A marble tablet rests in the left wall of the main entrance to the Bay Street Armoury. Like many other Victorians, I have walked past it many times, maybe noting a brief flash of white marble, but never pausing long enough to read the words, inscribed about 100 years ago.
And I never would have paused long enough to read the story on the stone had I not received an e-mail message from Capt. Dan Korolyk, CD (ret.) mildly chastising me for an error by omission in my Nov. 10 Remembrance Day column.
I had written that while we still honoured servicemen and women each year on Nov. 11, “earlier conflicts have been removed from memory.” The Boer War, I suggested, which ended only a dozen years before The Great War began, was now long forgotten.
Not so, wrote Capt. Korolyk: Each year, “after the Nov. 11 service downtown, 5 [B.C.] Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, has its members and former members lay a wreath at a plaque in the main entrance to the Bay Street Armoury for five local soldiers who lost their lives in the Boer War. This has been going on since 1914” — the year the Armoury opened for military service and at least five before the first official Armistice Day.
I checked and there are the names as clear as the day they were inscribed and first remembered. Capt. M.G. Blanchard (not to be confused with the more famous Blanshards), Sergeant W.I. Scott and gunners J. Todd, J.J. Somers and A. Maundrill.
All five fell in the battle of Paardeberg Drift on the banks of the Modder River. They were among the 31 officers and 866 other ranks of the 2nd (Special Service) Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment of Infantry and on Feb. 18, 1900, led the attack on General Piet Cronje’s well fortified base on the Modder.
It was the Canadians’ first major action in that war and described by historians as “extremely bloody,” with 18 Canadians dead and 60 wounded. Sixteen years later, those numbers would fade to insignificance when an estimated 20,000 Commonwealth soldiers were killed in the first 60 minutes of the Battle of the Somme.
But in 1901, the 18 killed and 60 wounded were enough to shock a still-young Canada. Blanchard didn’t die until June 15 “from wounds.” Scott, Todd, Somers and Maundrill were “killed in action.” In Victoria, fundraising began to finance a Francis Rattenbury designed “substantial stone structure to be known as the Paardenberg Gate” on Belleville Street opposite the legislature building.
Wikipedia suggests Rattenbury completed that assignment, and bases its notation on a reference in the Dictionary of Architects 1800-1950, which lists the Paardenberg Gate as a 1901 Rattenbury accomplishment. I’m still trying to find out if a “gate memorial” of any kind was ever built on Belleville, and if so what happened to it. Did it become “scaled down” and go from triumphal arch on Belleville to a marble slab in the gateway to the Armoury?
One of the next rainy days I’ll go poking around in city archives and report back – unless another kind advisory note wafts its email from another kind reader to offer friendly guidance.
I did learn a great deal after Capt. Korelyk launched me to first base on Bay Street. The Canadian Museum of Civilization informed me the Battle of Paardeberg Drift ended on Feb. 27, 1900, with the Canadian contingent given much of the credit for “the first significant British victory of the war.”
And I learned the Canadian contingent was 7,000 strong, “including 12 women nurses”; that the Book of Remembrance in Ottawa lists 267 Canadians dead; and that then-prime minister Wilfred Laurier pledged his decision to answer England’s call for help in time of war was “not a precedent.”
Of the four Victoria Crosses won in the Second Boer War, one of the most the most dramatic went to Sgt. A.H.L. Richardson of Lord Strathcona Horse. On July 5, 1900, he was retiring from the field wounded when he noticed one of his men unhorsed and in danger of being captured. Richardson turned, rode back through heavy fire, picked up the wounded trooper, slung him over his saddle and rode back through increasing fire to safety. Richardson died in England in 1932. His grave is in St. James Cemetery, Liverpool, and in 1996, some 96 years after the event, a monument honoring Richardson’s gallantry was put in place.
Sometimes it takes a while to recognize gallantry and self-sacrifice; sometimes good intentions get lost or just forgotten. Which brings me to one other thing picked up on the search triggered by retired Capt. Korolyk: In Australia, they have a permanent National Boer War Memorial Association. Last year, it unveiled the design of a Boer War memorial to be constructed in Canberra. It depicts four troopers riding breakneck through the African veldt. Readers can Google the Association for a look. Very dramatic.
But not the Canadian way. For us, a marble tablet with honoured names is enough — if we ever stop to read the words.