30 Days of Remembrance - Day 13 - Alexander William McHardy

In memory of

Second Lieutenant

Alexander William McHardy

who died on November 10, 1918

Military Service:

Age:

20

Force:

Air Force

Unit:

Royal Air Force

Additional Information:

Son of Alexander C. and Isabell McHardy of MacLennan's Mountain, Picture Co. Nova Scotia.

Cemetery:

TOURNAI COMMUNAL CEMETERY, ALLIED EXTENSION, Belgium

Grave Reference:

IV C 10

Commemorated on Page 590 of the First World War Book of Remembrance. 

I was first interested in researching Alexander William McHardy because of his birth place of Nova Scotia; I've been attempting to chose people who were representative of the population of Canada during that time. and due to their strong ties to the United Kingdom, many young men from the Maritime provinces were quick to sign up once war was declared. The fact that Alexander McHardy was also a member of the Royal Air Force made him even more intriguing. Alas, it also made him a lot more challenging to research.

 A quick search on Ancestry found a possible matching tree but the date of birth of June 3 1894 didn't match with an age of 20 in 1918 and the only citations were the 1910 and 1911 census. As I've done previously, I looked to the Attestation papers to compare birth dates, as well as parents' names and address. Unfortunately I wasn't able to locate any military documents for Alexander McHardy, not on Ancestry nor in the LAC files. It was then that I realized that there is no Service number listed for Alexander McHardy which made tracing him by military records almost impossible. I didn't know if this was an oversight or if it had to do with his being a member of the RAF so I searched for more info on Canadians in the RAF


From the Library and Archives Canada WWI information page:

The Royal Canadian Air Force did not exist at this time and those wishing to serve in the Air Forces would have joined the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Air Force (RAF). Library and Archives Canada does not hold personnel records for those individuals.

Library and Archives Canada does hold some nominal rolls of Canadians who served with the RFC and RAF in the following series. Those lists are not available on microfilm; they must be consulted onsite.

RG 24, vol. 23195: E to H and I to M
RG 24, vol. 23196: A to D and N to W
RG 24, acc. 1995-96/670, box 1: Acland to Luxton
RG 24, acc. 1995-96/670, box 2: Macaskill to Zieman

Personnel files for the RAF and RFC are in the custody of the National Archives in England. The records are described in their guide: Royal Air Force and predecessors.
[www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/familyhistory/military/airforce/]

With that I was able to search the UK National Archives to find this:

Reference: AIR 76/319/147

Description:  Name    McHardy, Alexander William

Date: [1918-1919]

Held by: The National Archives, Kew Former references: in its original department:   

Book No.151 part 3 

Legal status: Public Record

Sadly my budget didn't allow me to pay the £3.36 needed to view the records but at least it explained the missing Canadian Service number.

With little options left, I did a basic google search for "Alexander William McHardy, RAF" and got lucky- the very first link was for a message board thread on the 1914-1918 Invisionzone.com forum about this very same airman! There I was able to read about the circumstances surrounding the death of Alexander McHardy, from people with much more military knowledge than I have. One of the posters in this thread  is Trevor Henshaw, author of The Sky Their Battlefield :Air Fighting and the Complete List of Allied Air Casualties from Enemy Action in the First War: British, Commonswealth, and United States Air Services 1914 to 1918

 He writes:

What I have on Hardy is an entry on 10th November 1918 from my book The Sky Their Battlefield as follows:

F6195 Bristol F2b 20Sqn
**OP combat with EA ovCHARLEROI MIA(2Lt AW McHardy KIA/2Lt WA Rodger Can. KIA) left 10-20am

This would have been based on an RAF Casualty Report of the event.

As a bit of background: regarding 20 Sqn, November [saw] no lessening of fighting activity - rather an intensification occurred in the final days of the war: in the last seven days of action before the 11th there were nine combat claims. Some would say regrettably that one of the biggest actions occurred on November 10 when an offensive patrol came across seven Fokker DVIIIs attacking a formation of DH9 bombers over Charleroi. Diving onto them they destroyed three and sent down another two out of control, but two crews were also shot down, 2Lts AW McHardy and WA Rodger being killed and, whilst the pilot Lt EAC Britton in the other machine survived and escaped capture, his observer Sgt RS Dodds was killed. These last casualties in the Great War for 20 Squadron occurred barely twenty-four hours before the Armistice was signed.

Alexander William McHardy died Nov 10, 1918

30 Days of Remembrance - Day 12 - John Laird

In memory of
Private
John Laird
who died on November 9, 1917 

Military Service:

Service Number: 172470

Age: 34

Force: Army

Unit: 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles (2nd Central Ontario Regt.)

Additional Information:

Date and Place of Birth: June 12, 1882

Son of John Laird and Christian Morrison Laird, of Leith, Scotland; husband of the late Catherine Laird, of Toronto, Ontario.

Cemetery: WHITE HOUSE CEMETERY, Belgium

Grave Reference: I. F. 28.

Commemorated on Page 270 of the First World War Book of Remembrance.

 The first thing that stood out on John laird's attestation papers was his marital status of widowed.

According to the same, John Laird was born in Leith Scotland in 1882. Ancestry had a matching tree but was missing some source citations so I looked to Scotlands' People to find out that John married Catherine Adams Laird in Leith, in February, 1907. Their eldest child was born 3 months later on May 7 and named for her mother,  the record for which I also found on Scotlands's People.

In 1909 the family moved to Toronto, Canada where their second child a daughter named Anne Robertson was born on August 4, 1909. 2 years later a third child, a son John, was born in Toronto on Aug 22, 1911. Both of those records are from the Ontario Birth registrations and can be found on Ancestry .ca

Sadly, Catherine died in Aug of 1915. Her death record, also available on Ancestry shows that she died of pulmonary tuberculosis, commonly known as TB. A mere seven months later in March 1916, John Laird joined 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles, leaving his young children in Canada.

 A notice in the Toronto Star tells of the death of John Laird at Passchendaele and the sad tale of his 3 orphaned children.

from The Canadian Virtual War Memorial

John Laird died  November 9 1917

30 Days of Remembrance- Day 11- Kilner

Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1983-28-826

I decided to do a more personal post today and research soldiers of the First World War with my surname of Kilner. I already knew that none of my direct ancestors fought in the Great War but some family members did. I started by doing a search by last name only in the records of  Soldiers of the First World War and came up with 6 names

	Name	Date of Birth	Rank	Regimental number(s)	Reference
1.	KILNER, ARTHUR COLIN	18/05/1894		154590	RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5150 - 12
2.	KILNER, CLARENCE CARROLL	23/06/1892	LT		RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5150 - 13
3.	KILNER, DAVID JAMES	07/01/1898		678135	RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5150 - 14
4.	KILNER, JAMES ARTHUR	30/12/1875		446973	RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5150 - 15
5.	KILNER, JOSHUA	25/11/1879	LCP	808470	RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5150 - 16
6.	KILNER, THOMAS ROSS	10/05/1883	LCP	769974	RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 5150 - 17

 I am related to at least two of the soldiers on this list: Clarence Carroll Kilner, and Thomas Ross Kilner were both first cousins of my great grandfather William Kilner. Their respective fathers William,  Edward, and Thomas Bamforth were brothers, born in England who each emigrated to Canada in the late 1800`s. My gg- grandfather was the eldest of the 3 cousins and the only one who was not born in Canada. By the time England, and by extension Canada, joined the war, William was in his mid 30`s with a wife and 3 small children. It must have been a difficult decision to make - to stand by and watch others go off to fight, or to leave his young family perhaps never to return.

Clarence Carroll Kilner on the other hand was already an officer and a member of the 109th Regiment when he signed up to the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Forces in 1916 at the age of 24.

I found no records to indicate where he spent the war years or whether he received any injuries but he did survive to return home to Canada in August of 1919. He married Vera Wright in 1922, had a son John in 1924 and lived in Toronto until his death in 1963, at the age of 70.

Clarence Carroll Kilner, courtesy of Ancestry.ca/kathyhogan66

Thomas Ross Kilner was born in Morrison, ON in 1883 but grew up in Toronto. He joined the Canadian forces there in January of 1916. One interesting thing I discovered upon reading his medical assessment was that he had webbed toes on his left foot- some current members of my paternal line also carry this trait, which I thankfully did not inherit!

Like Clarence, I have no records of Thomas R Kilner's time during the war but he also survived and returned home to Canada in June of 1919. He married Kate White in 1925 but had no children. I have not found a date of death for him.


Of the six men named Kilner from the above list who fought in WWI, not a single one was killed in battle. None the less, they all served their country and likely came back much different than they left. They deserved to be remembered and honoured for their sacrifice as well.