In 1908, my Swiss-born paternal grandparents, Pastor Charles Bieler and his wife, Blanche Merle d’Aubigné Bieler, sailed to Montreal with their family. At the time, their five sons ranged in age from sixteen to seven. A mere seven years later, three of their sons, Jean, Etienne, and André, volunteered for duty in World War I. The fourth son, Philippe, enlisted in 1916 as he turned eighteen. The youngest, Jacques, remained at home with his parents throughout the war.
This book is about the experience of building a new life in Canada in the pre-War years, of war, as recorded through the voice of a mother who penned a manuscript entitled “Nos Origines,” of a father who supplemented his wife’s writings in her text and in letters, and of sons who sent letters to their parents from various corners of the European theatre of battle. I occasionally insert my own voice, as “editor,” in order to tie the various narratives together and to offer context concerning places and events at home and at war.
In her manuscript, Blanche, my grandmother, mentions with pride and fondness her “crown of sons.” The photograph on the facing page visually captures this sentiment. As a result of war she lost one of those sons, and a decade later a second. And yet she and my grandfather “soldiered” on, participating in the intellectual life of McGill University, enjoying the successes of their three remaining sons, welcoming grandchildren into the world, and becoming part of the fabric of Quebec and Canada. They lived on the sidelines of a second war, but not without worry. Their eldest son, Jean, and his family, who were residing in Geneva, had to find a way to escape Europe in 1941.
My grandparents and their five sons were newcomers to Canada. But their decision to emigrate, to move “onward” to a different continent and new horizons, was itself rooted in family tradition. The families of both my grandparents were a European blend of Swiss, French, Polish, and Irish blood, bound together historically in the French language and in Protestant faith.
In the years before their departure for Canada, my grandparents themselves had moved from Switzerland to Paris, where my grandmother’s brother “Oncle Charles” and her sister “Tante Julia” had settled. Little did they know that four of their sons would make that trip back across the Atlantic to participate in what was supposed to be the “war to end all wars.”
Family Reunion at La Clairière in 1935.
Top, left to right: André, Jacques, and Jean; middle: Blanche, Jeanette with Nathalie, Charles, and Raymonde; bottom: friend, Philippe (author of this book), and friend
IN 1958, AT THE AGE OF NINETY-FOUR, my grandmother died, having outlived my grandfather by twelve years. It was a sad moment, and the transition was punctuated by the sale of their much-loved Laurentian property, La Clairière. I can remember the gathering of the entire family to hear the reading of her will. My father, Jean, was willed furniture, and, as eldest grandson, I received the family book, “Nos Origines.” I had a feeling that it was their hope that I would take it one step further.
My grandparents had recorded the details of their life, and in particular the years of World War I, in “Nos Origines.” It was handwritten in French and contained over five hundred pages of text, pictures, and other family records. It was an arduous task to decipher the cramped writing on the thin, almost transparent, paper, but it was read by many, and it influenced my immediate generation. Over the years, I wondered whether I could add anything. One day, the Vimy Trust approached me about writing an article about my family during World War I. One thing led to another, and finally I accepted the challenge of writing this book. The book is largely a compilation of excerpts from “Nos Origines” and from the hundreds of letters that my grandparents, uncles, and father left behind.
My grandparents were both highly educated intellectuals, fluent in French, German, and English. My grandfather was a well-known and eloquent speaker, and my grandmother a prolific writer. She published, in 1929, a history of the Merle d’Aubigné family, including the official biography of her father, Jean Henri. French was their language, but they were first of all devout Protestants and enthusiastic evangelists. It was no surprise, therefore, that in coming to Quebec they would choose a Protestant milieu, which in Montreal was mostly English.
“Nos Origines” was written during a period from about 1925 to 1940. It deals briefly with the lives of my grandparent’s ancestors, and in much greater detail with their lives and those of their immediate family. Each of my grandparents wrote in French, composing their own chapters, and some of these dealt with the same periods.
“Nos Origines” quotes excerpts from many of the boys’ letters, but an important part of the text is in the form of “memoires” written by my grandparents. They were derived from conversations that they had with their sons after the war, visits from friends and relatives, other letters, and public sources. It is important to remember that my grandmother spent over a year with André during his recuperation from his serious gas exposure during the battle of Passchendaele. He would have told her many things that would never have passed the censors. During the war all the soldiers’ letters were censored by senior officers.
I translated and edited the letters and my grandparents’ memoirs, attempting to eliminate repetitive family details and to cut from the memoirs subjects that were dealt with better in the letters. In the text, excerpts from the memoirs are signed (BB) for Blanche, and (CB) for Charles. The letters are signed and dated by their author.
There were two categories of letters. The first being the many hundreds written by my father and his brothers in France and England during the war. The second were the much rarer ones written by my grandparents to their sons.
I’m told that most of the letters written by parents to their boys were lost in the mud of Flanders. My grandmother, having the time-consuming task of writing to four boys, decided to stencil copies to each one. She also felt sorry for their good friend, Jacques Grellet, who couldn’t be contacted by his parents in neutral Switzerland, so she made an extra copy for him. Two years ago, as I was searching for information, a cousin called me to say that she had received a bundle of World War I letters from an unknown lady. It turned out that Grellet drowned in the Great Slave River after the war, and his possessions were sent to his brother’s wife. Her daughter was cleaning the attic, found the bundle, and traced the Bieler family in Paris. Grellet had volunteered into Canada’s “Railway Regiment,” which stayed behind the Front during all of 1917 and 1918. His copies of the letters will join those of the other three boys at the archives of Queen’s University.
Another anecdote concerns the picture of a château in the Pas de Calais region, located near the boys’ battlefields. I chose it haphazardly to illustrate the kind of place they sometimes enjoyed during their rest days. When I sought permission to use the photograph from the current owner, he responded with enthusiasm, explaining that British Field Marshal John French and some of his men had slept there in 1915.
Etienne was the most prolific writer of the four boys, but there were blanks during two periods. The first was after his minor wound just before the battle of Passchendaele through until his return to the Lens Front. My grandmother must have mislaid them. The second was during his year with the Antisubmarine Division, where absolute secrecy was mandated. André may have written as many letters as his brother, but they were usually brief and less regular. Philippe, who arrived later, wrote the most focused and poetic letters. There are very few letters from my father, Jean. I believe that Tante Jeanette, André’s well-organized wife, filed all of André’s, Etienne’s, and Philippe’s letters and sent them to the Queen’s archives, whereas my parents left me with an incomplete box of papers, and I often had to rely on my grandparents for information about my father.
I have included the major part of almost all their letters. I attempted to keep all the non-repetitive material that told the story. A major exception is the volume of letters from Etienne during his many months recovering at the Camberwell Hospital. He would go on at some length about the nursing care and the visits from Lady Bunting and a myriad other titled and untitled visitors. My comments with regard to the editing and translation of my grandparents’ “memoirs” also applies to the letters.
This book records the events of World War I, and the lives of my family at home and at war, in chronological order. The war years are divided into twelve chapters, ranging from periods of three months to six months. The “backbone” is the overall events of the war, which I sourced from a number of books and articles. The most important contributions came from Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson’s Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1919, Ralph Hodder-Williams’s Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, 1914–1919, Grandson Michael’s online Canadian Great War Project: Canadian Field Artillery, and A.J.P. Taylor’s The First World War: An Illustrated History.
A weakness of attempting to write a detailed historical account often comes from lack of information. This is especially true in writing about wars where those who have the facts are not permitted to divulge them. I tried to circumvent that by reviewing and quoting some of the official war diaries.
Etienne was a lieutenant in the Canadian Field Artillery. From February 1916 to June 1916 he was with the 3rd Brigade; from July 1916 to March 1917, he was with the 12th Brigade; and finally in April 1917 with the 1st Brigade. He fought in the battles of Sanctuary Wood, Courcelette, and Vimy. The daily activity of the Brigades was recorded in the Canadian Corp’s war diaries, which were archived in Canada’s Library and Archives and later reorganized by Grandson Michael in his Canadian Great War Project. Given the strict censorship, as Etienne was not permitted to write about his daily war activities, some of these diaries are included in the narrative. It is very likely that Etienne was there as they were being written and even that he wrote some of them himself. He is mentioned in many of them.
However, the heart of the book is “Nos Origines,” the letters, blended within a matrix of the memoirs, and the actual events of the war. There are therefore three voices: those of the boys, those of my grandparents, and my own voice, relating the news of the day as I have derived it from numerous sources.
Philippe E. Bieler
