Read Online Into the Blizzard by Michael Winter - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Winter
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George was five foot ten, 144 pounds, a fisherman from Middle Arm. His aged father, John Ricketts, was imprisoned and his mother, Amelia Cassell, had moved to Canada and remarried. His sister, Rachel, was going to marry his friend Edward Gavin. All George Ricketts had left was a younger brother, Tommy. Tommy Ricketts was fourteen. George took the coastal steamer to St John’s and signed up there and gave sixty cents of his daily pay to his sister, who was looking after Tommy. He was sent to the depot in Ayr.
“Simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need”—this Kipling quotation, from the poem “Sons of Martha,” is used at the base of a Celtic cross that presides over the Newfoundland dead in Scotland—over two dozen who died here from accidents and illness. Kipling wrote the poem before the war; the poem is meant to honour those who work to serve others.Patrick Tobin, buried here, died of “syncope.” Eric Ellis, who spent thewar at the Ayr depot, wrote in his diary that this meant Tobin drank too much—Tobin was “found drowned” and he had lost his watch. He had served at Gallipoli and was wounded at Beaumont-Hamel, and it was Christmas of 1916, back at the depot, when he died suddenly of alcohol poisoning. He was twenty-one. Tobin’s allotment of fifty cents a day to his mother was immediately stopped. Instead his mother received three hundred and fifty dollars and a photograph of the grave of her son—this grave here, where I was standing—which was sent to her in 1921.
Some of the dead, I noticed, were from the Forestry Corps, and their tombstones had a carved log motif.
The men in the regiment loved Scotland. They saw Charlie Chaplin movies and they saw Charlie Chaplin himself on stage. They stayed up at Halloween parties until three in the morning. They played field hockey against the ladies. They learned from a commander at the Gas School that it was considered a crime for men to drink water taken from shell holes of a contaminated area. The men watched plays at the Gaiety Theatre and ate boxes of chocolates sent over at Valentine’s.
All of a Sudden Peggy
was a play about a spider that was found in a maid’s food, and was taken to his lordship’s room for inspection.“Real good,” Eric Ellis wrote. Ayr was a town happy to host the Newfoundlanders.
The men found time to marry Scots ladies. And after the war the women returned with the men to Newfoundland.The women thought Newfoundland must be an island like the Isle of Wight. They did not realize it was so far across the Atlantic.They were not prepared for outhouses and oil lamps. For skinning rabbits and turning salt fish over in the sun. The savagery of pioneer existence was too overwhelming for some of those who were used to simple service simply given. And so some of them returned to Scotland. For didn’t Jesus scold Martha for working too hard?
Come, sit with Mary and listen to me.
In June of 1917 Eric Ellis received leave and took a ship from Brighton back to Rimouski, Quebec. Then he traded a ferry for the railroad back to Newfoundland and spent a week in Kelligrews shooting birds—those would be the only things Eric Ellis shot through the entire war. He spent over three months away from the war. Then he returned to England: he sailed with a draft of men in October aboard the
Florizel
to Halifax, took the
Metagama
with a convoy of ten steamers and eight liaison ships back to Liverpool, and made his way north to the depot at Ayr.
EGYPT
The medical officer Cluny Macpherson, who had witnessed the men’s physicals back in St John’s, was one of the soldiers riding a camel in one of the photographs near thepyramids. He looks both distinguished and ridiculous on the camel. I knew of Cluny Macpherson because his name is on a plaque on a stone wall outside a house in St John’s telling you that he was the inventor of the gas mask. That is not a statement you expect to read while walking down a street in
“Simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need”—this Kipling quotation, from the poem “Sons of Martha,” is used at the base of a Celtic cross that presides over the Newfoundland dead in Scotland—over two dozen who died here from accidents and illness. Kipling wrote the poem before the war; the poem is meant to honour those who work to serve others.Patrick Tobin, buried here, died of “syncope.” Eric Ellis, who spent thewar at the Ayr depot, wrote in his diary that this meant Tobin drank too much—Tobin was “found drowned” and he had lost his watch. He had served at Gallipoli and was wounded at Beaumont-Hamel, and it was Christmas of 1916, back at the depot, when he died suddenly of alcohol poisoning. He was twenty-one. Tobin’s allotment of fifty cents a day to his mother was immediately stopped. Instead his mother received three hundred and fifty dollars and a photograph of the grave of her son—this grave here, where I was standing—which was sent to her in 1921.
Some of the dead, I noticed, were from the Forestry Corps, and their tombstones had a carved log motif.
The men in the regiment loved Scotland. They saw Charlie Chaplin movies and they saw Charlie Chaplin himself on stage. They stayed up at Halloween parties until three in the morning. They played field hockey against the ladies. They learned from a commander at the Gas School that it was considered a crime for men to drink water taken from shell holes of a contaminated area. The men watched plays at the Gaiety Theatre and ate boxes of chocolates sent over at Valentine’s.
All of a Sudden Peggy
was a play about a spider that was found in a maid’s food, and was taken to his lordship’s room for inspection.“Real good,” Eric Ellis wrote. Ayr was a town happy to host the Newfoundlanders.
The men found time to marry Scots ladies. And after the war the women returned with the men to Newfoundland.The women thought Newfoundland must be an island like the Isle of Wight. They did not realize it was so far across the Atlantic.They were not prepared for outhouses and oil lamps. For skinning rabbits and turning salt fish over in the sun. The savagery of pioneer existence was too overwhelming for some of those who were used to simple service simply given. And so some of them returned to Scotland. For didn’t Jesus scold Martha for working too hard?
Come, sit with Mary and listen to me.
In June of 1917 Eric Ellis received leave and took a ship from Brighton back to Rimouski, Quebec. Then he traded a ferry for the railroad back to Newfoundland and spent a week in Kelligrews shooting birds—those would be the only things Eric Ellis shot through the entire war. He spent over three months away from the war. Then he returned to England: he sailed with a draft of men in October aboard the
Florizel
to Halifax, took the
Metagama
with a convoy of ten steamers and eight liaison ships back to Liverpool, and made his way north to the depot at Ayr.
EGYPT
The medical officer Cluny Macpherson, who had witnessed the men’s physicals back in St John’s, was one of the soldiers riding a camel in one of the photographs near thepyramids. He looks both distinguished and ridiculous on the camel. I knew of Cluny Macpherson because his name is on a plaque on a stone wall outside a house in St John’s telling you that he was the inventor of the gas mask. That is not a statement you expect to read while walking down a street in
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