#118074 Private Robert Henry Killip
2ND CANADIAN MOUNTED RIFLES
ALL OF THE TROOPS THAT began making up Canada’s contingent on the outbreak of the Great War were volunteers. The first group of more than 30,000 offered their services in just a few days and of those, 60 per cent were of British birth. Canada was also experiencing a depression in 1914 and many men were out of work. Some appreciated the wage, or if they were expats perhaps saw it as a route home. Others were experienced men who had fought in the Boer War; adventurers who could not resist the great European conflict. By the time the Canadians arrived on the Somme they numbered more than 100,000 men in four divisions. The first three had been resting since June after a monstrous time in the dreaded Ypres Salient, but still providing working parties and undergoing training. One of these was 25-year-old Robert Killip. Born and raised on the Isle of Man, he emigrated aboard the Empress of Ireland in 1912, sailing into Nova Scotia. Having departed Britain a farm labourer, on the outbreak of war he was a rancher in Alberta, where he enlisted at Pincher’s Creek, a rural new town south-west of the Rockies.
Until they arrived on the Somme, the Canadian forces’ experience of fighting in Europe had been very much characterised by defensive warfare. Life had become monotonous in Belgium and so there was excitement about venturing over the border. Many of the men spoke French and the knowledge that they had crossed the Atlantic to fight the Germans made them fascinating to the natives. As planned, the ANZAC troops on the Somme were being withdrawn and replaced by the Canadians, command passing to the latter on 3rd September. At the beginning of the month, Robert Killip was at Abeele undergoing training when orders came to say that the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles were to leave immediately and entrain for the battlefield. On the 7th Robert travelled via Saint-Omer, Étaples and Boulogne and arrived north of Amiens at 3:30am the following morning. Three days later, more orders came to clamber into motor buses that jolted and lurched towards Albert. Twenty-four hours on, having arrived, Robert and the rest of the men drew forty-eight hour rations and departed for the trenches. The Mounted Rifles were about to find themselves in the Mouquet Farm sector, where their compatriots had already been standing their ground for a week or so, despite heavy barrages and counter-attacks. The artillery bombardment rarely let up, but Haig wanted his Canadian troops to have time to settle in before undertaking any major offensive operations.
On the night of 11th/12th September, in ‘inky darkness’ the Canadians came into the line to find dubious looking trenches scratched into the unfamiliar ground. Robert’s battalion relieved the 10th Canadian Infantry near Pozières, a shade over 700 men with twenty-two officers. Two companies went into the front line, leaving one in support and one in reserve. The relief was completed relatively swiftly, without mishap and patrols were immediately sent out into no-man’s-land. The men even managed to set out advanced posts ahead of their front line.
The Canadians were constantly sapping to get ready for upcoming operations and the Germans were trying to wreck their efforts with shells, machine guns and bombs against working parties, anything they could to deter efforts, causing mounting casualties. From the moment they came into the line, Robert Killip’s brigade was subjected to heavy shelling, ‘the Germans evidently having become aware of the fact that new troops were arriving in the sector’. Before they had had any chance to settle in, a sudden attack was launched by the enemy at Robert’s battalion. They were driven back, with the ground left covered in German bodies, but the Canadians had suffered too.
Less than twenty-four hours after arriving in the trenches on the Somme, Robert Killip was mortally wounded. Admitted to a field ambulance with a fractured skull caused by gunshot wounds to his head, there was nothing that medical personnel could do to save him. By 13th September, having assumed command ten days before, the Canadian contingent had already suffered casualties of almost 100 officers and more than 2,700 men. Robert Killip was laid to rest at Albert Communal Cemetery Extension, plot I.N.19.
Canadian troops move off with their picks and shovels to consolidate a position. (Authors’ collection)