Into the Blizzard (31 page)

    
1
.  “Is he a prisoner of war …” (attestation papers, The Rooms).

    
2
.  “For who could tell what swift blizzard …” (definition of “nunch,”
Dictionary of Newfoundland English
).

    
3
.  “men wore their hair short …”
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919: A Chronicle of Service in France and Belgium
(Abacus 1988).

    
4
.  “… there was a photo of him in the newspaper …” (
Evening Telegram
).

    
5
.  “… it is not by men but by devils …” (
Twillingate Sun
).

    
6
.  “Bernard Harvey,” (Commonwealth War Graves Commission).

    
7
.  “drinking to the health of everyone else …” (
MBP,
p. 35).

    
8
.  “the strike of 1902 …” (Briton Cooper Busch, “The Newfoundland Sealers Strike of 1902”,
Journal of Canadian Labour Studies,
1984).

    
9
.  “I thought you were killed” (
MBP,
p. 157).

  
10
.  “the sculpture is of two large toy soldiers …” Douglas Coupland.

  
11
.  “and left on his way rejoicing …” (22 August 1914,
Twillingate Sun
).

  
12
.  “had built a wall …” (Danette
Dooley,
Evening Telegram
).

  
13
.  “before more nurses had their hands …” (
Twillingate Sun
).

  
14
.  “good luck and a chance …” (
Twillingate Sun
).

  
15
.  “… and a dozen postcards cost …” (
MBP,
p. 29).

  
16
.  “very hardy and accustomed …” (
TFN,
p. 118).

  
17
.  “a mile is a thousand …” (conversation with Jean Dandenault, Toronto).

  
18
.  “that forest of ships” (
MBP,
p. 35).

  
19
.  “… that care taken for an individual life …” Frederick George Scott,
The Great War As I Saw It
(F. D. Goodchild & Co., 1922).

  
20
.  “Jim Stacey only visited …” (
MBP,
p. 38).

  
21
.  “many’s the drop of salt water …” (
TFN,
p.127).

  
22
.  “… a slip from a rose tree …” (
Your Daughter Fanny,
p. 99).

  
23
.  “a tent-load of brother privates” (
TFN,
p.126).

  
24
.  “… essential for a writer to travel …” James Salter,
Paris Review
(No. 133, Winter 1994).

  
25
.  “They had milk in their tea …” p. 39 (
TFN,
p 129).

  
26
.  “It is very exciting …” (
LML,
p. 9).

  
27
.  “Christmas dinner: goose and roast beef,” (
LML,
p. 5).

  
28
.  “You couldn’t escape it.” (
TFN,
p. 131).

  
29
.  “abdominal disease,” Jack Chaplin attestation papers, The Rooms.

  
30
.  “When you’re weaving …” (Jonathan Cleaver, from an interview with Rebecca Gordon,
STV News,
12 July 2012).

  
31
.  “Troop Train Disaster” (
The Times,
1915).

  
32
.  “… soft end of the plank.” (
TFN,
p 138).

  
33
.  “… selling coal from a cart,” (
MBP,
p.45).

  
34
.  “… sheep wandered around the tents.” p.43 (
LML,
p 35).

  
35
.  “A detention camp …” (
LML,
p 15).

  
36
.  “… one of the men made a movie of their march …” (
LML,
p.28).

  
37
.  “final ‘polish’ ” (
LML,
p. 41).

  
38
.  George Ricketts (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
39
.  Patrick Tobin (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
40
.  “Real good …” (Eric Ellis diaries, The Rooms).

  
41
.  “They were not prepared …” (War Brides, “Land & Sea” Episode, CBC TV).

  
42
.  “Come, sit with Mary …” (“Sons of Martha,” Rudyard Kipling).

  
43
.  “Gas mask …” (The material here is culled from “Notes on Cluny Macpherson, 1879-1966,” Faculty of Medicine Founders’ Archive, Memorial University of Newfoundland).

  
44
.  “They are sure to be in fine condition,” Lieutenant Owen Steele, p. 116.

  
45
.  “… the coastal steamer
Prince Abbas
 …” (
MBP,
p. 52).

  
46
.  Hugh McWhirter (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
47
.  James Donnelly (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
48
.  “Owen Steele in shorts …” (
LOWS,
pp. xvii & 80).

  
49
.  “The Turks used dogs …” p. 52 (
LML,
p. 74).

  
50
.  “Dr. Wakefield led the Presbyterians in prayer …” (
LOWS,
p. 25).

  
51
.  “It reminded one of the
Greenland
disaster,” (
LOWS,
p. 100).

  
52
.  George McWhirter (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
53
.  “a pillar of the community,” (obituary,
Western Star
).

  
54
.  “He was a racewalker …” (introduction,
LOWS
).

  
55
.  “the peach trees were in bloom …” (
MBP,
p. 74).

  
56
.  “… tea and cakes along the way …” (
LML,
p.111).

  
57
.  “… John Roberts.” (
Shot at Dawn,
p. 98, Julian Putkowski & Julian Sykes, Pen & Sword 1998).

  
58
.  “… inculcate the offensive spirit …” (
Goodbye to All That,
Robert Graves, 1929).

  
59
.  “Arthur Wakefield, who had …” (
Into the Silence,
Wade Davis, Knopf Canada, 2011).

  
60
.  “… caribou through the snow.” (
Labrador Memoir of Dr Harry Paddon 1912-1938,
ed. Ronald Rompkey, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003).

  
61
.  Bertram Butler (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
62
.  “… a uniped.” (
Saga of Erik the Red
).

  
63
.  “their bayonets glistening in the sun,” (
TFN,
p. 266).

  
64
.  “Brandenburg cuffs …” (from a thread on the Great War Forum website).

  
65
.  “World War One is coming.” Conversation with Mark Ferguson.

  
66
.  The Norman Collins interview is from audio supplied by Mark Ferguson of the Rooms.

  
67
.  “Men who would never …” (Hugh Trevor-Roper,
The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History,
2008).

  
68
.  “alive with bees,” (
MBP,
p. 88).

  
69
.  “The general who would have fought this war differently …” (video,
Line of Fire,
Part 3 of 12).

  
70
.  “… so that forevermore …” (
Evening Telegram
).

  
71
.  “Much could be written …” (
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer,
Siegfried Sasson).

  
72
.  “He recommended lying down …” (General Sir Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle,
Reminiscences of Sport and War,
1939).

  
73
.  “better than the best … savours of extravagance,” (
TFN,
p. 493).

  
74
.  “The best small-boat seamen …” (Richard H. Gimblett,
Citizen Sailors: Chronicles of Canada’s Naval Reserve,
1910-2010).

  
75
.  “eight million horses perished …” (Jilly Cooper,
Animals in War
).

  
76
.  “… ribbons on a mule …” (
MBP,
p. 75).

  
77
.  “… seven times more likely …” (The
British historian Dr Clare Makepeace makes this point and discusses venereal disease and brothels in several published articles).

  
78
.  Ernest Chafe (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
79
.  “Goodbye, Jews!” (Louis CK interview, Conan O’Brien, TBS, 2013).

  
80
.  “I venture to speak …” (Edmund Blunden, introduction to Fabian Ware’s
The Immortal Heritage,
1937).

  
81
.  “miners stripped to the waist …” (
Shots from the Front: The British Soldier 1914-1918,
Richard Holmes).

  
82
.  “… twenty lives a foot …” (F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Tender is the Night,
1934).

  
83
.  Cyril Gardner (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
84
.  “… unable to move for fear of being seen.” (George Culpitt war diary,
http://www.culpitt-war-diary.org.uk
).

  
85
.  Moyle Stick (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
86
.  “… the colour of lamp black and wool.” (James Forbes-Robertson, attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
87
.  “… closed the gates …” (
Evening Telegram,
19 April 1917).

  
88
.  Thomas Nangle (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
89
.  Tommy Ricketts (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
90
.  “two brothers in uniform,”
Two Newfoundland VCs,
p. 84, Joy B. Cave (Creative Printers, 1984).

  
91
.  “buildings without doors,” Leo Murphy,
Veteran
magazine.

  
92
.  “communicates with the sea …” Lewis Amadeus Anspatch,
A History of the Island of Newfoundland
(1819) p. 86.

  
93
.  “as stirring as it is weird …” Glenn Colton, “Imagining Nation: Music and Identity in Pre-Confederation Newfoundland” (Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, Vol. 22, No 1, 2007).

  
94
.  “Hadow, in the snow …” (
MBP,
p. 148).

  
95
.  Robins Stick (attestation papers,
The Rooms).

  
96
.  “I was a runner …” Fred Bursey (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
97
.  “that difficult matter is swept away,” (correspondence, The Rooms).

  
98
.  Ruben Bursey’s letter. Goliath Bursey (attestation papers, The Rooms).

  
99
.  “It is the annulling …” (D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell, 1916).

100
.  “There was an unbroken …” (Landwehr Lieutenant M. Gerster, Reserve Infantry Regiment 119, speaking of events about 29 June near Beaumont-Hamel).

101
.  Henry Snow (attestation papers, The Rooms).

102
.  Richard Sellars (attestation papers, The Rooms).

103
.  Alexander Parsons (attestation papers, The Rooms).

104
.  Eric Robertson (attestation papers, The Rooms).

105
.  “The whole wall was white …” (Arthur Wakefield on Everest 1922: no ‘passenger’, Ronald Bayne,
Alpine Journal,
2004).

106
.  “… a colourful praying Hitler” is the sculpture “Him” by Maurizio Catellan, Ydessa Hendeles Foundation, Toronto.

107
.  Material on Prince John is from “Notes on Cluny Macpherson, 1879-1966” (Faculty of Medicine Founders’ Archive, Memorial University of Newfoundland).

108
.  “… rowing its weight in the boat.” (
Evening Telegram
).

109
.  “When war broke out …” Western and General report no. 92, Part I, British Empire and Africa, 30 October, 1918. Records of the Cabinet Office.

110
.  “… looked very smart as a page.” (
Newfoundland Quarterly, 1921
).

111
.  “… a generation that had gone to school …” (Walter Benjamin,
The Storyteller,
1936).

112
.  Wallace Pike (attestation
papers, The Rooms).

113
.  
The People Who were Murdered for Fun,
Harold Horwood (
Maclean’s
magazine, 1959).

114
.  “Sampson Hamel …” (David Parsons, CBC interview, 4 July 2012).

115
.  Eric Ellis diaries (The Rooms).

116
.  “beautiful scenery, he noted,” (notebooks of Eric Ellis, The Rooms).

117
.  “on a pontoon bridge” (
TFN,
p. 504).

118
.  “he thought it was a very bad order” interview with Arthur Raley, Oral Histories of the First World War, Library and Archives Canada.

119
.  “Mick Nugent was forty-two …” Mick Nugent (attestation papers, The Rooms).

120
.  “Matthew Brazil … was a miner, almost six feet tall,” (attestation papers, The Rooms).

121
.  “When the boys go over the top”; “I’ll be down on the last bread wagon,” Lead Belly,
Lead Belly’s Last Sessions.

122
.  Sydney Frost (attestation papers, The Rooms). Tommy Ricketts is third on Frost’s list of recommendations for a Victoria Cross.

123
.  Edward Joy (attestation papers, The Rooms).

124
.  “The Portuguese sided with the …” footnote, p. 47,
Grand Bank Soldier,
ed. Bert Riggs (Flanker Press, 2007).

125
.  “Davidson, educated …” from a conversation with Stephen Crocker.

126
.  “James Moore had suffered …” (
MBP,
p. 163).

127
.  these anniversary speeches were printed in the
Evening Telegram.

128
.  “… beginning of the loss of …” Robert J Harding, “Glorious Tragedy: Newfoundland’s Cultural Memory of
the Attack at Beaumont Hamel, 1916-1925” (Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, Vo. 21, No. 1, 2006).

129
.  “… a dull and wet month.” (National Meteorological Library & Archive, England).