Tom Slater & Tom St. Amand
In July of 1917 Sergeant William Chapman confided to his friend back home in Sarnia that the front line was “no place for an old man.”
The reality was that Chapman, nearly 41, was 15 years older than the average Canadian soldier in the First World War.
His age, however, didn’t prevent him from serving admirably on the front, a battle he wanted to fight.
Nor did his situation in Sarnia. A contractor by trade, when he left to serve his country overseas Chapman left behind his wife, Bessie, and seven young children.
William Chapman would die in action, but his letters to Thomas Peacock, his good friend in Sarnia, survived the war. Always honest and occasionally visceral, they describe the horrors of the front and his unwavering belief in the Allied cause.
Sergeant Chapman landed in France with the 7th Battalion Canadian Railway Troops on March 29, 1917.
His letters reveal as much about the man as they do about the war. He took pride in the job and working well under pressure. As a member of the Canadian Railway Troops, he was tasked with building and maintaining the rail lines that moved artillery and troops; with repairing trenches; and, at times, fighting on the front.
They worked “day and night under constant observation of the enemy [that] tried to put every obstacle in our way by sending over all kinds of shrapnel and high explosives,” he wrote.
Once, after repairing breaks in a line, he was recognized by the commanding officer for “coolness and bravery under shell fire.” Another time, Chapman confessed he “did not like the job, but ammunition had to be got up to the guns . . . so we have to do our duty.”
Chapman never questioned the cause or nature of the war. Simply put, the enemy was “cruel” and it was a kill-or-be-killed world. After witnessing an enormous explosion engineered by the Allies, Chapman wrote, “It was a sight . . . few will ever have the pleasure of seeing again.”
He witnessed terrible events. After one advance he described “dead Germans lying all over, some partly buried by shells, others lying dead in their concrete dugouts where they had crawled to die, or by being bombed by our advancing Tommies.”
He also recognized the inherent inhumanity of war. Another Allied barrage was a “grand spectacle if one could forget that part of the setting was human lives. Talk about rivers being red with blood; here it was shell holes filled with water that was red with blood.”
Like every soldier at the front, he knew danger and death were ever present. He survived a number of encounters with high explosive shells and shrapnel, with his “Easter Bonnet” — the steel helmet he’d been issued on Easter Sunday — saving his life.
This “godsend” sustained three different dents, each representing an escape from injury or worse.
His final letter was dated July 15, 1917 and expressed hope the war would end before winter.
Two months later in Belgium, Sergeant William Chapman died from gunshot wounds to the abdomen.
At their home on Maria Street, Bessie Chapman received the letter from an army chaplain: “Your husband died at the post of duty. He came here knowing the danger, and he bravely made the noble sacrifice,” she read, suddenly a widow with seven children under the age of 11.
William Chapman is buried in Dozinghem Military Cemetery, Belgium.