Canadians veterans lay a wreath as part of a repatriation of an unknown Newfoundland First World War soldier at the Gueudecourt Newfoundland Memorial in France, on May 24.Rafael Yaghobzadeh/The Globe and Mail
Berkley Lawrence choked back tears as he held a small case containing his grandfather’s leather dog tags, with his name and service number, 1686, neatly inscribed.
Stephen Lawrence was wounded twice in the First World War: once during the Battle of the Somme in July, 1916, and again three months later while fighting near Gueudecourt, in northern France. He’s one of 3,600 Newfoundlanders who died or were wounded during the Great War, when the province was a separate dominion of the British Empire.
“It’s shivering for me to be here,” Mr. Lawrence said Friday as he stood at a small memorial in Gueudecourt that commemorates Newfoundland soldiers. “I break down every time I talk about him.”
Mr. Lawrence, 70, is part of a delegation of Newfoundland and Labrador veterans and government representatives who have travelled to northern France this week for a historic ceremony.
On Saturday, the remains of a Newfoundland soldier who died during the First World War will be loaded on to a plane in Lille, France, and flown to St. John’s. The casket will be interred in a new tomb for the unknown soldier on July 1 as part of commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of Newfoundland’s National War Memorial.
The repatriation was the brainchild of Newfoundlander Frank Sullivan, who served in the navy for 42 years and spent the past five years lobbying officials.
Mr. Sullivan’s great-uncle, Charles Canning, died near Beaumont-Hamel during the Battle of the Somme, and it always rankled him that there was a tomb of the unknown soldier at the National War Memorial in Ottawa and not one in St. John’s.
“Newfoundland was its own dominion back then, so why haven’t we got one? Our war memorial predates the Canadian one by 15 years,” Mr. Sullivan, 77, said Friday as he toured the memorial at Gueudecourt.
It particularly irked him that the remains interred in the National War Memorial are those of a soldier who died during the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917, when more than 10,000 Canadians were killed or wounded while taking a strategic hilltop. Since Newfoundlanders didn’t fight at Vimy Ridge, Mr. Sullivan felt the tomb in Ottawa didn’t represent the province’s substantial sacrifice.
About 12,000 Newfoundlanders signed up to fight after Britain declared war in August, 1914. That represented more than a third of the dominion’s population of young men at the time. More than 700 died in the first half-hour of fighting at the Somme, and many of the bodies were never recovered. Another 239 died or were wounded at Gueudecourt.
Armed with a stack of research, Mr. Sullivan began lobbying various levels of government and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, a multinational organization that maintains cemeteries around the world for soldiers from Commonwealth countries who died during the world wars.
The repatriation project was approved in 2022, and the commission selected the soldier whose identity is unknown. The Newfoundland and Labrador government, with support from the Royal Canadian Legion, refurbished the war memorial in St. John’s and built a place for a tomb.
Mr. Sullivan saw the casket this week in France. “I broke down,” he said as tears welled up in his eyes. “In July, it will be entombed, and we’ll have our own hero.”
Newfoundland Premier Andrew Furey, who has travelled to France for Saturday’s ceremony, said almost everyone in the province has some connection to the men and women who lost their lives during the war. “Every Newfoundland and Labradorian learns from a young age the story of the fighting Newfoundlander and how it was born in the First World War,” he said.
Mr. Furey said the war had a profound impact on Newfoundland in terms of human cost and economic fallout, which ultimately led the province to give up its independence in 1949.
Bringing an unknown soldier home “is incredibly moving and it will be historic for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to be able to go and visit and pay respects to someone who’s given an ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms we enjoy today,” he said.
Retired general Rick Hillier, a former chief of the defence staff, was among the veterans honouring fallen Newfoundland soldiers Friday. At one point, Mr. Hillier, who is from Campbellton, N.L., encouraged the group to walk by rows of graves and remember someone who died during the war.
“It’s been incredible, very emotional,” he said during the delegation’s stop at a war cemetery outside Beaumont-Hamel.
As he toured the cemetery, Mr. Hillier was asked about the war in Ukraine and whether any parallels could be drawn with the First World War.
“The lessons of war never get old, sadly,” he said. “Warfare changes in some ways, but fundamentally it’s two people trying to kill each other. And you do that in any way you can.”
Saturday’s ceremony, which begins at the Newfoundland Memorial at Beaumont-Hamel, will also be special for Sharp Dopler, 61, from Paradise, N.L. The 14-year veteran of the naval reserve was forced out of the military in 1997 because of their sexual orientation.
Dopler has been included in the delegation as a representative of Rainbow Veterans of Canada, an organization that represents LGBTQ veterans, who were purged from the military for decades, up to the 1990s.
The organization has only recently been included in veterans’ events and has started working with the Legion. “I had some fear coming here as a queer veteran,” Dopler said. “But everybody here has been amazing.”
They choked up when asked what Saturday’s ceremony will mean to them. “It’s a huge, huge honour,” Dopler replied. “I still can’t believe I’m here.”