REGIMENTAL SERJEANT MAJOR STEWART GODFREY
PRINCESS PATRICIA'S CANADIAN LIGHT INFANTRY
18TH APRIL 1916 AGE 47
BURIED: MENIN ROAD SOUTH MILITARY CEMETERY, YPRES, BELGIUM
Stewart Godfrey was a former soldier who had fought in the South African War. Born in Brixton, London, he enlisted in Canada on 24 August 1914, giving his civilian occupation as 'clerk'. He was 44. He served with Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (Eastern Ontario Regiment), which departed for England on 22 September 1914, landed on 25 October and after four months intensive training went to France in February 1915. His rank on departure from Canada was Company Quartermaster Sergeant. This means that he was not "past the military age" as his brother put on his inscription.
The original call up was for men between the ages of 19 and 35 but this recruiting poster shows that for former non-commissioned officers the upper age limit was 45, and for sergeants 50.
The regiment was involved in the fighting at St Julien in April 1915, when the Germans used gas for the first time, and at Festubert and Ginchy. It spent the winter of 1915 in the trenches near Ploegsteert and took part in the battle of St Eloi Craters between 27 March and 16 April 1916. Godfrey survived all this and then was killed on 18 April when, as reported in the War Diary, the Battalion Headquarters at Half Way House was 'shelled with 4.2" R.S.M. [Godfrey S. 1589] killed by direct hit on dugout'.
Although Godfrey had been born in Britain, it was not necessary for a Canadian to have been born there to feel the pull of the mother country. Many Canadian citizens simply looked on themselves as those north Americans who had remained loyal to the British crown - they were British, and more than 600,000 of them were prepared to volunteer to fight for their country.
