My great uncle, William Faris Hetherington, regimental #158111, joined the 81st Battalion in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1915 as a 31 year old farmer from Ireland. He trained in the city until on April 28th, 1916 his unit sailed for England. When he arrived at Salisbury Plain, he continued to train but events in Belgium lead to a fast transfer.
I am paraphrasing from an excellent account written by Capt. S.G. Bennett on the events of the 4th CMR that has helped me to understand what my great uncle experienced in The Great War right up until he fell in the trenches of The Bluff. It is a free ebook you can find at;
https://archive.org/details/mountedrifles00bennuoft (please remove this link if I'm not allowed to post it)
I am paraphrasing here from descriptions of Capt. Bennett taken from war diaries;
Canadians were holding the line in the Ypres Salient and on a rather dry summer day on June 2nd, described as "a calm, beautiful and noticeably quiet morning" in Sanctuary Woods. Seemingly out of nowhere, the sky opened up and the bombardment continued at full strength for 4 and a half hours. At the end of the day for the 4th CMR, only 3 officers of 22 came out of the trenches and 73 men of 680 answered to roll call on June 4th. They were devastated.
On June 7th, my great uncle William landed in France and immediately left for Ypres. He arrived for duty with the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles at Sanctuary Woods on June 9th with 562 other reinforcements. Once at the Western front, they first gathered for introduction to the landscape and the trenches where he was put to work supporting the 7th Battalion as a workforce reinforcing communication trenches by night. On July 13th they marched for for billets in Ypres. On July 23rd his unit took over the front line from the 5th CMR. Snipers and bombardments continued to take its toll on the officers and men alike until the battalion was relieved to billets on the 27th. By August 8th his unit had relieved the 14th Battalion, worked for a week at Swan Chateau and then made their way to The Bluff. On August 19th, 1916 my great uncle was called up with 5 others to work on a trench known as 30S. They were digging dug-outs and doing trench work when at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon, a random enemy shell exploded in their trench wounding two and killing my great uncle William Hetherington along with three others. He had nothing more than $1.93 Canadian in his pocket.
William Faris Hetherington now rests in the Bedford House Cemetery in Belgium. His time in the war was short but nonetheless critical to the success of the Canadians who continued to fight and die for our freedom. With his fierce Irish tenacity and courage, he faced his fears and contributed to his unit to the end of his days. I am very proud of him.
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