62nd Regiment, Saint John Fusiliers. Initially Morgan enlisted in the 1st Depot Battalion, New Brunswick Regiment, a reserve unit meant to supply trained soldiers primarily to the depleted ranks of the 26th Battalion in France. Under those orders new enlistees began training at Camp Sussex. But that was not to be Morgan's eventual fate.
     It is not known how Morgan came to connect with Grand Manan and more precisely White Head. Perhaps he was a product of the migration of many British families to Canada prior to 1914 who sought a new life and the prospect of free homestead land. Unfortunately, something occurred that left him homeless by 1911, and he became officially linked with Grand Manan by the next year. On White Head he was taken in by the fishing family of Melvin and Blanche (Guptill) Cossaboom.
     A little known sideshow to the closing year of the World War I was the action seen by soldiers of the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force (CSEF) in far flung parts of Russia in 1918 and 1919. The CSEF was composed of nearly 4,200 men from across Canada and was part of an Allied effort to bolster their presence in Vladivostok, Russia, during the midst of the Russian Revolution. Tom Morgan became part of this intervention near the Sea of Japan.
     By the summer of 1918, Allied leaders in Great Britain, Canada, United States, Japan and France felt that concrete military intervention was necessary to block the Bolshevik army and support the anti‑Bolshevik White Russians in Vladivostok. In October 1918 plans were well advanced to form two infantry battalions, the 259th and 260th Canadian Rifles, along with two artillery batteries, a machine gun company and a squadron of cavalry made up of Royal Northwest Mounted Police. One company of the 260th was drawn from Atlantic Canada, and this was likely where Tom Morgan was assigned in the autumn of 1918.
     Winter weather had already set in when Canadian troops arrived in the Russian seaport of Vladivostok on October 11, and, while not the conditions faced by soldiers on the Western Front, it was nevertheless fraught with risk, exposure to harsh environment and subject to attacks by Bolshevik‑backed forces attempting to capture the port from White Army defenders. The CSEF continued to be engaged well into 1919 until Morgan's unit became the first unit of Canadian troops to sail from Hong Kong on April 8. After formal discharge from his battalion, he eventually boarded a train for the long journey to Saint John and home to Grand Manan.
     By 1921 Morgan was back on Grand Manan pursuing a fisherman's life until 1930, when he became a merchant seaman. For more than a decade he secured a position with the Life Saving Station at Shag Cove, Wood Island. When war erupted again in 1939 Morgan served in the Grand Manan Home Guard unit. During his retirement years he became president of the Grand Manan Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion. He died in August 31, 1962, at age 71.