In
Memoriam
When the news reached Port Rowan
last week that Private J. S. Crerar hall fallen in action on the
9th, at Vimy Ridge, it brought home to the community with renewed
force the stern realities which we all have to face.
Crerar was a graduate of Queen's
University and Principal of the [Port Rowan] High School since
1914.
He left in the fall with the
133rd, and crossed to France with the 14th Canadian Battalion in
December.
Under normal circumstances he was
eminently a man of peace. Gun and bayonet work was repugnant to
him, as they are to so many of our men until hammered into
hardness by actual contact with the vile and unspeakable cruelty
of the Huns, which exceeds all the world has ever known of the
horrors of war.
There was a little group of our
village boys with him. It was like a little bit of the town
transported to France. They formed an observation post; shared the
same [......], and did their bit together like the brave men they
were. There were Morley Knowles, his brother Leslie Knowles, Harold
Nethercott, C. Earl Cook and perhaps one or two more.
Particulars have not yet reached us. All we know is that Crerar
and Nethercott were killed and Morley Knowles wounded. Every man
of them splendid types, keen of brain, and sure of hand; alive to
all the war means in its ultimate issues for the Empire and the
world.
[Two
paragraphs re patriotism omitted]
No one seemed to think of Crerar
enlisting. No one "recruited" him. Reticent about the
deeper and nearer things in life, he hammered it out in his own
mind, until all barriers were burned away by his own fervent sense
of duty, and he could follow "the gleam" with a good,
manly conscious.
He was of Scotch descent and
hoped to have an opportunity of visiting the home of his
forefathers in the little village of Scone, about two miles
outside the fair city of Perth, on the banks of the Tay.
He had heard of Perth
"Inches" -- parks, we would call them. He had heard of
the kirk where John Knox preached his great sermon of the
Reformation, and he had heard of Scone Palace, where Robert de
Bruce was crowned King of Scots by the Countess of Buchan, a lady
of the great Clan Macduff. The mystic stone of Destiny had been
carried off to England, nevertheless Bruce's coronation was valid,
and victory, as we know, adorned his banner at Bannockburn.
We doubt if his wish to see these
spots was realized. He dreamed his dream. He had every right to
dream golden dreams of a happy and useful life, and if the dream
has not ccome true, according to our reckoning, it does not follow
that it has failed in its better fruition; for there are still
more things in heaven and earth than eyes have seen or heart
conceived of.
Crerar and Nethercott were
friends and comrades, lovely in their lives, and in their deaths
not divided.
[Poem, an
"old Scotch ditty" omitted]
