CORPORAL JAMES EDWARD NOBLE
CANADIAN INFANTRY
13TH JUNE 1918 AGE 21
BURIED: WAILLY ORCHARD CEMETERY, FRANCE
25th Battalion Canadian Infantry War Diary
Neuville Vitasse
At 2.00 am on 13 6 1918 [the diary says 1917 but this is a mistake] the Royal Engineers put over a gas projection on the lines opposite our front, which was accompanied by heavy artillery fire. In reply to this, the enemy put down a barrage on our front and support lines, which lasted until 2.45 am. [...] Casualties - killed in action, Lieut. E.C.C. Bing and 8 Other Ranks; wounded Capt. W.A. Livingstone and 21 Other Ranks.
This was the enemy barrage that stilled Corporal Noble's heart and broke his mother's.
James Edward Noble attested in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia on 31 March 1916. He was nineteen and one month. He served with the 25th Battalion Canadian Infantry, the Nova Scotia Rifles.
Noble's parents, William and Agnes, had ten children, two of whom died in infancy. James was killed in 1918 and his younger brother, George Ross Noble, died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Nova Scotia on 30 March 1921. He was 22. George had been a soldier. He'd served in France for a year with the 193rd Battalion, which it was believed had brought on his condition. He's buried under a War Graves Commission headstone with an inscription chosen by his wife, Ruby: 'Sadly missed and lovingly remembered'.