Nutt, Private Lionel Sydney

Service highlights

  • Service Number: 602837
  • Born: 2 May 1897,
  • Before enlistment: Worked as a machine hand at Daniel C. Baird’s sawmill and lumber yard on Station Street.
  • Enlisted: 4 August 1915 in London with the 34th Battalion, CEF
  • Overseas: Sailed 23 October 1915 from Quebec City on the SS California, arrived in England on 1 November 1915.
  • Training and postings: Posted 3 February 1916 to the 23rd Reserve Battalion at Sandling, then 25 May 1916 to the Canadian General Base Depot at Le Havre, including a refresher course at the Central Training School known as the “Bull Ring.”
  • Front line unit: Joined the 10th Canadian Infantry Battalion on 7 June 1916 during the Battle of Mount Sorrel south of Ypres.
  • Hospitalization: Admitted on 15 June 1916 to the 1 Canadian Divisional Rest Station for two days with exhaustion and shell shock.
  • Killed in action: 28 April 1917 after an attack on Arleux-en-Gohelle near Vimy.
  • No known grave: Buried near the battlefield west of Willerval, grave could not be located
  • Commemorated: On the Canadian National Vimy Memorial and the St. Marys cenotaph.

A Life and Service Remembered

Lionel Sydney Nutt grew up in St. Marys as the youngest child in a busy family home on Wellington Street. Before the war, he worked with his hands as a machine hand at the local sawmill and lumber yard on Station Street, the kind of work that leaves you tired at the end of the day and known by the people you work beside.

He enlisted in London in August 1915, just after turning eighteen, and within months he was crossing the Atlantic on the SS California. The pace of his service is striking. Training, reserve postings, and then France, where the “Bull Ring” refresher course was meant to harden men quickly for what waited ahead.

By early June 1916 he was with the 10th Battalion during the fighting around Mount Sorrel. The record notes that the intensity caught up with him, and he spent time at a divisional rest station for exhaustion and shell shock. He returned to his battalion and stayed with them through the Somme in 1916 and into the spring of 1917.

On 28 April 1917, during an attack near Arleux-en-Gohelle after Vimy Ridge, Lionel was reported killed. He was buried near where he fell, but later battlefield clearance teams could not find his grave. That absence is its own kind of ache. A name carried home, a place of rest that could not be pointed to. His family kept his memory close. On his birthday in 1918, they published a memorial verse in the St. Marys Journal that begins, “Into the field of battle he bravely took his place,” a simple line that still sounds like a family trying to speak to him across distance.

Major battles and operations

  • Mount Sorrel (June 1916): Joined the 10th Battalion during the battle south of Ypres; later treated briefly for exhaustion and shell shock.
  • The Somme (1916): Served with the 10th Battalion in the long grinding campaign.
  • Vimy Ridge period and aftermath (April 1917): Present with the battalion in the Vimy area; killed 28 April 1917 during fighting near Arleux-en-Gohelle.

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