Radcliffe, Private David Henry

Service highlights

  • Service Number: 802864
  • Born: 8 October 1878
  • Worked as a clerk in Lucan for his brother in law.
  • Enlisted 26 January 1916 at Lucan in C Company of the 135th (Middlesex) Canadian Infantry Battalion.
  • Unit: 135th then transferred to 123rd Battalion at Witley, then to the 4th Canadian Infantry Battalion
  • Hospitalized repeatedly in 1917 with “debility,” including care through the 1 Canadian Field Ambulance and the 2 (Australian) General Hospital, before returning to the battalion.
  • Seconded 5 February 1918 to the 1st Canadian Trench Mortar Battery, with additional time in hospitals and rest camps in spring 1918 for lumbago.
  • Died 27 September 1918
  • Buried at Ontario Cemetery.
  • Commemorated on the cenotaphs in Rannoch and St. Marys.

A Life and Service Remembered

David Henry Radcliffe’s story begins on a concession road near Granton, then settles into the rhythms of small town life. He worked as a clerk in Lucan and took part in community life, including the Loyal Orange Lodge and the Granton Presbyterian Church choir. He was not a young recruit when he enlisted in January 1916. At 38, he was described plainly in the record as “old for the infantry,” a line that lands hard because it comes from experience, not poetry.

He crossed the Atlantic in August 1916 aboard the RMS Olympic, a famous ship even then, as it was a sister ship to the Titanic. He arrived to the constant reshuffling that defined so many wartime careers. His original battalion was broken up, and he was sent forward to the 4th Battalion in France. With them, he fought through 1917’s defining battles and the grinding months that followed.

His service also includes the quieter, harder details that do not fit neatly into a parade of battles. In 1917, trench conditions wore him down. He was admitted with “debility,” moved through field medical care and base hospital, then returned again and again to the reinforcement stream before he could rejoin his unit. He made it back in time for Passchendaele in the fall, then spent part of 1918 seconded to a trench mortar battery, with more time away from the line for lumbago.

In August 1918 he returned to the 4th Battalion as the war shifted from static trenches to fast moving operations. He came through the battles of late summer and was with his unit as it pushed toward Cambrai. On 27 September 1918, shortly after his company reached its objective at Sains-lès-Marquion, he was killed by an enemy shell. A brief notice back home later reported the telegram that carried the news to his family. Like so many, his story ends far from the places that formed him, but his name returned to the communities that claimed him.

Major battles and operations

  • Vimy Ridge, April 1917.
  • Arleux Loop, April 1917.
  • Passchendaele, October and November 1917.
  • Arras area operations, late August to early September 1918, including the capture of Drury and the breaching of the Drocourt Quéant Line.
  • Advance toward Cambrai, September 1918, killed near Sains-lès-Marquion.

Learn More

https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/memorials/canadian-virtual-war-memorial/579247
https://canadiangreatwarproject.com/person.php?pid=13299
https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?op=pdf&app=CEF&id=B8063-S012
https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/lifestory/6061226
https://library2.smu.ca/bitstream/handle/01/30909/Azzano_Mark_MASTERS_2022.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Richard Holt, The Fallen802864 Private D.H. Radcliffe pg 54