SOLDIER DETAILS:
Blair,
John Hastings
Corporal P.P.C.L.I. 475775
March 16, 1920
Woodlawn
Cemetery, Guelph ON
Born in Campbellville, ON
Maple Leaf Legacy
Project
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Haltonville Memorial
R. Laughton
%20Veterans%20Graves%20Cropped.jpg)
Guelph Woodlawn Cemetery
R. Laughton for
Commonwealth War Graves
Woodlawn Cemetery
R. Laughton
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Corporal Blair
is commemorated on the Haltonville Cenotaph.
Corporal
Blair
is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Guelph, Ontario (Blk. E. Sec. 12.
35).
For reasons unknown, he does not have a standard CEF
gravestone. The CWGC has been so advised.
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SOLDIER SUMMARY:
| Corporal Blair was born in Campbellville, Ontario
which is in the Town of Milton. Regional Municipality of
Halton. His parents home, as well as his grave site where
we took the photograph is located in Guelph, Ontario. The
Haltonville Memorial is somewhat in between Milton and Guelph -
as it would have been back in 1920.
Corporal Blair's Attestation Papers show he attested with the
#3 McGill University Company of the PPCLI, as also noted on his
grave stone. It appears this was completed after he
arrived in England. He was in and out of the hospital and at one
time was taken on strength to the 7th Trench Mortar Battery,
after he was promoted to Corporal (October 1917).
The P.P.C.L.I. was in the Red Trench at La Coulotte near the
Lens-Arras Road in April 1918. The winter of 1918 had been
relatively quiet for the Canadians, but as Nicholson reports, there
were 3,552 casualties of which 694 were fatal. Corporal
Blair was wounded (SW left elbow) and then
further injured in a traffic accident in the ambulance on April
22, 1918. The situation was reported quiet that day, but 2
were killed and 4 wounded the night of April
21, 1918.
With influenza and the face wounds from the accident, he was
sent home to recover in Canada in July 1919.
It appears that Corporal Blair had always been plagued with
Bronchitis and after suffering from gas exposure, complicated
with the injury to his jaw, he never recovered. He died on March
16, 1920 in Canada. |
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The soldier pages contain information
that is available from a number of resources. The following hyperlinks
are active where the information is available:
The summary of the service is taken from
the soldier's service records, if they were available from Library and
Archives Canada. A complete copy of the service record is
available in electronic and paper format in the Alex
Cooke Memorial Archives at the Milton Historical Society.
Using that summary, combined with the key references, a summary of the
events leading up to the death of the soldier has been prepared.
The research information available is as noted on the Canadian
Expeditionary Force Study Group web site Matrix
Project as well as in the Library and Archives Canada On-Line
War Diaries.
A summary of all the soldiers is
contained on the Web Blog "Great
War Soldiers of Milton, Ontario CANADA". Please also
be sure to purchase your own copy of "Milton
Remembers World War I - The Men and Women We Never Knew" by
John Challinor II and Jim Dills, edited by Ken Lamb. |
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