Major John McKendrick Hughes

Major (Army).

John served with 19th Alberta Dragoons and Alberta Mounted Rifles, Canadian Militia, from 1907 until 1915, rising from a Trooper to the rank of Major. He enlisted in the 66th Battalion in June 1915, transferred to the 151st Bn. in December of that year, and finally went overseas in October 1916. As soon as the 151st arrived at Shorncliffee, all the other officers were ordered to fall out, and were told they were "surplus to establishment". For the next six months he cooled his heels in England. In June 1917 he took a demotion to Lieutenant in order to serve as an Area Commandant with the British Second Army in France. After about a month he was appointed Agricultural Officer (AO) for the British 9th Corps. Several months later he became AO for the 2nd Army and later the 4th Army., He stayed with the 4th Army until 19 October 1918, when he was attached to the Directorate of Agricultural Production (part of the Armistice Commission). By December 1918 he was in Cologne, Germany, inspecting agricultural equipment being shipped from Germany to France and Belgium. John was shipped home in May 1919.

For his work with French civilians while serving as an AO in the fall of 1917, he was made an Officier l'Ordre du merite agricole, one of four Canadian officers to receive this French award.

During his entire time overseas, John wrote home every day to his wife; in 1956 he found all these letters which Sara had saved, and wrote a book, The Unwanted, which described his experiences as an AO, and with the Armistice Commission. The manuscript was edited in 2003 by his grandson, John R. Hughes, and published in May 2005 by the University of Alberta Press, under the title The Unwanted, Great War Letters from the Field. The book is reviewed on this site (link here) and on the University of Alberta Press site (Link here)

Two of the letters in the abovementioned book have been made available with the permission of John R. Hughes and are available in the "Letters from the Front" section of the site. These can be seen here and here.