LCol Russell Lambert Boyle, Mentioned in Despatches and killed in action leading his men of the 10th Battalion on 22 April 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres. Only Mentioned in Despatches. Boyle’s actions certainly worthy of a Military Cross medal, or the higher award of a Distinguished Service Order.
Lieutenant Colonel Russel Lambert Boyle, 10th Canadian Infantry (Alberta Regiment), the Commanding Officer of the 10th Canadians, killed in the unit’s very first combat action.
The Battle of Kitchener’s Wood
The Battle of Kitcheners’ Wood part of the overall Second Battle of Ypres, and began on the night of 21-22 April 1915 mere hours after the Germans launched the first poison gas attack of the war on the Western Front. The gas routing two divisions of French colonials and territorials and causing the First Canadian Division to be hurriedly thrown into action.
LCol Russell Lambert Boyle leading both the 10th and 16th (Canadian Scottish) Battalions in a hastily organized counterattack when struck five times by a German machine gun in the groin. He died a few days later, but the 10th gained fame in their successful counterattack, earning the Calgary Highlanders the right to wear a prized Oak Leaf shoulder badge in commemoration of this attack.
St. Julien’s Day
St. Julien’s Day commemorated annually. Kitchener’s Wood located near the town of St. Julien where much fighting occurred after the initial counterattack of the Canadians at the Wood. On the property of Mr Ignace Bentien stands the Kitchener’s Wood Memorial.
Kitchener’s Wood Memorial
Jozef Dekeyser designed and created the memorial. Ignace Bentein assisted to realize this project. Erected in 1997 by the schoolchildren of the Vrije Basisschool of nearby St-Juliaan.
The same area below at dawn, 22 April 2015. The fog eerily reminiscent of the approaching cloud of gas on the afternoon of 22 April 1915.
Early Life of Russell Lambert Boyle
Russell Lambert Boyle born in Port Colbourne, Ontario, on 29 October 1880. Brother of Major Mahlon Lambert Boyle and Nettie Mae Fennell Boyle.
On 7 June 1894, Boyle enlisted in the Canadian Field Artillery and served continuously in the Militia from then until 1914, with the exception of his service in South Africa as a sergeant in the artillery.
He returned to Canada with a war wound, and three clasps to the Queen’s Medal. He engaged in ranching near Crossfield, Alberta, sat as a member of the school board and the municipal council.
Boyle became a major in the local Militia unit, the 15th Canadian Light Horse. As of May 1910, commanded the Crossfield squadron of the unit. He passed the militia staff course and also gained a certificate from the School of Signalling.
LCol John Grant Rattray
Boyle joined the CEF at Valcartier and took over the 10th Battalion after Lieutenant Colonel John Grant Rattray‘s humiliation at the hands of Sir Sam Hughes.
Rattray commanded two battalions at Camp Valcartier, the 6th (Fort Garry Horse) and the 10th Battalion which he organized for departure to England. Rattray, a Liberal, had run afoul of the Conservative militia minister, Sam Hughes. Hughes found Rattray on parade at Valcartier.
“Colonel Rattray, what are you doing here? Get the hell out of here!”
Conservative militia minister, Sam Hughes
Rattray humiliated, and the battalion’s officers further insulted when Hughes left without inspecting the 10th.
Upon reaching England, LCol Russell Lambert Boyle drew up the battalion, took off his coat, and issued a challenge to his men. Noting that some of the men on ship had said they wanted to “punch the hell” out of him, he told the men that anyone who would like to try was welcome to it, right then and there. No one took him Boyle up on the offer. Major T D J Ringwood, still training officers of the Canadian Field Artillery in Canada, had taken the same approach with his men.
Mouse Trap Farm
Mouse Trap Farm, surrounded by a double late medieval rampart, marked on Belgian maps as Château and known to the Belgians and French as Château du Nord.
The British called the farm Shell Trap Farm (freely translates as Farm that attracts shells).
By order of the V Corps leadership, this bad luck name changed to Mouse Trap Farm (Mice Trap Farm). Also known for a time as Canadian Farm because the headquarters of the 3rd Canadian Brigade located there.
Wasserschloss
The Germans captured the farm after the last gas attack during the Second Battle of Ypres on 24 April 1915. In their enthusiasm they named the fortification Wieltje Château although they had not captured Wieltje themselves. Later they changed the name to Wasserschloss.
The double ramparts around the farm had its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage the reinforcements had an extra defense. The disadvantage the limitation of the evacuation options.
Captain Francis Alexander Scrimger VC
The farm served not only as the headquarters of the 3rd Canadian Brigade, but also as a dressing station. When the farm set on fire, the wounded had to be evacuated. Since the Germans constantly bombarded the only passage through the wall, the wounded had to be brought to safety via the water.
The person in charge of the dressing station – Captain Francis Alexander Scrimger VC. Scrimger assigned to the 14th (Royal Montreal) Battalion as a Canadian Army Medical Service medic. For his dedication to Mouse Trap Farm between April 22 and 25, Scrimger awarded the Victoria Cross.
War Artist Bruce Bairnsfather
Bruce Bairnsfather, as a 2nd Lieutenant, experienced an attack on Mouse Trap Farm on 25 May 1915 and wounded. As an Old Bill draftsman, the common soldier at the front, he would make hundreds of cartoons about war scenes, becoming the most famous cartoonist of his time.
The shelling of the farm continued. As I lay on the bank of the rampart, I heard a colossal murmur in the air, but I no longer heard the impact… I lay in the water, covered from head to toe. the mud. Suddenly I started to tremble all over. I couldn’t grab anything. I was blown up by a grenade…
2nd Lieutenant Bruce Bairnsfather
Fighting west and northwest of Mouse Trap Farm during the German capture of the farm on 24 May 1915, killed T Carthy and John Condon of the Royal Irish Regiment. Carthy was the oldest soldier of his unit at 47 years old, Condon was the youngest soldier of the world war with his age (according to post-war data) of just under 14 years. (Source : Robert Missinne)
Second Battle of Ypres
By April 1915, the 10th Battalion in reserve at Ypres, in the Flanders region of Belgium. On 22 April 1915, the major engagement known as the Second Battle of Ypres would begin. In the initial stage during the Battle of St. Julien, the Germans released tons of chlorine gas.
The Canadians had taken over part of the front line, with the French on their left and British forces on their right. The French forces on the Canadians’ left flank felt the full brunt of the gas and collapsed, leaving an almost 4 kilometre gap in the Allied line. The Germans slowly advanced into the gap, and the 10th Battalion called upon to participate in a hurried counterattack with the 16th Battalion to halt the Germans.
Kitchener’s Wood
As part of the counterattack, immediately before midnight on 22 April 1915, the 10th called to lead the 16th Battalion in an action to recapture some artillery and to secure a place known as Kitchener’s Wood.
The attack planned for midnight. None of the officers nor men had training or experience in night attacks and though in unfamiliar territory, that did not deter them.
LCol Russell Lambert Boyle’s comrades later reported that just before they started to move forward at twenty minutes to midnight, he turned to his men and spoke.
We have been aching for a fight; we are now going to get it, just follow me.
LCol Russell Lambert Boyle
And they did. He led the battalion through the whole action. They faced a barrage of machine gun fire from Germans hidden in the Wood, among the first Canadians ever to face automatic weapons. Boyle hit five times in the groin, but refused treatment for several hours so he could direct his men in setting up new defensive positions.
Lord Beaverbrook
William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook
War artist Richard Jack portrayed the Canadian stand during the Second Battle of Ypres, which he did not witness. He painted an enormous work of art, with the canvas 371.5 by 589.0 centimetres, in his London studio.
It was the first of almost a thousand works, by over one hundred artists, commissioned by the Canadian War Memorials Fund (CWMF), an organization established by Lord Beaverbrook to document Canada’s war effort.
Sir Edmund Walker, who sat on the advisory board to the CWMF, felt that Jack captured the achievements of the Canadians during the battle. However, he felt the work would not resonate with Canadians, who, he felt, were “not likely to appreciate such realistic treatment of war.”
Beaverbrook Collection of War Art
CWM 19710261-0161
Jack’s painting remains an iconic work of the Great War.
Death of LCol Russell Lambert Byle
Boyles’ delay in treatment, so his colleagues said, contributed to his death several days later, even though he had remained optimistic that he would make a full recovery and return to duty. He died on 25 April 1915 and buried in the Poperinghe Old Military Cemetery, Belgium. Of almost 900 men in the 10th Battalion, less than 200 survived Kitchener’s Wood.
Major Daniel Mowat Ormond
The men impressed by Boyle’s courage. During the initial attack into the wood, Boyle among the first men hit by automatic weapons fire. The 10th’s Adjutant, Major Ormond later recalled.
The colonel got five bullets from a machine-gun in his left groin – made a wonderful pattern of two and a half inches.
Major (later Brigadier-General) Daniel Mowat Ormond
Boyle later moved to a hospital at Boulogne. Fellow patient Lt William Lowry – also hit at Kitchener’s Wood – remembered.
We did not dream he would peg out. He was always talking of getting back to the regiment.
Lieutenant William Arthur Lowry
Despite his optimism, LCol Russell Lambert Boyle died on 25 April 1915.
The CEF would push on to close the gap in the line in what the Supreme Allied Commander called the single greatest act of bravery in the war. From that point on, the Canadians had a well-deserved reputation as the fiercest and bravest soldiers at the front.
LCol Russell Lambert Boyle lauded as a true Canadian hero in Alberta. In his childhood home of Port Colborne, a memorial service held for him, and in Calgary, Alberta, in Central Memorial Park, a statue of Russell Boyle on a horse, a monument to the veterans of the South African War.
Poperinghe
The town of Poperinghe (now Poperinge) of great importance during the war because, although occasionally bombed or bombarded at long range, still the nearest place to Ypres (now Ieper) both considerable in size and reasonably safe. At first a centre for Casualty Clearing Stations, but by 1916 it became necessary to move these units further back and field ambulances took their places.
The Old Military Cemetery made in the course of the First Battle of Ypres and closed for burials at the beginning of May 1915. The New Military Cemetery established later in June 1915.
Poperinghe New Military Cemetery
Poperinghe Old Military Cemetery
The Old Military Cemetery contains 450 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the Great War. 24 of the burials unidentified but special memorials to seven casualties known or believed to be buried among them.
The graves of about 800 French and Belgian soldiers and nearly 500 civilians removed from the cemetery after the Armistice. For the most part, the civilians died in an epidemic of typhoid at the end of 1914, and buried from an emergency hospital housed in a neighbouring chateau.
Remembered
LCol Russell Lambert Boyle Mentioned in Despatches and given a posthumous award of the Oak Leaves. An equestrian statue of R.L. Boyle, in his Boer War uniform, sits atop a Boer War memorial in Calgary’s Central Memorial Park.
LCol Russell Lambert Boyle also mentioned by name on a plaque at the entrance to Calgary City Hall.
Kitchener’s Wood Memorial Centenary Celebrations
On the 100th Anniversary of the attack on Kitcheners’ Wood, a delegation of The Calgary Highlanders (who perpetuate the 10th Battalion) visited LCol Russell Lambert Boyle’s grave. His grandson, Mr. Russell Everett Boyle, and his wife, Melody part of the delegation.
Private James Duffy
On 23 April 2015 at the Menin Gate, Private James Duffy of the 16th Battalion the featured soldier during the ceremony. James died on 23 April 1915 shortly after receiving the Last Rites from Reverend Frederick George Scott.
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