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1 This is my great-grandfather, Albert Chabot. #OTD in 1918 he was operated on in a field hospital after being wounded in an attack during the Hundred Days’ Offensive. This is a thread about his #WW1 experience and how it changed his life and my family.
2 Albert Chabot was born on September 9, 1895 in Manistique, Michigan, to Antoine and Delima. Like so many French-Canadians of their era, they had temporarily emigrated to the US for a better life.
3 By 1917, Albert was living in the village of Carleton Place, near Ottawa, working as a spinner in a textile mill. He had something going with a local girl, Margaret Thomson.
4 Like most French-Canadians, Albert did not volunteer. Maybe he opposed the closure of French schools in Ontario even as French-Cdns were being accused of not doing enough, or maybe he had a personal reason. The government, however, introduced conscription in the fall of 1917.
5 Because of widespread opposition in Quebec, the bill allowed many exemptions from service (until it was amended later, which caused riots and deaths in Quebec City).
6 But 22-yr old Albert did not fit any of the still-generous criteria for an exemption, and he was conscripted in January 1918, joining the 2nd (Eastern Ontario) Canadian Infantry Battalion as a private. He was 5 ft 3.5 in tall.
7 After training in England, he joined his battalion August 17 in France, as the CEF was preparing to attack a major objective, the Drocourt-Queant Line (part of the Hindenburg Line). Here is a cigar box with the Bttn crest:
8 On August 30, the 2nd attacked near the Vis-en-Artois switch. The German positions were captured but the fighting was fierce. Albert was wounded in the left arm, described as “gun shot wound” (listed as shrapnel on other docs).
9 This caused a “complete fracture of left radius and ulna and necessitating immediate amputation.” His left arm was removed below the elbow on August 31. He was one of the very few Canadian conscripts to have been severely wounded. His only battle. One limb.
10 On Sept 2, the bttn chaplain, Percival Després, wrote to Margaret with a message from Albert: “He wishes me to let you know that he was wounded on Aug 30 in the left arm. He is getting along as well as possible, there is no need for you to be worried or anxious about him.”
11 The chaplain, perhaps on Albert’s instructions, seems to have been deliberately vague (a typical practice I presume), for Margaret would certainly have been worried had she known the full details. Albert was sent first to hospital in England, then on to Canada.
12 Albert was discharged in July 1919, with what the army described as “satisfactory dress arm and working arm” (the working arm was a prosthetic with a hooked end). He returned to Carleton Place, but because he was now disabled, Margaret’s family advised her not to marry him.
13 Her folks feared he would not be able to provide for a family. She ignored their advice and they married anyway, proof of their love and her mettle.
14 Between the wars, Albert and Margaret had six children, 3 boys and 3 girls. Albert paid the bills thanks to his disability pension, as well as his horse and cart, which he used to sell firewood and transport garbage.
15 The pension helped them particularly during the depression, ironic given Margaret’s parents’ earlier fears. Albert also managed to build a 3-room cottage on a nearby lake for summer fishing – quite a feat for a man with one arm.
16 In summer 1940, the two oldest boys, James and Gilbert, both volunteered. Albert disappeared suddenly and could not be found – an ad was placed in a local paper for help in locating him. Here are Albert and James in their uniforms in 1940 (note Albert hiding his stump):
17 Turns out he’d had a nervous breakdown upon learning his sons would also go to war and had fled to his sister’s place in Montreal without telling anyone. No doubt his fears of what might happen to his sons coupled with his own trauma overwhelmed him.
18 James and Gilbert survived (both were wounded in body and mind like their father). In his later years, Albert enjoyed playing cards, and James recalled him holding his hand of cards in the crook of his stump! Albert passed away in 1964 at 69. Gone but not forgotten.
