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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Canadian Soldier portrait


wulsten

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Picked up this portait photo today, believe Canadian, can anyone add anything about the picture or confirm era of the picture, ie is it WW1 or later, apologies for quality of the image its behind glass and i dont want to remove or disturb it, anything appreciated

post-9296-1269978336.jpg

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hi wulsten,the uniform looks like ww1 to me,ys it looks to be a canadian soldier as he has the maple leaf on his cap.I cant make it out clearly but his shoulder lepells look like it has an NF which could be the newfoundland reg.good luck.He also looks to be a sergent lookin at his stripes.

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Any markings on the back of the frame to indicate location? That would narrow it a bit. Unfortunately I think it looks like a private purchase pattern, made IIRC by Eatons of Canada that were identical except for the centre numeral.

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but his shoulder lepells look like it has an NF which could be the newfoundland reg.

He is not a member of the Newfoundland Regiment or Newfoundland Forestry unit as both regiments wore the caribou cap badge and collar badges, this gentleman is wearing Canadian maple leaf badges. He is also wearing the CANADA shoulder title. The NF shoulder could be "INF" for Infantry.

Chris

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The one for 64BN appears to be quite similar.

Im trying to open the link to the cap badges but for some reason my computer will not allow me to enlarge the pages of the shown cap badges, can anyone post a 64th Bn badge for comparison ?

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OK, definitely 133rd Bn. for my money.

http://www.diggerhistory.info/images/canada/133cef.JPG

All the points add up, plus the two scrolls curving up and down. Sailed for England November 1916, and then went into 23rd Reserve Battalion.

Nominal roll here: http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:MzgeXZ...=clnk&gl=ca (I couldn't get the main page to open, so used Google's cached version).

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Michael, it is certainly clearer with the close up than on the portrait shot and i agree you have the id spot on, if only i had a name, i wonder if he was associated with Redhill where the photo was taken or whether the Battalion was stationed there for a period ?

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You could use the nominal roll to identify those soldiers who were born in England, then go to the CEF database http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databas...42-100.01-e.php

to retrieve their enlistment papers to see if any of them were born in Surrey. I suspect that you could narrow it down to those who were NCOs. The embarcation roll could tell you that. I think this link will let you download a .pdf of the embarcation roll: http://www.mediafire.com/rlaughton

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I would agree, 133BN.

As for who he is, by the looks of it this soldier would make a good candidate:

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databas...aq9k7p7er3kntn1

1911 census

http://automatedgenealogy.com/census11/Vie...+James+F.+Donly

if you click the "Links" button you'll see him in the 1901 census with surname Danby.

The Ontario Cemetery Finding Aid shows no burial in the province for him:

http://www.islandnet.com/ocfa/search.php

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I don't think Donly was a Sergeant in 1916, and he was born in Canada.

797518 Barnwell (born Essex)

798005 Blake (Hants)

797019 Clancy (Kent) (brother serving with Royal Fusilers, Lemnos)

797010 Smith (Bath)

Lots of the Sergeants were Canadian-born, some Welsh or Scots.

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Well, there are 7 casualties via Geoff.

001 ABBOTT HE 797160 133RD BN 22/05/1920 CANADIAN INFANTRY

002 GRIFFIN WP 871950 133RD BN 30/10/1918 CANADIAN INFANTRY

003 MULVANEY J 2498509 133RD BN 18/08/1920 CANADIAN INFANTRY

004 NIGHTINGALE H 796748 133RD BN 25/07/1921 CANADIAN INFANTRY

005 PAULIN A - 133RD BN 13/03/1917 CANADIAN INFANTRY

006 PEPPER TW 797547 133RD BN 25/07/1916 CANADIAN INFANTRY

007 STELMASHUK F 797647 133RD BN 17/11/1920 CANADIAN INFANTRY

One is an officer, so I think that rules our chap out, plus all bar one are much older. 2 do have UK connections, though.

IF our chap WAS a casualty, then Stelmashuk would seem closest. Oh, and you can guess Peppers rank!

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Quite true, he wasn't; but I'm fairly certain we're looking at someone who was born in the 1890s. I'm not so sure whether there's a connection between the studio and the soldier's place of birth, though. There's a number of other reasons why it would have been framed there.

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007 STELMASHUK F 797647 133RD BN 17/11/1920 CANADIAN INFANTRY

One is an officer, so I think that rules our chap out, plus all bar one are much older. 2 do have UK connections, though.

IF our chap WAS a casualty, then Stelmashuk would seem closest. Oh, and you can guess Peppers rank!

He embarked and passed away as a Private, though.

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The 133rd and 23rd Reserve were at Shorncliffe Camp, which is 65 miles from Redhill, which seems a litle far to go to get framing done. Here's alink for the 23rd Reserve, which confirms that the the 133rd went to Shorncliffe as well. http://www.cefresearch.com/matrix/Utilitie...serves/23rd.htm

My experience is that framers often put a name on the back of the photo, probably to match up with the framing instructions. Some framers padded the back with newspapers, which really shouldn't be left due to the acid content.

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Bad news is there is no name on the reverse of the photo, good news managed to check it without damaging the framing label

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