Private Frederick George Fletcher

Private, 8th Battalion, Infantry (Army).

Frederick was the son of Richard and Sarah Fletcher of Steventon, Berkshire, England. Richard and Sarah were married in 1874 and Richard worked as an agricultural labourer. They had ten children, all born in Steventon, but two of them died young. Frederick was their youngest child, born in April 1891.

In April 1910 two weeks after his 19th birthday Frederick left England on the Campania, headed for New York. He was listed as single, a farmer from Steventon and next-of-kin was his father Richard Fletcher of Hill Farm. Frederick moved to Canada not long before the war started. He lived in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba and worked for the Lake of the Woods Milling Company for several months before enlisting.

Mobilization orders were issued in Canada on 7 August 1914, three days after Britain declared war. Officers and volunteers were to told go to Valcartier, an area about 20 miles north of Quebec City that would become the site of a large military camp. Within a few weeks there were 30,000 men and 7,000 horses there.

Frederick would have travelled by train to Valcartier with other volunteers from Manitoba. At the camp they underwent training, medical tests and inoculations. On 22 September he enlisted with the 8th Battalion, a new unit made up of recruits from Winnipeg and northwestern Ontario. The 8th Battalion embarked for England in October, leaving from Quebec City on the SS Franconia. They were part of a convoy of 32 transport ships protected by a Royal Navy escort because of the danger from German submarines. The convoy arrived safely in Plymouth, England on 14 October.

The 8th Battalion was sent to Salisbury Plain in southern England where they trained for several months. The men were billeted in tents and huts and due to the cold, wet winter weather many of them became sick with severe colds and pneumonia. In December they were given a period of leave for the holiday season and Frederick likely visited his family in Steventon, which was only about 100 km away. In February 1915 the men were sent to France and by April they were in the trenches in Belgium.

Poison gas was first used by the Germans on a large scale on the Western Front on 22 April 1915 at Gravenstafel Ridge. The 8th Battalion was hit by it on 24 April. From the War Diary of the 8th Battalion, 24-25 April 1915, Gravenstafel: "The trenches were all attacked at night, and all the men in the trenches except the reserves were weak from fumes - in fact some men had already died from fumes." The 8th battalion suffered heavy casualties in the gas attack and in the Battle of St. Julien, which began the same day. Frederick was killed in action on the second day of the battle, 25 April.

Frederick's final resting place in unknown. He is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial (Ypres, Belgium), which bears the names of 55,000 men who died in the Ypres Salient and have no known grave.

He is also commemorated on Portage la Prairie War Memorial, the WW1 Roll of Honour for the 8th Battalion (Royal Winnipeg Rifles) and the Lake of the Woods Milling Company plaque in Keewatin, Ontario. The plaque honours staff and citizens who gave their lives in the Great War.

Frederick is listed in Company "F" on the 8th Battalion's Nominal Roll of Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers and Men.