DRIVER LELAND WINGATE FERNALD
CANADIAN FIELD ARTILLERY
8TH MAY 1916 AGE 28
BURIED: LIJSSENTHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
Leland Wingate Fernald was an American citizen, a painter from Bakersfield in California whose parents lived in Dover, New Hampshire. He enlisted in the Canadian Army on 11 November 1915 in Esquimalt, British Columbia and died of wounds - "shrapnel wounds on head" - in No. 10 Casualty Clearing Station, Lijssenthoek just under six months later. His headstone inscription, chosen by his parents, makes clear his motives for enlisting - to avenge the deaths of the 1,191 civilians, 139 of them US citizens, who died when the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat on 7 May 1915. Many people called for America to enter the war on the side of the Allies as a result of the sinking but it was two years before she did so on 6 April 1917. However, this did not stop several US citizens like Leland Wingate from crossing the border into Canada and joining the British Army.