Veteran discovers Dad’s poem from the trenches

LS (Retired) Wayne Archibald displays the medals of his father Private Issac Archibald of Truro, N.S., who fought for Canada in France during the First World War. Photo by Peter Mallett, Lookout

Peter Mallett, Staff Writer ~

Canadian First World War survivor Private Issac Jackson Archibald died four decades ago but his recollections of war and life in the trenches live on through his poetry.

On Nov. 9, as Victoria prepared for Remembrance Day and the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice, 82-year-old Leading Seaman (Retired) Wayne Archibald made a surprise visit to the Lookout’s headquarters on Signal Hill to share his father’s gift of poetry with our readers.

He wanted to share the heartfelt and descriptive first-hand accounts by his father and his hand-written verse entitled Somewhere in France 1917.

“This poem is very special to me, so I thought I would share it,” said Archibald. “My dad was one of the lucky ones and made it home from the war safe. He penned the poem in France, but we don’t know the exact date and are unsure of the precise location. The only thing we know was that it was written at some point during the last year or so of the war.”

The poem was penned somewhere on the battlefield during a break in the fighting, but Archibald says his father’s regiment and the battles he fought in remain unknown.

The poem was recently discovered in a storage box earlier this year.

The scant details of his father’s military service are not dissimilar to other sons and daughters of the survivors of ‘The War to End All Wars’, a bloody conflict that killed approximately 60,000 Canadian soldiers and changed the lives of countless others.

“My Dad never talked about the war, it was very upsetting to him,” said Archibald.

Issac’s brother William died while fighting in the same line of trenches located less than a quarter of a mile away from him.

“He didn’t find out his brother had died until six months later,” said Archibald.

Issac was born in Truro, N.S., in 1898 and was employed as a lumberjack supplying fire wood for the steam engines of CP Railway. After the war he moved Wayne and the family to Manitoba to take up farming. During the Second World War, Wayne says his father found employment guarding the main bridge in Rainy River, Ont., from possible attack by the enemy.

Isaac died in 1985, but his memory lives on through his poem.