What Real Sacrifice Looks Like: Casualties of the Great War

 

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial

 

Recently the inexplicable sight of groups of ill-informed young men glorifying enemies of the United States made me think of family members who actually fought AGAINST the enemies of our country, and of civilization. One that I recently learned about was my mom's cousin, Jim McGillivray. 

Jane Orr, my great-grandmother, my mom's grandmother, was born in Canada. She and her Scottish-born husband Hugh McGillivray first set up housekeeping in 1875 in Paisley, Ontario, an area full of Scottish settlers, including Hugh's father, stepmother, and half brother and sister. All of these McGillivrays had children (though not as many as Jane and Hugh, who had 17), and then their children had children. So soon there were plenty of McGillivray cousins.  

My mom was much the youngest of four. Her cousin Jim, the son of her uncle Hector McGillivray, was the youngest of five. My great-grandparents Hugh and Jane McGillivray eventually moved their family to Grand Forks, North Dakota, homesteading on the fertile land that they got free as long as they agreed to work it. They all became U.S. citizens. Hugh even became the local postmaster. 

Hector McGillivray, Hugh's half brother, was also a farmer, and his family stayed in Canada, which was then still part of the British Empire. So when England went to war with Germany in 1914, to defend its allies right to self-rule, young Canadian men joined the armed forces in droves. And as soon as he was old enough, Jim McGillivray joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the CEF. It was 1916, and he was 18. 

 

Jim McGillivray joined up at the age of 18.

 

Jim went through basic training and finally landed in France in 1917, a private in the 54th Battalion of the CEF. The Canadians saw a lot of action. One of the most horrible battles of that horrible war had been going on for months, an apparently endless stalemate of death and destruction -- the Battle of Vimy Ridge. After several attempts to take this area from the German army, the Canadian forces, commanded by General Sir Julian Byng, finally did so, but at tremendous cost.

Jim McGillivray was seriously wounded and taken to a hospital in Pas-de-Calais, where he died of pneumonia on April 18, 1918, eight days after his twentieth birthday. No one can really imagine how his family felt when they learned of his death -- the youngest of a large family, healthy, energetic, and looking toward who knew what opportunities in the future. All of that ended in an instant with a few bullets or bits of shrapnel. 

 

The causes and explanations for World War 1 are obscure to most people now. But the Allies' cause was understood by most people to be protecting the self-determination of France, Belgium, and other European nations against German aggression. These soldiers sacrificed themselves for something -- not to oppress and control others, but to defend their freedom.   

The area where Jim was mortally wounded is now the site of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, because thousands of Canadian soldiers were killed there. Even now it is a dangerous place, the earth riddled with trenches, tunnels, and unexploded bombs that it is too risky to try and remove. In a sense, the Great War has never ended in this patch of France.