Memorial to G. Rex Tucker 1893-1916
Background
While gathering genealogical data on my family in 1977 I learned from my father that one of his mother’s brothers---Rex Tucker---had been in the Canadian army and was killed during World War I.
Over time I learned that my great uncle’s full name was name was George Rex William Tucker. His parents, Charles Flynn Tucker (1856-1900) and Charlotte Agnes Saunders (1863-1932) gave each of their 8 children two middle names. George went by his first middle name Rex.
In 1998, I sent away to the Canadian Archives and received the few pages of Rex Tucker’s military file. Among other things I learned he was part of the 28th Battalion and was killed “in the field” 6 June 1916.
A few more years went by and I became curious about where Rex was buried. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission: http://www.cwgc.org provides a database of locations of graves of British Commonwealth soldiers killed in World War I and II. I learned that Rex’s “grave” was the Menin Gate Memorial in Belgium.
Menin Gate Memorial
Belgium has two ethnic groups, one French speaking and one Flemish. At the time of World War I the Flemish town now called Ieper, went by its French name Ypres. Ypres is pronounced “ee-pray” however British troops tended to pronounce it “wipers.” Ypres is in the West Flanders Province of Belgium, not far from the border with France to the west.
The Ypres Salient was the part of the trenches on the Western Front held by troops from Britain and the British Empire. A salient is a protuberance in the line. In this case the line of trenches running more or less north-south, made a bulge to the east around the town of Ypres.
In medieval times Ypres was a walled town and had a gate in the eastern wall opening onto the road from Ypres to Menin. By World War I there was no gate across the road, but the ruins of the medieval gate was a local landmark.
The Menin Gate Memorial was built in 1927. It is a building that arches over the Menin road at the site of the old gate. The Memorial contains panels with the names of 54,000 British Empire soldiers who died in the area of the Ypres Salient and for whom no known grave exists. Soldiers names are arranged by battalion. My great uncle’s name is on a panel with 259 other soldiers from the Canadian 28th Battalion who have no marked grave.
At present, every night at 8:00 pm, police stop traffic from going through the arch while two Ieper firemen play Last Post (the British equivalent of the American Taps). That brief ceremony has occurred every day since 1927 with the exception of World War II when Ypres was occupied by German troops.
Tuckers Named George
Rex Tucker was born 7 October 1893 in Mattawa, Ontario, the 6th child and only male born to Charles and Charlotte. Mattawa is in the North Bay area, north of Toronto. Rex was named after his grandfather George Rex Tucker (1816-1864) born in Edwardsburgh, Ontario. Edwardsburgh is on the St. Lawrence River; the river being the border between Ontario and New York. The latter’s father was George William Tucker (c. 1771-1842), born in Hartford, Connecticut. That George migrated to Edwardsburgh in 1798 and later was one of the founders of the town of Westmeath, Ontario (north of Ottawa).
1914
The Tucker family continued its penchant for moving around. Rex’s father Charles had died in 1900. By 1914 Rex’s mother Charlotte and two of his sisters, Pearl (my grandmother) and Bertha, were living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I don’t know exactly where Rex was living. He was unmarried and working as a salesman at the time he volunteered for the army at Regina, Saskatchewan 24 October 1914
In 1914 the Dominion of Canada managed its own domestic affairs, but was tied to Great Britain for foreign policy. Thus when Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, Canada automatically entered the war as well. Canada offered an initial contingent of 25,000 men; what became the First Division, Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) . Canada offered a second contingent in the autumn of 1914. Rex was enlisted in that; what would become the Second Division, CEF.
Rex’s unit, the 28th “Northwest” Battalion was formed on 1 November 1914 at a strength of approximately 35 officers and 1,100 men. The 28th along with 3 other battalions from western Canada: the 27th “City of Winnipeg,” 29th “Tobin's Tigers/Vancouver,” and the 31st “Alberta,” became part of the 6th Brigade. The 6th Brigade, along with the 4th and 5th Brigades, comprised the Second Division, CEF.
The 28th trained in Winnipeg through the winter and spring of 1915. The battalion was housed in the Old Horse Show Building which was poorly suited to the task.
Off to England
On 26 May 1915 the 28th left Winnipeg from the Canadian Pacific Station on two trains for Montreal. On 28 May they arrived in Montreal, formed up in the rail yard, and marched to the ship S. S. Northland, a vessel of about 10,000 tons. The ship departed that same day for a 10 day crossing to Plymouth, England.
On 7 June the 28th Battalion traveled by train from Plymouth to London and then south to the coast where they joined the rest of the 6th Brigade already at Dibgate Camp at Shorncliffe, Kent (west of Dover). Rex and the 28th trained at Dibgate Camp through the middle of August when they moved to nearby Otterpool Camp for further training. On 12 September 1915 Rex qualified as a Bomb Thrower. At that time throwing a grenade was a specialty; later in the war most any soldier might throw one.
The brigade got orders to move to France. On 16 September 1915 they marched to Folkstone harbor, sailed the next day and arrived at Boulogne, France on 18 September 1915 in the early morning hours. At noon they took the train to St. Omer then to Cassel, then to billets at St. Sylvestre Cappel, in the north of France near the boarder with Belgium. On 21 September they marched into Belgium to a reserve camp at De Groute Farm. On 25 September they marched to the trenches at the Ypres Salient. The 28th went to the Kemmel trenches south of the town.
Soldiers in Canadian battalions at that time went to war with a Ross Rifle. The Ross was an excellent target rifle but a failure as a military weapon.
Ross Rifle
World War I was not the first war in which Canada as a nation had sent troops. They participated in the Boer War (1899-1902). During that war their requests of the British for more up-to-date weapons were turned down as the British gave priority to equipping their own troops. That led Canada to desire and to set up its own arms industry.
First Canada tried to obtain a license to manufacture British Lee-Enfield rifles, but was turned down. As an alternative they began production of a Canadian designed rifle---the Ross. Ross rifles used the same .303 caliber cartridge used in the British Short Magazine Lee Enfield. The first Ross military rifles were delivered in 1903.
Ross rifles employed a straight-back-straight-forward bolt action rather than the conventional up-back-forwards-down action. A straight pull action is slower and more fatiguing to operate. It also produces less camming power to extract spent cases resulting in more stuck rounds. The Ross bolt could be improperly re-assembled after a field servicing, such that it failed to lock. Upon firing in that instance, the bolt would fly backwards out of the receiver.
However the most serious design problem with the Ross was its unusual susceptibility to dirt and grime resulting in a high frequency of jammed bolts. First used in combat by the 1st Division CEF troops in April 1915, instances occurred of Canadian soldiers abandoning their jammed Ross and replacing it with a Lee Enfield picked up from a fallen British soldier.
In late summer of 1916 the Army replaced the 28th Battalion’s Ross rifles with British made Lee Enfields. By that time Rex was dead.
The First Days at the Front
The 28th was divided into four companies---A, B, C, and D of over 200 soldiers each; plus smaller specialty companies---signal, machine gun, headquarters and brass band. I don’t know for sure which company Rex served in. His military records don’t list it and he does not appear in a published set of 28th Battalion photos. However companies were formed from people from the same area and given his enlistment at Regina, Rex was probably in B Company.
In their first few days in the trenches 3 men of the 28th were killed by German mortar fire, and another killed by a sniper. On 30 September 1915 the 28th was relieved and moved to the rear.
Trench Warfare
In the early days of World War I the Germans had made sweeping advances through Belgium into France approaching to the north of Paris. The First Battle of Marne (5-10 September 1914) halted the German advance. The Germans then withdrew to defensive positions in the west of France. Shortly the war of maneuver became a stalemate leading to trench warfare on the Western Front.
Trenches gave the defender a very large advantage vs. an attacker. That is, to hold a position in a trench required fewer men and lower casualties than to attack and route defenders from their trenches.
The British trenches around Ypres had a primary front-line trench and a secondary support trench about 200 to 500 yards to the rear. Those trenches were connected by communication trenches used to send men in and out. Movement to and from the trenches was done at night.
German and British front-line trenches at Ypres were typically about 200 to 300 yards apart from each other, sometimes much closer. The Germans had a greater tactical advantage as their trenches were on higher ground.
Typically a battalion such as the 28th would serve a period of time, say a week, in the trenches, then rotate to a support area for a time, e.g., the Kemmel Shelters, then rotate still further back to a reserve area for rest and training, e.g., at the near-by village of Locre. Then the process would start again. The 28th would not always return to the same area of the trench line nor always relieve or be relieved by the same battalions.
By the time Rex arrived at the Ypres Salient, it was part of an unbroken line of trenches 475 miles long from the North Sea to the mountain frontier of neutral Switzerland.
Fall 1915
On 6 October 1915 the 28th was back in the trenches again. Two days later the Germans set off explosives in tunnels they had dug from their lines to a point under the Canadian trenches in a section manned by D company. That company suffered 19 killed, 30 wounded and 7 missing in the explosion. On 28 October the 28th was relieved. A period of relative quite followed.
In 22 April 1915 the Germans had introduced chlorine gas at Ypres. On 19 December 1915 they used poisonous phosgene gas at Ypres for the first time on the Western Front. The 28th was well to the rear at the time.
The 28th Battalion was back in the trenches on Christmas Day 1915. The Germans were singing Christmas carols. Many from the 28th joined in singing Stille Nacht/Silent Night. Pvt. J. C. Andrews reported seeing about 20 men from the 28th exchanging cigarettes and souvenirs with a similar number of Germans in no man’s land between the opposing trenches.
Christmas Truce
Local informal truces with the Germans sometimes occurred to allow both sides to retrieve and bury their dead. On Christmas the prior year (1914) an informal truce occurred along most of the British line around Ypres as well as elsewhere. Both sides sang Christmas carols from their trenches. Overtures were made to not shoot each other. Eventually German and British soldiers came out of their trenches and openly fraternized with each other. They exchanged items and engaged in informal soccer matches. The truce was not sanctioned by the headquarters staffs of either side, but the frontline officers tolerated it.
Christmas 1915, when Rex was in the trenches, there was a second Christmas truce although it was more sporadic and less tolerated by officers than the 1914 one.
Winter and Spring 1916
On 27 December 1915, the 28th mover to the reserve area at Locre where they celebrated the New Year. For six days 2-8 January 1916 the 28th was back in the trenches suffering 3 killed by rifle or machinegun fire.
The 28th was next in the trenches 14 January. They were further to the north in front of Kemmel. The German trenches in that area were very close; in places only 30-40 yards in front of the Canadian trenches. On 20 January the 28th returned to the reserve with only 1 wounded during that time at the front.
They returned to the trenches 26 January 1916. Up to this time the 28th had manned the trenches during periods when neither they nor the Germans were attacking. Now the 28th would carry out its first raid the night of 30 January and the early morning of 31 January. Two men went into no man’s land and cut a path through the German barbed wire at the foot of Messines Ridge near Wyschaete, Belgium. Then 30 to 40 men went through the path and entered the German trench. Six minutes later they withdrew and returned to their own trench. About 40 Germans were killed with a loss of 1 or 2 Canadians killed and about 6 wounded.
The next activity of consequence that the 28th participated in was the Actions of St. Eloi Craters. On 27 March 1916 the British had exploded a series of mines in front of their lines at St. Eloi creating large craters. The British then pushed their trench line forward in order to gain a more advantages tactical position. Bloody, confused and unsuccessful fighting ensued. The 6th Brigade moved in to relieve the British regiments on the night of 3-4 April 1916. The 28th (part of the 6th Brigade) participated in a reserve capacity. Bombing parties from the 28th were employed on 7 April and possibly Rex---a bomb thrower---participated.
Death
The action in which Rex Tucker was killed is known as the Hooge, part of the Battle of Mount Sorrel (2-14 June 1916). At the beginning of June 1916 the Canadian Corps held the southern section of the Ypres Salient from just north of Hooge to St. Eloi. The Second Division held the right of the Canadian line. On 2 June the Germans opened a very heavy artillery bombardment followed by their infantry leaving their trenches and attaching the Canadian line. The 28th was in the reserve at the time. The Germans succeed in opening a large gap in the Canadian line from Mount Sorrel to Sanctuary Wood. On 3 June the Canadians counterattacked. The 28th was still in the reserve until the night of 5-6 June when they moved up the Menin Road, skirting the Menin gate, then over to the trenches on the knoll near the village of Hooge. A and B Companies occupied the front trench and C and D Companies the support trench about 500 yards to the rear. Again, probably Rex was in B Company.
At 7:00 AM on 6 June the Germans started a heavy artillery barrage. It continued until 2:00 PM. Then at 3:05 PM the Germans exploded 4 mines under about 200 yards of the front-line trenches the 28th occupied. Most of A company, about 200 men were killed by those four explosions. The German infantry attached and overran B Company in the front trench. Private George Rex Tucker was killed 6 June 1916; his body was not recovered. That day was the bloodiest in the history of the 28th Battalion
The German advance was stopped by the 28th's men in the support trench along the Menin Road and by the 31st Battalion on the right flank in Zouave Wood. At the end of the day the Germans remained in possession of the Hooge line.
On 13 June the 28th was part of a counterattack and the lost ground was regained. On 14 June the Germans continued to bombard their recently won and lost position, but the Canadians were dug in again.
In Flanders Fields
A little over a year prior to Rex’s death, Canadian Maj. John McCrae wrote the poem “In Flanders Fields” the day after the burial of his friend Lieut. Alexis Helmer. The middle paragraph of McCrae’s poem is:
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.