After three years of investigation, the Canadian military has identified the remains of a World War I soldier who was killed in action in 1917. He was Private John Lambert of St. John’s, Newfoundland who was barely 16 years old when he lied about his age to enlist in 1916. His remains and those of three still-unidentified British soldiers were discovered in April 2016 during an archaeological survey near the town of Langemark, Belgium.
Born on July 10th, 1900, Lambert enlisted on August 14th, 1916. He claimed to be 18 years and three months old, which means he lied about his birth date as well as the year. Two weeks later he was on his way to Scotland to join the 2nd Battalion of The Newfoundland Regiment. There he and his comrades were trained before being sent to the Western Front. He joined the 1st Battalion in the field in June 1917. In August, Lambert’s division was deployed to attack the German lines north of Ypres. The advance was successful and the 29th Division took all of its objects, but John Lambert paid the ultimate price. He died of his wounds received during the advance, dubbed the Battle of Langemarck, on August 16th. He was 17 years and six days old.
He was recorded as killed in action and his family notified, but in the confusion of war, his grave site was lost.
The war diary of the 88th Brigade mentions that a ‘Field Ambulance Relay Post’ was located near Tuffs Farm. This relay post was most likely located within 100 meters of the location where Private Lambert was recovered in 2016. It is believed that he and the other soldiers found with him were buried near this ‘Relay Post’ and for unknown reasons their remains were not found and recovered following the war.
When the remains of the four soldiers were discovered in 2016, one of the artifacts found in the grave was the shoulder title of The Newfoundland Regiment. Armed with this key clue, the Canadian Armed Forces’ Casualty Identification Program set to discovering the identity of the soldier.
Only 16 Newfoundlanders were listed as missing from World War I, which helpfully limited the number of possibilities, but the process was challenging nonetheless. Osteological analysis and DNA retrieved from his bones revealed his age and height. Here John Lambert’s century-old lies put a spanner in the works, because the army’s records for his age obviously did not match the biological evidence.
Extensive historical and genealogical research was able to locate descendants of 13 of the 16 missing Newfoundlanders, and Patricia Egan, Lambert’s 90-year-old niece, provided her DNA to test against his. It was a match.
St. John’s resident Shirlene Murphy, [Egan’s daughter,] said the family kept his memory alive through the years.
“The family dearly loved him,” Murphy said in an interview Tuesday, noting that Lambert was her grandmother’s brother. “He was always talked about. There’s pictures of him in everybody’s house.”
Everyone in the family referred to him as “Uncle Jack.” […]
A padre and the commanding officer of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment officially delivered the news to Eagan on Friday that her uncle had been identified.
“She’s just amazed,” said Murphy, referring to her mother. “The first thing she thought about was her mother and how good it would have been if she was around to see this.”
Private Lambert’s remains will be reburied, probably next summer, in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s New Irish Farm Cemetery in West-Vlaanderen, Belgium. The three British soldiers who were laid to rest with him 103 years ago will be reburied alongside him as well.
What an absolute waste, poor kid fully brainwashed to sacrifice his life for a worthless France.
Why America at large ever got involve in that bloodletting I will never understand. Look at eurabia now, was it worth 15 million dead men? If u answer yes u r a pig
Welcome home Jack.
I totally understand your response, the tragedy of such life lost. However many people of today’s world have completely lost sight of important virtues like courage and honor and sacrifice. Not so Americans of that era. Nor does one know what motivated this young boy-man; many Canadians are of French heritage – perhaps he felt the virtuous tug of duty? No matter, clearly his family was/is proud of him. However, as you so aptly say, I’m probably just throwing pearls before swine.
If I have learned anything in my life its this – if you hate or disrespect people from elsewhere it becomes a habit, and other people respond negatively to you and your life ends up worse, and if you imagine people were more wonderful in the past then you disrespect those here today.
Be the person others can admire, don’t let them trap you in the mire.
‘The Last Days of Mankind‘ (in German: Die letzten Tage der Menschheit), a satirical play by Karl Kraus written in 1915–22, for those that understand German, performed by Qualtinger in sections :
-> YT /watch?v=9JR0aRiMBH8 (here part 5 of 10)
…and for those that understand English, something similar (Blackadder, ‘Advanced WWI Tactics’):
-> YT /watch?v=rblfKREj50o
Seems as if I lost an article on how the potato harvesters in Flanders still find bodies and unexploded gas shells on a regular basis, shells that they then calmly deposit aside their fields and carry on with their work, in order for the military specialists to pick them up soon afterwards.
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March 2014 – On Wednesday, two workers were killed in the detonation of a grenade near Ypres. The explosion happened on an industrial site where no ammunition is currently being dug. All construction work is at great risk of unstable dud bombs going off. The Belgian army has a special unit specifically for the clearance of such deadly legacies. When the grenade blew up, that special unit had by accident been busy nearby to destroy about 800 poison gas canisters from World War I.
At first glance, the city appears somewhat old-fashioned and traditional. Around the market place there are venerable buildings, such as the famous Cloth Hall, one of the largest Gothic secular buildings in the world with a respectful tower. Behind it rises the St. Martin’s Cathedral, also built in the late Middle Ages – at least in style. However, the church, like the Cloth Hall and the entire city, was largely rebuilt in the 20th century. More precisely, in the period between the 1920s and the 1960s. World War I had left almost nothing of Ypres.
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Seems as if I lost an article on how the potato harvesters in Flanders still find bodies and unexploded gas shells on a regular basis, shells that they then calmly deposit aside their fields and carry on with their work, in order for the military specialists to pick them up soon afterwards.
——————
March 2014 – On Wednesday, two workers were killed in the detonation of a grenade near Ypres. The explosion happened on an industrial site where no ammunition is currently being dug. All construction work is at great risk of unstable dud bombs going off. The Belgian army has a special unit specifically for the clearance of such deadly legacies. When the grenade blew up, that special unit had by accident been busy nearby to destroy about 800 poison gas canisters from World War I.
[…]
Seems as if I lost an article on how the potato harvesters in Flanders still find bodies and unexploded gas shells on a regular basis, shells that they then calmly deposit aside their fields and carry on with their work, in order for the military specialists to pick them up soon afterwards :confused:
PS: Also, I wanted to post another one, as in 2014 two people died, when a grenade went off,… but WordPress is pressing me…
–I hereby surrender unconditionally–
“They will not grow old, as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them.”
-Laurence Binyon-
Because kids that age think they are invincible and that nothing bad will happen to them.
Which is why totalitarian states brainwash the young into participating in blood “sports,” whether that involves teens taking on T-34s with Panzerfausts, Japanese young men engaging in suicidal banzai charges, or Iranian boys doing the same against entrenched Iraquis in order to earn their plastic “key into heaven.”
“but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a huge millstone should be hung around his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea.”
-Matthew 18:6