| SOLDIER DETAILS:
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SOLDIER SUMMARY:
| Private Sinclair was a member of the 20th Halton
Rifles and is remembered most in Milton for his contribution to
the local baseball and hockey teams. Although born in St.
Catherines,
his pay records showed his kin as Albert Sinclair of Milton
West, Ontario. He worked in Milton for the CPR.
He attested to the 76th Infantry Battalion on September 15,
1915 after his medical in Georgetown. After arrival in
England he was transferred to the 24th Battalion (2nd
Division, 5th Infantry Brigade). Hospitalized by tonsillitis, he
did not join the unit in the field until August 10, 1916.
Unfortunately, he was killed in action on September 17, 1916 in
the Battle of the Somme.
Along with many other Milton lads, Private Sinclair and the
24th Battalion made an advance of the area of the Sugar Refinery
south of Courcelette on the wet day of September
17, 1916 and here.
The heavy losses in the 24th Battalion was blamed on the
inadequacy of the artillery fire prior to the attack.
There were 560 casualties in the 24th and 7,230 for the week in
the Canadian Corps! Details of the battle at the Brigade level
are reported in the war diary here
and here.
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The following additional information (somewhat of a
genealogical puzzle as Ron's father is the half-brother of Hugh Sinclair) was provided by Ron Sinclair in
his e-mails of April 2008:
Private Hugh Sinclair |
Private Sinclair (3rd from the left) |
Hugh's father and mother (John and Marion Sinclair) lived in St. Catherines at the time Hugh was born in 1893. Unfortunately Marion passed away in 1895, leaving John with 4 children to finish raising, of which Hugh was the youngest. His 13 year old sister Sybil became his surrogate mother and when she herself married in 1902, she took Hugh along with her to finish raising him with her husband Jim Etherington, and
they moved to Milton. The Etherington family had a carpet mill in
Milton. Meanwhile his father, John Sinclair, my grandfather, remarried in a few years and started a new life in Queenston, where my Dad Jim Sinclair was born. When Hugh was in training with the 76th at Niagara-On-The –Lake, he would drive a motorcycle over to Queenston to visit with his father and my Dad, who was 15 years younger than Hugh. Jim Etherington, at 40 years of age, also served in WW1, although health issues meant he served his time in England. Jim joined the 164th Battalion at attestation time in late 1915.
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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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