Cobourg's John Fairhurst was older than most locals to enlist

Posted By RICK DADE

Posted 3 months ago

August, 5,1914: the young Dominion of Canada declares war on Germany and its allies, the boys of Cobourg answer the call of King and country, joining Northumberland County's 40th Regiment of Artillery. It would be a lark. They would serve with their pals, have an adventure of a lifetime, and oh yes, be home for Christmas. Little did they know of the horrors the next four years that would have in store for them.

A short man and much older than most of the local enlistees, 41-year-old John Fairhurst, a machinist by trade, left his wife Emma and family behind, and set sail for England, the land of his birth, for training on the heavy gun crews.

Unlike the infantry, where men could be moved from regiment to regiment, the 40th would stay together as a trained unit, being absorbed into the 2nd Heavy Battery, RCA. They set sail from Southampton in May of 1915, and would see their first action at Bas Olyumpe, Belgium, by mid-month. They were honing their skills and preparing for what was to come.

By the spring of 1916, the Ypres salient was a terrifying place to be. The war had settled into one of attrition, with lines of mud-filled and rat-infested trenches, stretching hundreds of miles south from the English Channel. Victories or defeats were measured in yards - lost or gained. With the infantry at the front in a virtual stalemate, the war become a deadly artillery dual. By war's end, half of the deaths and injuries on both sides came from shelling.

In May of that year, the Germans had launched a relentless offensive on the Canadian lines. Curtains of shells screamed into the gun emplacements, ripping and tearing at everything in their path. The sky would be ablaze with fireballs of death. Mussel flashes and the roar of the howitzers signaled that the 2nd Heavy Battery was answering round for round, what the enemy was pouring into them.

The ground around Fairhurst would heave and erupt with the hurricane force of the 500-lb. shells that were lobbed from giant guns situated miles behind the German lines.

Fairhurst and the crew would be constantly manhandling the their guns into new positions - a direct hit could set off all of the ammunition, wipe out four or five guns, and kill or wound scores of men at a time. Telephone and communication lines, continually severed by the bombardment, had to be replaced while under fire.

The air would be filled with the stench of cordite, smoke, and dust. The enemy was employing a new delivery system for their latest weapon - shells loaded with phosgene gas, even more potent than the chlorine used the year before.

Sleep for Fairhurst was a luxury that he could ill afford. Every night the men would be building concrete dugouts, their sturdiness was the only thing that could save your life in a direct hit. In that month alone, 2000 shells fell on the Canadian positions.

Passing through the lines, moving farther to the rear to the field hospital, Fairhurst would see ambulances and stretcher bearers carrying the hideously wounded from the front. A grizzly parade of men with arms and legs blown off, bloody holes where faces had been, gaping chest wounds, and for those who were able - the walking wounded, staggering and lurching toward medical help. Fairhurst saw close-up the what the devastation to human life that the war had wrung down upon the infantry a mile up the line. The thundering roar of the guns and the whine of income shells made it almost impossible for him to hear their tortured screams of pain.

It was a very hot day, that last day of May when 43-year-old John Fairhurst's war came to an end. The 2nd Heavy Battery had come under another searing bombardment from the German guns. It is unclear whether it was a direct hit, or a swirling, twisted piece of shrapnel that cut him down. But when the hostilities would come to and end in two years time, he would be counted among the 66,573 Canadians who made the ultimate sacrifice. They were heroes all.

Lest We Forget.

John Fairhurst is buried at the Divisional Cemetery, Belgium