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    The Wartime Letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1915-1919
    The Wartime Letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1915-1919
    The Wartime Letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1915-1919
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    The Wartime Letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1915-1919

    By Wilfrid Laurier University Press

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    About this ebook

  • 2019 correspondence marks 100th anniversary of the last of letters from the Great War; hardcover first published in 2007. This is first publication of paperback
  • Leslie Frost was premier of Ontario from May 1949 to November 1961; his government was first to pass laws providing penalties for racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination on private property, leading directly to the Ontario Human Rights Code in 1962; his government also introduced voting rights for First Nations
  • numerous centres, schools, buildings named after Leslie Frost in Ontario
    • LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilfrid Laurier University Press
    Release dateApr 7, 2011
    ISBN9781554586851
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      The Wartime Letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1915-1919 - Wilfrid Laurier University Press

      THE WARTIME LETTERS OF

      LESLIE AND CECIL FROST

      1915–1919

      LIFE WRITING SERIES

      In the Life Writing Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press publishes life writing and new life-writing criticism in order to promote autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters, and testimonials written and/or told by women and men whose political, literary, or philosophical purposes are central to their lives. Life Writing features the accounts of ordinary people, written in English, or translated into English from French or the languages of the First Nations or from any of the languages of immigration to Canada. Life Writing will also publish original theoretical investigations about life writing, as long as they are not limited to one author or text.

      Priority is given to manuscripts that provide access to those voices that have not traditionally had access to the publication process.

      Manuscripts of social, cultural, and historical interest that are considered for the series, but are not published, are maintained in the Life Writing Archive of Wilfrid Laurier University Library.

      Series Editor

      Marlene Kadar

      Humanities Division, York University

      Manuscripts to be sent to

      Brian Henderson, Director

      Wilfrid Laurier University Press

      75 University Avenue West

      Waterloo, Ontario, Canada  N2L 3C5

      The WARTIME Letters of

      Leslie and Cecil Frost

      1915–1919

      Edited by R.B. Fleming

      We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities. We acknowledge a generous gift from the Symons Trust Fund for Canadian Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario.

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Frost, Leslie M. (Leslie Miscampbell), 1895–1973

      The wartime letters of Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1915–1919 / edited by R.B. Fleming.

      (Life writing series)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-1-55458-000-2

      1. Frost, Leslie M. (Leslie Miscampbell), 1895–1973 — Correspondence. 2. Frost, Cecil, 1897–1947 — Correspondence. 3. Canada. Canadian Army. Battalion, 157th — Biography. 4. Canada. Canadian Army — Officers — Correspondence. 5. World War, 1914–1918 — Personal narratives, Canadian. 6. World War, 1914–1918 — Campaigns — Western. I. Fleming, Rae Bruce, 1944–II. Frost, Cecil, 1897–1947 III. Title. IV. Series.

      D640.F83 2007       940.4′8171       C2007-902337-1

      © 2007 R.B. Fleming

      Cover image: The Artist’s Own Dug-Out on the Albert-Braye Roadside (1916), by Thurstan Topham (1888–1966); watercolour on paper, 21.9 × 28.2 cm; Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum, 8896. Cover and text design by P.J. Woodland.

      Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in future printings.

      This book is printed on Ancient Forest Friendly paper (100% post-consumer recycled).

      Printed in Canada

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

      Published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press

      Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

      www.wlupress.wlu.ca

      For Marjorie, of course

      Mail is about the most popular of all things

      as far as the men out here are concerned

      Leslie Frost in France to his parents in

      Orillia, Ontario, 22 February 1918

      MAP 1: Western Europe in 1914, with two insets showing where most of the letters in this collection were written.

      Table of Contents

      List of Illustrations

      Foreword by Thomas H.B. Symons, CC, FRSC

      Memorandum by the Honourable Leslie M. Frost

      Preface

      Acknowledgements

      Abbreviations

      Introduction by R.B. Fleming

      The Letters

      1   Training in Canada

      2   From Orillia to England

      3   Training and Touring in England and Scotland

      4   Leslie Frost Arrives in France

      5   Cecil Frost Arrives in France

      6   Leslie Frost Wounded

      7   Cecil Frost Wounded

      8   Armistice

      Appendix 1: Unit Sizes and Designations

      Appendix 2: Electoral Ridings

      Appendix 3: Soldiers Mentioned in Letters and Commentary

      Selected Bibliography

      Index

      Illustrations

      MAP 1: Western Europe in 1914

      Leslie and Cecil Frost, 1913

      Letterhead of the Glasgow Bakery, 1869

      MAP 2: The Frosts’ Orillia

      The Frost house at Mississaga and Wyandotte Streets, Orillia, 1884

      The Highlands, Orillia

      Interior of Diamond Hall, the Frost jewellery shop, Orillia

      At Geneva Park, Lake Couchiching, 1913

      Advertisement for a Stephen Leacock reading, March 1915

      Army band on parade, Niagara-on-the-Lake

      At Camp Niagara, August 1915

      Farewell ceremonies in Orillia, June 1916

      At Camp Borden, near Barrie, Ontario, July 1916

      Notice of farewell dinner for C Company, October 1916

      Presentation of colours at Camp Borden, October 1916

      Mobile field post office, France, 1918

      Cecil Frost near Bramshott, England, 1916

      Leslie Frost in England

      William S. Frost in 1917, age 53

      Margaret Frost in the library of the Highlands

      Germans attempting a counterattack on Hill 70, August 1917

      Canadian soldiers carrying water at Hill 70, August 1917

      Wounded Canadian, France, 1916

      Three members of the Dumbells

      King Edward VIII with Canadian veterans at Vimy Monument unveiling

      Premier L. Frost, Premier J. Lesage, and Dr. T.H.B. Symons, 1965

      Halifax Harbour, October 1916

      1st Simcoes on the Cameronia, October 1916

      MAP 3: Southeast England

      Canadian artillery training in England at Witley Camp

      Christmas dinner, Bramshott Camp, 1916

      Etching of Cecil Frost by Bill (W.H.) Woods

      Leslie Frost’s map of the training camps in Kent

      Mumsie’s Dream

      Members of C Company in French farmhouse billet in Ferfay

      Lt. Cecil Frost on horseback in England

      Cecil’s diagram for an identity bracelet

      MAPS 4 and 5: Details of France and Belgium

      The 22nd Battalion—the famous Vingt-Deux

      The old Menin Gate, Ypres, Belgium

      At Potijze, Belgium

      Passchendaele, November 1917

      Canadian election propaganda in France, December 1917

      Canadian nursing sisters in France cast their vote, December 1917

      Transporting the wounded, 1916

      Leslie Frost’s field message book with bullet hole

      Trench art aeroplane made from bullets and shell casings

      Wounded Canadian near Iwuy, October 1918

      Canadian soldiers in Mons, Belgium, on 11 November 1918

      Sir Arthur Currie inspecting Canadian soldiers crossing the Rhine

      Final march through London, May 1919

      The Frost family at Lochbrae, 1924

      MAP SPECIFICATIONS

      Sources

      Base Map 1: ESRI digital files

      Base Map 2: Air photos from National Air Photo Library

      Section 31D/11: A3082 #36 1930 1:13000

      Section 31D/11: RA 2 #67 1927 1:10000

      Section 31D/11: A9190 #18 1932 1:10000

      Base Map 3: Illustrated Atlas of the World (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1982)

      Big Road Atlas Britain (Hampshire: Automobile Association, 1992)

      Base Map 4: Illustrated Atlas of the World (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1982)

      Base Map 5: Michelin #236 France Nord Flandres-Artois-Picardie 1:200,000 (Paris: Michelin éditions du voyage, 2000)

      Other:           John Keegan, The First World War (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1998), and Anthony Livesay, Atlas de la Première guerre mondiale (Paris: Éditions autrement, 1996)

      Projections

      Map 1: Cylindrical equal-area CM 3 Lat 50

      Map 2: Not applicable.

      Maps 3 and 4: Delisle Conic Equidistant

      Map 5: Unknown

      Disclaimer

      These maps are representations and not intended as precise models. Please refer to sources for more information.

      Design

      Chantal Ellingwood, Lindsay, Ontario, using Adobe Illustrator CS.

      Two Likely Lads

      Foreword by Thomas H.B. Symons

      Two likely lads—that was how an Old Country sergeant major described Leslie and Cecil Frost when he encountered them in France in 1917. He got it right.

      The wartime letters from these two remarkable brothers to their parents reveal thoughtful, decent, utterly unpretentious young men of character and quality going about their duty as they saw it. They reveal, too, the great promise they had for service to Canadian society in their postwar lives.

      Dr. Rae Fleming has rendered a valuable service by ensuring the survival and wide accessibility of the letters in print form and by his scholarly introduction to them and his many informative footnotes. The letters are important source material for students of Canadian history on several counts. They provide a clear and often telling picture of personalities, events, and conditions throughout the war years—in Canada, in Britain, and in France. They also provide snapshots of the evolving formation of the views and values of these two young men who would, in their later lives, have such an influence on shaping the public life of Ontario and of Canada.

      The letters convey very well something both of life on the home front in Canada during the titanic struggle over there and of the life of Canadian infantry soldiers who went to serve in France and Flanders and to train or recuperate in England. They depict a good deal of the essence of small-town Ontario life in the age of Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. They tell us much about the old province of Ontario and about its heritage and core values at the high tide of Empire in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Times and the complexion of the province have changed in so many ways. Yet much remains the same.

      Indeed, while these letters are from a faraway scene of appalling conflict, perhaps the greatest insights they provide relate to the homeland of the authors.

      In personal terms, the letters provide a remarkable portrait of a close-knit family, a family that is deeply engaged with its community. More especially, they record a tale of extraordinary friendship and comradeship between the two brothers. As the tale unfolds through the war years, readers can trace the events and conditions that laid the foundations for an unusual lifetime partnership and, ultimately, for the most notable and successful career in the public life of Ontario in the twentieth century.

      The letters contain an astonishing amount and variety of information. Letters that often begin with an apologetic phrase such as I am afraid that I haven’t got much news tonight will in the very next sentence report on a telling adventure (or misadventure) or that Harry Lauder was down here tonight. It is sometimes surprising what the censor let through. It is often not difficult to figure out from references in the correspondence where units were on the front and even what recent or projected troop movements might be involved. But, quite aside from the censor, there was an understandable reluctance to write about the battle. As Leslie notes (21 October 1917), Mater says I do not say very much in my letters about what we do over here. Well, there is really very little to tell. If you follow the newspaper, you will know about where we are and as to experiences, any that I have, I just as soon talk about them when I get home and forget them when I am here.

      The letters contain, at times, acknowledgement of low morale, along with some forthright discussion of the reasons for it. Both men make strong, constructively critical remarks about the military leadership, and at least one letter from Leslie (18 February 1917) is so bluntly critical that, in the wrong hands, it could have brought the wrath of the brass down upon his head.

      But the letters exude the deep and, for the most part, unspoken patriotism of the brothers and of their family, comrades, and community. This more often finds expression in their actions than in their words. Leslie was the first officer of the 157th Simcoes to revert in rank from Captain to Lieutenant in order to get to France: Dad was mentioning about me reverting to get out here. Well I do miss my captaincy to a degree but I would rather be out here as a private doing my bit than in England as a Colonel. The jobs in England can be quite well handled by casualty officers i.e. officers who have been wounded or rendered unfit for service in France (1 October 1917).

      Although the youthful and innocent enthusiasms for the war faded as it progressed, something of the original élan and itch for action continued amongst the Canadians. As late as September 1917, Leslie could still write that his platoon had been given as its objective an attack on the village of Sallaumines, and that this project was contemplated as an adventure with some enthusiasm.

      Cecil expressed similar sentiments and determination, for example, when concern was expressed about the consequences of Russia’s collapse and surrender: The British will never give up, however. Whatever happens we will fight on til the last dog’s hung (6 May 1917).

      The letters contain many references to the Empire, or, with affection, the old Empire. Through the eyes of these young men one is reminded that at that time the British Empire was the only world organization. There then being no United Nations or League of Nations or other global international organization, the Empire was the only body that brought together people of almost every race and creed from all quarters and continents of the globe. Nevertheless, in these letters one can also perceive an incipient Canadian nationalism and a Canadian sentiment being sown, which grows stronger as the war continues.

      The important part played by the mail throughout the war is the overwhelming message of these letters. Its huge volume, the priorities given to it, and the vast significance for both senders and recipients are all well described by Dr. Fleming. Indeed, in terms of morale, mail was a very real factor in the outcome of the war. It is a pity that only a fraction of this Frost wartime correspondence has survived and, in particular, that only three of the several hundred letters from home to the two boys remain.

      Many thousands of others were, of course, writing from Canada and to Canada, too. Not all the letters were helpful. The problems arising from the spread of rumours and gossip, often about personal conduct, are noted by both the boys. Leslie was remarkably forthright in his comments to his parents about rumours of wild behaviour and debauchery on the part of some Canadian soldier friends who were said to be living fast (18 February 1917), and he was particularly firm in rejecting any suggestion of such behaviour by him or Cecil: I say quite freely that neither Cecil or I have done anything since we came here that we will regret afterwards or that anyone else will regret…. As far as I am concerned (and Cecil too) they can turn a searchlight on what we have done and we would have nothing to be ashamed of (26 February 1917). Mail spreading gossip could be destructive of morale and unleash all sorts of rumour and speculations. The Frost correspondence is notably free of such gossip. The letters have, almost always, an upbeat tone and, indeed, are sometimes rather euphemistic in the descriptions and mood they convey. At least in part, this was a tactic they chose to adopt in order to ease their parents’ worries.

      There were, of course, grey areas. The subject of alcohol was perhaps chief among these, and it was a particularly sensitive one for the Frost boys, who came from a strongly temperance home—so strongly temperance that the family might change basic political allegiance depending on the stance of the candidates on this one question. It is perfectly clear that by the war’s end, drink, probably in considerable moderation, was not unknown to the boys’ lips. Cecil notes (28 October 1917) that he purchased, when in London on leave, a flask to carry rum in. Though I have never touched a drop of whiskey over here, I’m certainly going to carry it at the front if not for my own good then for some one else. But really, rum keeps those poor fellows out in the cold and rain alive. The temperance tradition continued strong in the Frost family. To the end of his days, Leslie did not altogether approve of drinking, but he did enjoy it occasionally.

      Despite the surely preoccupying and often wretched circumstances of their own battlefront existence, the Frost boys were deeply concerned about the well-being of their parents and about conditions at home. The family finances, their father’s business affairs, a change of dwelling, and, above all, their mother’s illness, are constant and major elements in their letters home. The influence of their childhood upbringing of family prayers, Bible readings, and Sunday observance stayed with them overseas in various unspoken ways. So did other aspects of their parents’ values, including a thoughtful approach to questions and a good measure of independent thinking.

      The Frost boys, and the Frost family, were in some ways models for characters in Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Indeed, several of Leacock’s characters may be based upon older members of the family, which was deeply rooted in Leacock’s beloved town. Leslie and Cecil were shaped, too, by the family’s Scottish, Yorkshire, and Lancashire ancestry. Their manner was positive, good humoured, stoic, and doughty when need be—at times almost phlegmatic. But they shared something of the romantic side of this heritage as well, including a love of Robbie Burns and the Scottish writers. They had, too, an affection for the English tradition and countryside, which Leslie treasured but also sometimes poked fun at, calling the lovely old Canadian log cabin, which he acquired and relocated on Sturgeon Lake, Poges in honour of Stoke Poges churchyard where Gray composed his famous elegy with its best remembered line the paths of glory lead but to the grave.

      Theirs was a home of constant discourse, of reading and debate, of examining, testing, and considering. It was this attribute that perhaps stood them in best stead for their wartime ordeals and for what was to come after. The reality of this rich heritage pervades their letters and their conduct during the war.

      The closeness of the two brothers, in so many ways, is extraordinary. Each distinct and strong in their own character and convictions, they proceeded through the war and through life in a kind of comradely lockstep. Leslie enlisted in the 157th Battalion Simcoe Foresters in the spring of 1915, to be joined there by Cecil at the age of eighteen in January 1916. They were thus together in the first battalion to take up quarters in the new Camp Borden in July 1916. Together, they departed Halifax on the troopship Cameronia in October 1916. They were together for much of the training in England and near to one another through much of the gore and mud in France and Flanders, including the fierce battles of Third Ypres. At the front, situated only two miles apart, Leslie went over to visit Cecil for Christmas dinner and Cecil returned the visit for New Year’s dinner in 1917. Together, on leave in England, they visited their ancestral homelands, haunted the Houses of Parliament, and explored the sights of London.

      Their close relationship continued in the postwar years. Leslie and Cecil enrolled together in law school in 1919. Together they bought a law practice in 1921 in Lindsay, where they married two sisters, Roberta and Gertrude, daughters of Lindsay lumber baron, John Carew. They went into political life together in the Ontario Conservative Party, where Leslie took the front-of-house role as a candidate who was in due course elected to the provincial legislature, while Cecil worked in a less prominent role on party organization and in municipal politics. Cecil became president of the Conservative Association, but unfortunately did not live to see Leslie become premier in 1949. At the Port Hope conference and during the years preceding and following it, the two of them worked together to reshape the Ontario Conservative Party along more progressive lines in terms of social policy and political attitudes. They laid the groundwork for some forty years of Tory rule in the province, twelve of which saw Leslie as premier.

      The interest of Leslie and Cecil in political affairs is a major theme of these letters. In them one can readily discern two young Red Tories in the making, who would have a profound influence on the political and public life of Ontario and of Canada in the ensuing half century. In Britain, they were constant visitors, together and individually, to the House of Commons, where they listened avidly to the debates and heard the great parliamentarians of the day, including Lloyd George, H.H. Asquith, A.J. Balfour, John Redmond, Sir Edward Carson, Bonar Law, Sir Austen Chamberlain, Lord Hugh Cecil, Winston Churchill, Sir Herbert Samuel, and many more. They were present for the great Irish debate of 1917, and heard the Commons on most of the great issues of the day. Much of this is well reported in their letters home.

      Like their fellow combatants on leave, the Frost boys went often to the theatre in London, where they saw some of the great actors and great shows of the time, ranging from Sir Henry Irving to Harry Lauder to Chu Chin Chow. But for them the favourite theatre was always the British Parliament. They were fascinated by the parliamentary process and by British public life. This experience helped to set in their minds a standard for the conduct of public affairs to which in later life they would often repair. Wit, thought, gentlemanly—even courtly—behaviour, courtesy to opponents, respect for those with different views, and the recognition of the importance of the orderly processes of discussion and debate were hallmarks of this standard. It equipped them with a preferred habit and style that they took with them throughout their lives. They saw life as a continuing discourse on the questions of the day.

      This experience in Britain, which can be so well traced in these letters, sharpened and deepened their abiding interest in history and literature, and in heritage. It informed and strengthened the value they placed on Canada’s British connection. Yet at many points it increased their Canadian sentiment. For Leslie, in particular, it fostered a love of history. But the history about which he later wrote was on Canadian themes: local and regional history, Aboriginal history, and the history of the Canadians in the unit with which he served in the Great War.

      During the wartime years, Leslie and Cecil, as seen in this correspondence, were clearly political animals in the making, although not yet formed in their views. As Leslie noted forthrightly in a letter home on 1 October 1917, Am greatly interested in the political situation in Canada. But he was not yet committed to a party or even to a line of policy, offering critical observations about both Borden and Laurier and their various postures and policies. Cecil, too, was greatly interested by Canadian political matters, although he roundly denounced them in a letter home on 9 October 1917, saying, I used to discuss politics in my letters—I can’t now—I’m far too disgusted with Canadian Politics, which nevertheless clearly fascinated him. The letters of both of them are full of comments about Canadian political affairs.

      Apart from the fostering of their interest in the parliamentary process and heritage, how did their wartime experience affect their political views and later conduct? The war was a traumatic experience for them, as it was for most soldiers. One can discern in their letters strands and signals of public policy attitudes to come. These include matters in the fields of education, public health, public finance, and their evolving views on state intervention and citizen responsibility. In education, the experience of Khaki College had a positive impact on the attitude of the Frosts to adult education and higher education, and to the public policy treatment of veterans after the Second World War. In regard to public health, their wartime experience, it might be argued, moved their thinking towards recognizing the need for some form of state intervention to help with the costs of both hospitalization and medical treatment. Leslie’s prolonged experience with the misdiagnosis of his war wound and extended months of hospitalization underlined the magnitude of the burden of medical treatment and the need for public assistance to help meet the costs involved. The natural instincts of the Frosts to manage money cautiously and carefully were reinforced by what they saw in the war, and this found expression in the theme of fiscal responsibility and fiscal conservatism that characterized Leslie’s handling of the public finances as provincial treasurer and then as premier. Both Leslie and Cecil were confirmed by the war in their view that each person had a primary responsibility to care for themselves, both financially and morally, as well as a responsibility to help others. Nonetheless, the turbulence and the social needs caused by or revealed by the war years moved them to take a lead in developing a more activistic state-interventionist conservatism that was more caring of its citizens. Overall, the war highlighted in their minds the importance of leadership and leadership skills.

      The war did not produce in the Frosts the poetry and romantic writing of some who wrote at the time or subsequently of their war experiences. But that is not to say that it did not touch them deeply. It did. The loss of friends and comrades, the horror and bloodshed, the spectacles of death, all touched them deeply. So too did their own brushes with death: in Leslie’s case a very serious pelvic wound on Easter Sunday, 1918, which left him with periodic pain and a limp for the rest of his life; in Cecil’s case a wound to his temple, miraculously deflected, but which may have played a part in his untimely death from a tumour on the same spot years later. Leslie’s wound was one that took him, through many months of treatment, to hospital in England and then to Christie Street Veterans’ Hospital in Toronto. Cecil chose to brush his wound experience aside, probably/perhaps signed himself out of hospital, and took part in the battles of the Last Hundred Days of the war. The description, in his letter home of 17 November 1918, of the way in which the news of the Armistice was received at Mons on 11 November is powerful in its simplicity: Every man had a grin from ear to ear on his face. Nobody yelled or showed uncontainable enthusiasm—everybody just grinned and I think the cause was, that the men couldn’t find words to express themselves … no wonder they couldn’t say much—They simply grinned. Cecil reports that on 16 November, the people of Mons gave a reception to the officers of the 2nd Canadian division: They had a beautiful orchestra which ended up by playing O! Canada and the Dumbells performed. It must have been a magical occasion!

      For men like Leslie and Cecil Frost, the war was not purposeless or without meaning. It is the thesis of Leslie Frost’s book Fighting Men that the First World War was one of the decisive episodes in our history and one of the great formative experiences in shaping the character and viewpoint of the country. The truth of this thesis is well borne out by these letters, the pictures they convey, and the stories they tell. The challenge posed by the war with its vast bloodshed and destruction was met by the steadfastness and remarkable accomplishments of the country’s men and women at arms.

      Beyond this, there was a spiritual dimension to the war, little spoken of in these letters but implicit in almost every one. Death and anticipation of death on such a scale engendered a spiritual crisis for many of those who fought in the war, on both sides and in all ranks. Countless episodes of gallantry, bravery, comradeship, and self-sacrifice attest to spiritual aspects of the conflict.

      It is fitting that the last letter in this collection from Leslie Frost to his parents (28 November 1920) is on the theme of public service and duty, which is the bottom line of the entire collection: Then there is always the question of duty. A person should take part in some public matters either civil or military.

      This book is a splendid companion volume to Leslie Frost’s own memoir of the Great War, Fighting Men. There he sought to rekindle and to honour the memory of the men with whom he served in that war. Many of the men, and others like them, live again in these letters.

      Thomas H.B. Symons, CC, FRSC,

      Founding President of Trent University

      Memorandum

      by the Honourable Leslie M. Frost

      Almost unbelievable surviving after well over half a century are the letters written by L.M.F. and C.G.F. from 1915 to 1920. They are the story of a family during the First World War. I say that it is almost unbelievable that these letters should have survived. It was due to the foresight of my mother and father. It was their custom to circulate these letters among the family, who read the same and returned them to my parents. Both of them passed on upwards of thirty years ago but in one way or another the letters have been kept together and now are being placed in the archives of Trent University, where they can provide the story of a family in those days of very great stress.

      Considering that the letters were sent from overseas in 1917 and 1918 when submarine warfare was at its height and no doubt some were destroyed by enemy action, it is remarkable that the story is so complete. My brother and I were both front-line men. I was afterwards to serve eight months with the 20th Canadian Infantry Battalion and my brother with the 2nd Machine Gun Battalion. We both saw many actions.

      By way of background, I refer to my book Fighting Men (Clarke, Irwin, & Company, 1967). At the time of publication, some reviewers questioned why I made practically no mention of myself. This was intentional. I was writing about the Company from Orillia, which I commanded. Of 226 men, 44 were killed in action, 113 were wounded, totalling 157 casualties or 69 percent. Added to this were 5 of the band and machine gun details which did not return, and 14 more wounded. I felt very strongly that I should not, as it were, personalize this story but rather write it in the form of a tribute to these brave men. The publishers at the time raised some questions about this. I said on page 172 that those of us who survived revere those who made the great sacrifice as comrades, the latches of whose shoes they are ‘not worthy to unloose.’ It is in that sense that I look back on those days and those men, many of whom like Fred Grandy were personal friends.

      This account I am now writing is of course different. Still Fighting Men gives the background to those days and times.

      Our family was in very many ways not a political family. My father was very definitely an independent in politics. He was intensely interested and engaged in municipal affairs in Orillia. I was named after Andrew Miscampbell, the member for Simcoe East,¹ when I was born. He was a great personal friend of my father, who was a very much younger man. Miscampbell helped him in business. Subsequently he [William Frost] altered between Liberals and Conservatives, federally and provincially. He was an ardent temperance man which meant he was a prohibitionist. He, accordingly, supported N.W. Rowell, for instance. Temperance so called was one of his great motivations. My father had served with the Queen’s Own Rifles in 1882–83 and was a supporter of the cadet and militia movement.

      My first connections with the 35th Regiment Simcoe Foresters was as a cadet in 1913 and 1914. The cadets had a close association with the 35th Regiment.² I refer to these days in the second chapter of Fighting Men. My brother and I were greatly stirred with the glamour of the militia. It was a great sight to see on the Plains of Niagara the long lines of several thousand cadets, mostly in red uniforms with blue trousers, which was the garb of most of the militia up to 1914. In the chapter I refer to, I mention the great impression made upon us by the environment of Niagara and those like Janet Carnochan,³ who never wearied in telling the young volunteers and cadets about the defence of Canada. In those days, the League of Nations and the United Nations were far in the future. The only real world organization was the British Empire. Janet was revered as a public speaker and almost always had some reference to this great empire upon which the sun never set. Among my contemporaries was Arthur Ardagh,⁴ captain of the Cadet Corps. My association with him had a profound influence on my life. He was afterwards killed in action on the 10th of May, 1917. The Ardagh family made up in part for his loss by making me almost part of their family. My wife to be, Gertrude Jane Carew of Lindsay, was a great friend of Arthur and his family. It was in their home I met my wife, who was to be my close partner, friend, and advisor until her passing in 1970.⁵

      I was nineteen years of age when the soldiers of the first contingent, with their red uniforms and blue trousers, marched down Mississaga Street in Orillia on the way to the train. In my enthusiasm I would have liked to have gone with them. However, as I mentioned in Fighting Men, it was generally thought that the war would be over before they got there.

      I was appointed a provisional lieutenant in the 35th Regiment Simcoe Foresters on May 6th, 1915. I was moved by the stories of the Battle of St. Julien, which was the first real baptism of fire for the 1st Canadian Division. With my father’s horse and buggy, I drove out to Jarratt’s Corners between Orillia and Coldwater, and there, Captain Boadway had me sign the necessary papers. On August the 4th, exactly one year from the outbreak of war, I left Orillia for Niagara-on-the Lake to attend the School of Infantry, which was under the command of Colonel Lang, head of the Chemistry Department of the University of Toronto, [and] his adjutant, A.D. LePan, long associated with the university as its building superintendent. The route to Niagara-on-the-Lake was by train to the old station on Front Street [Toronto] and thence by boat to Niagara. My mother, a very devout woman, gave me a Bible, which is being placed in the Trent Archives, in which she wrote a text to endure hardness as a good soldier, Paul’s words to Timothy. How true this was! There would be very much bitterness and hardness for the coming four years. This text I later made the basis of the Frost-Carew memorial in the Cambridge Street United Church in Lindsay. I completed my course in mid September, and at that time the movement for county battalions arose. I also mentioned this in Fighting Men. Reference is also made to the same in the reminiscences of Charles Harold Hale.⁶ At the end of the month I was in North House university residence,⁷ where I must confess my thoughts were entirely related to the military and what little was left to mathematics and physics, in which course my brother, who later became head of the Queen’s [University] Chemistry Department and who was five years my senior, had enrolled me. During this time, academic studies with me were futile. I attended again the School of Infantry, then on College Street, and qualified as a captain.

      From the Toronto Telegram, 15 January 1959, a photograph of Leslie and Cecil Frost. The original was taken in 1913 by their father, whose two younger sons were on their way to Camp Niagara. The background is the Red Ensign. Premier Frost must have sent the photograph to the newspaper. Later in 1959, he told a friend, The Red Ensign has been the official flag of the Canadian Army insofar as I am aware in two World Wars. I was wounded under it and many of my comrades were buried under it. It is officially recognized as a distinctive Canadian flag. In this day and generation when there is so much agitation for a distinctive Canadian flag, why not keep the one we have. Frost even designed a Red Ensign with twelve maple leaves, one for each province and territory. (Private Collection; reproduction by Joanna Veale.)

      The county battalions took form, the first actually being the 157th Simcoe Foresters. The first number was 122nd. Colonel D.M. Grant of Huntsville was the commanding officer. Within a month or two, this number was transferred to Muskoka, and Colonel Henry MacLaren was appointed as the officer commanding. Both offered me staff positions, but I decided without hesitation to stay with the Simcoe County regiment of the 35th Simcoe Foresters. I was appointed assistant adjutant in December 1915 and then acted as adjutant during the absence of Captain Grandy for some months until I was appointed to command C Company, the Orillia company about which I have told in Fighting Men.

      The battalion went overseas on the 15th of October, 1916. I have recounted in my book this story. In England the battalion was broken up, and while I was attending various military schools, there was always the hope that I might be taken into the 5th Division, which was then in formation. To get there, it was necessary for me to revert while in France from my rank as captain and to serve to start with as junior lieutenant of the front line of the 20th Battalion. Of all the officers above the rank of lieutenant, only two reverted, Grandy and myself. I was wounded. Grandy came up and took my platoon #9 C Company and was killed in action in the breaking of the Hindenburg Line, 28th of August, 1918.

      I lasted out from the 7th of August, 1917 until I was wounded and invalided from France on the 4th of April, 1918. My eight-month stay in France exceeded the life of most infantry lieutenants. I joined the 20th Battalion at the Battle of Hill 70, which commenced August 15th, 1917. I served in the usual trench warfare, battle patrols, and the like until moved to Passchendaele with the Canadian Corps in October 1917. It then became very apparent that we were to be faced with the fury of a German offensive. Bolshevik Russia—the Russia of Lenin—made a humiliating peace with the Germans, who then had numerical superiority over the British and French armies. Indeed our backs were to the wall. The American armies were only then in formation and obviously it was going to be a do-or-die German effort. The great battle started the 21st of March, 1917, and the British positions were so overrun and ultimately the British lines in the Somme area retreated some thirty-five miles. On the 29th of March, the 2nd Division, which had been separated from the Canadian Corps, marched down towards the Somme and then went in the line at a critical point in front of Arras at the ruins of a village called Neuville-Vitasse. There on Easter Sunday, March 31st, my company commander and I were doing a little reconnoitring. The great battle, as sometimes happens, had died down. We were in open country and had simply dug what we called funk holes, by some, fox holes. We actually did not know the position of the enemy, and it was doubtful as to whether they knew our position.

      In any event, we started looking around just towards dusk and we were fired on by small arms fire and I was wounded. It was the end of my career as a fighting man in France. My wounds were described as slight. Actually it was of the utmost seriousness. The wound had fractured the pelvis and had caused severe internal injuries, from which I was barely able to survive. I was taken to the field dressing station to a little place called Wailly. From thence I was taken by ambulance to Doullens. At this place a few days before, British and French had met together and appointed General Foch as Supreme Commander. This was the beginning of unity of command. My entrance into Doullens was rather inauspicious. The casualties were so great that the wounded lay in the courtyard of the Hotel de Ville, where very probably the unity of command was settled. The hotel [city hall] was crowded with casualties and for the best part of two days I remained there on a stretcher, the doctors and nurses doing their very best to look after the vast number of casualties assembled there. One would wonder how one could survive, but we were all young soldiers in the very best physical condition.

      In the correspondence home from my brother and myself, I have appended to some of the letters an explanation of what the references were to. These letters, this memo, the comments I wish to make, and the book Fighting Men will tell the story of my military days and those of my brother, who became captain of the 2nd Machine Gun Battalion. He survived the war, although he was wounded on the 13th of October, 1918, at Iwuy. He was wounded at the right temple, the bullet piercing his steel helmet. He, however, refused to stay in hospital and went up to the line again, joining his battalion, and was present at the time of the Armistice and the march to the Rhine.

      While the above story concluded my life as an active soldier, nevertheless I have had military connections since. In 1920 Colonel Dougall Carmichael, DSO, MC, asked me to help in the reorganization of the 35th Regiment. This I did and for a year or two commanded the Orillia Company. My brother and I started to practise [law] in Lindsay in September 1921 and I became a member of the reserve of officers of the regiment. Subsequently in the 1960s I became the honorary lieutenant colonel and finally the honorary colonel of the Queen’s York Rangers, from which in part the 20th Infantry Battalion has sprung. This regiment had long associations with the 35th Simcoe Foresters; between them they formed a composite battalion in the Rebellion of 1885. The Queen’s York Rangers is a descendant of Brock’s York Volunteers of 1812, so the Frost family over a period of ninety years from 1882 to the time of the writing of this memo have been associated with the Canadian Army.

      The Honourable Leslie M. Frost,

      Retired Premier of Ontario and

      Chancellor of Trent University

      Lindsay, Ontario

      May 1972

      NOTES

      1   From 1890 to 1902, Conservative MPP for Simcoe East riding, which included Orillia. Among other things, in 1899 Miscampbell was a member of the standing committee that considered Bill 162, An Act to Incorporate the Ontario Historical Society, which had been founded eleven years earlier. Leslie Frost’s interest in Ontario history was in a sense preordained. See Appendix 2 for further information.

      2   The 35th Regiment, known as the Simcoe Foresters, also called The Volunteers, was formed in 1866 in response to the first wave of Fenian invasions. Each year it trained for a week at Niagara-on-the Lake. So too did volunteer cadets at the end of each school year.

      3   Janet Carnochan (1839–1926) was first president of the Niagara Historical Society, founded in 1895. She donated land for a museum, of which she was the first curator. Her History of Niagara was published in 1914, the year before Leslie Frost heard her speak about the area and its historical figures such as Laura Second and General Brock. Like most Canadians before the war, she saw the Great War as yet another patriotic Canadian war, and in 1919 she presented returning soldiers from the Niagara district with a sterling-silver maple leaf medal (Leslie M. Frost, Fighting Men (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1967), 17).

      4   See Appendix 3.

      5   Gertrude Carew was engaged to Arthur Ardagh.

      6   Harold Hale (1874–1963), a family friend, was owner of the Orillia Packet, founded in 1870 by his uncle William Hale. In 1926, the Orillia Times and Packet were amalgamated, and Hale became editor and owner of the Packet and Times.

      7   One of the residences of Burwash Hall at Victoria College, University of Toronto.

      Preface

      Several voices have contributed to this book, the most important being the voices of two soldiers of the Great War, Leslie and Cecil Frost. About 170 of their letters survived the war. Another voice is that of their mother, Margaret, who wrote over a hundred letters to her two sons overseas, of which only three have survived. Then there’s the voice of another Leslie Frost, the retired premier of Ontario, who, more than half a century after the Great War, comments on the letters of two youthful brothers. A fourth voice is that of Dr. Tom Symons, founding president of Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, who in his foreword comments on the two young soldiers and the Great War. Symons and Frost were friends and colleagues from 1967 to 1973, when Leslie Frost was chancellor of Trent.

      In addition, the editor’s voice, as unobtrusively as possible, comments in footnotes on the contents of the letters. He has avoided [sic] as much as possible, even when tempted to use it for a spelling error, usually minor, or for an occasional vague phrase or missing word. Leslie Frost misspelled words—allright for alright, and staid for stayed. Small errors have been corrected without comment. Other errors, such as the absence of an apostrophe in the possessive case or the elision of words like that is to thats, remain as they appear in the actual letters. The tone of the letters was usually conversational, and thus at times they read as if the brothers were talking directly to their parents, with the usual conversational ellipses and colloquialisms. Occasionally, for clarification, a comma or a question mark has been inserted. Dates are standardized in a day-month-year format. Leslie Frost’s annotations of 1971 greatly facilitated the work of the editor, who identifies Frost’s comments with LMF 1971.

      The reader is urged to consult the three appendices at the back for (1) an explanation of army units, (2) a list of politicians in two ridings, Simcoe East and Victoria, and (3)

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