Fighting Battalion

The Fighter

/ Matthew K Barrett / 2 Comments

Lieutenant Colonel Russ Boyle †
10th (Canadians) BattalionBoyle

Words will not express the absolute sense of calamity which has struck every officer and man in the battalion since we have lost him. He was our ideal of a man and a leader and I can assure you that there was not one of us who did not feel to the very limit his loss.

(Captain Ross, 10th Bn. to Mrs. Laura Boyle [wife], 27 May 1915)

Russell Lambert Boyle was one of three CEF colonels killed in action during the second battle of Ypres in April 1915. Born on 29 October 1880 in Port Colbourne, Ontario, Boyle was active in the militia from a young age. He joined the Canadian Field Artillery in 1894 and served with the 15th Light Horse. During the Boer War, he volunteered and fought in South Africa. As a resident of Crossfield, Alberta, Boyle sat on the town council and owned a ranch.

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The Cavalryman

/ Matthew K Barrett / 4 Comments

Lieutenant Colonel Sam Beckett †
75th (Mississauga) BattalionSBeckett

Col. Beckett ranked with the few most prominent and able military officers which Toronto and even Canada has produced in the present struggle abroad. That he was efficient and an authority on military tactics, particularly cavalry manoeuvers was attested when he was chosen one of the few officers who left here commanding battalions to take his regiment to France. He had innumerable friends in Toronto.

(Toronto World, 5 March 1917, 1)

Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Gustavus Beckett of the 75th Battalion was killed in action during a March 1917 trench raid near Vimy Ridge. Born on 2 December 1869 in Toronto, Beckett was a partner in an architect firm with fellow Lt. Colonel W. C. V. Chadwick of the 124th Battalion. A student of military history and expert on the cavalry tactics of American Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, Beckett had been involved in the Canadian militia since 1893. At the outbreak of the war, he was commanding officer of the 9th Mississauga Horse.

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