When Canadians rallied to the flag 110 years ago at the start of the Great War, many expected only a few months of glory before returning home.
It didn’t turn out that way.
These young men in uniform, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and farmers only months before, were quickly shocked into reality. Flung into a world of muddy, rat- and lice-infested trenches, they watched more than 2,000 of their comrades die in the first 48 hours of the Battle of Ypres. In the same period, another 4,000 were seriously wounded.
Far worse was still to come. At the Somme, Canadians witnessed greater horrors as more than 24,000 were killed, wounded, or went missing. Even at Vimy Ridge, long considered Canada’s greatest triumph of World War I, Canada suffered over 10,000 casualties.
The trauma of war has been likened to taking a walk through hell while still on earth. It has the power to change all men in one way or another.
This is the story of how it affected one man.
J.D. Rae was born in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1888. A carpenter by trade, he immigrated to Canada, eventually settling in Sarnia, Ontario. He boarded at 121 John Street.
In April of 1916, Rae enlisted in Sarnia as a soldier in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces to serve King and Country. His enlistment papers described him as a 27-year-old of good mental and physical health.
He could not have known what was to come.
The brutal reality of war set in when Rae arrived on the front lines in January 1917, serving as a sapper with the 14th Canadian Engineers. For the next eleven months, he endured the squalor of trench life, hurried meals of poor food, long sleepless nights torn by the screams of incoming mortars and shelling, and the stench of rotting corpses in No Man’s Land. Like all of his fellow soldiers torn from civilian life, the young carpenter was now engulfed in a miasma of death, punctuated by the screaming whine of bullets from a constantly vigilant enemy.
Late in 1917, something happened that was likely a precursor of what was to come. Rae was abruptly wrenched from this world of horror with two weeks of leave in London. Twenty-three days after being plunged back into it, John Rae was dead.
In the words of his fellow soldiers, Rae had become “unusually quiet” and “despondent” upon returning from leave.
They were with Rae on February 19, 1918, when they reported hearing “a peculiar squeal or shriek.” With an army-issued razor, Rae had slit his throat from ear to ear. Death ensued within minutes.
In 1998, Hollywood released a film that, more than any other, may have conveyed some idea of the terror inflicted on those who meet the call to arms in wartime. Many moviegoers reported being stunned by the fury depicted during just the first fifteen minutes of Saving Private Ryan. That raw depiction of shock and horror is a faint reflection of what soldiers like John Rae endured.
The brief, tortured life of Sarnia’s John Rae is worth contemplating in this month of May—a month dedicated to the issue of mental health. Over the past forty-five years, we have learned much about the causes and effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), though psychological trauma from war was acknowledged far earlier.
John Rae may not fit the image portrayed in movies as the classic warrior. Yet every person who, during the “war to end all wars,” answered the call to arms was undeniably a patriot. John Rae was a patriot who served Canada and deserves to be remembered in that light.
Sapper Rae was buried with his fallen comrades at Quatre-Vents Military Cemetery at Pas de Calais, France. He is commemorated in the Books of Remembrance in the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.
Yet his name is missing from the local cenotaph.
It should not be.