Private Angus Martin
PERSONAL INFORMATION
MILITARY INFORMATION
- Private, 52nd Battalion, Infantry (Army).
- Private (Army).
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RESEARCH INFORMATION
According to his attestation papers, Angus Martin was born 22 August 1979 in the Eldon/Belfast area of Prince Edward Island. With two years previous experience with the 17th Field Battery, at the time of his signing of the papers on 24 May 1916 in Kenora, Ontario, he had been working as a "Gasoline Engineer" in the nearby community of Minaki. He gave his uncle Martin Martin as his next of kin, Martin living in Uigg in Prince Edward Island, very close to Angus' birth place. He also gave the name of Miss Lillian Jette (friend) of Kenora (formerly Port Arthur) as the contact in Canada for his payroll and the beneficiary in his will.
With the 141st Battalion, Private Angus Martin left Kenora by train on 1 August 1916, destination the battalion's headquarters in Port Arthur, Ontario. In February of 1917 he was sent to Winnipeg for a month of training at the Infantry School of Instruction in Winnipeg, returning to Port Arthur 29 March 1917. Later that spring, the 141st headed east and embarked aboard the Olympic from Halifax, Nova Scotia on 29 April 1917.
Once overseas, Angus was transferred to the 18th Reserve Battalion at Dibgate and then drafted to the 52nd Battalion on 21 June 1917. In just a matter of a few months, on 29 October 1917, Private Angus Martin was reported as Missing in Action, presumed dead. From the Circumstance of Death record for Angus: "Previously for official purposes presumed to have Died now reported Killed in Action."
Private Angus Martin's final resting place is in the Tyne Cottage British Cemetery along with nearly 12 000 other soldiers of the Commonwealth Forces. It is located near Ieper (Ypres) in Belgium. Notification was sent to his uncle back in Prince Edward Island while other war related forms, medals and decorations, plaque and scroll were sent to Mrs John Berg (formerly Lillian Jette) in Vermilion Bay, Ontario. Vermilion Bay is a small community located near Kenora in northwestern Ontario.
Private Angus Martin is commemorated on page 292 of the First World War Book of Remembrance housed in the Memorial Chamber of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, on the Kenora Cenotaph, and the Kenora Legion War Memorial.