Sixty Joyless De-Britished Uncrowned Commonpoor Years (1949-2009)

Elizabeth II Vice-Regal Saint: Remembering Paul Comtois (1895–1966), Lt.-Governor of Québec
Britannic Inheritance: Britain's proud legacy. What legacy will America leave?
English Debate: Daniel Hannan revels in making mince meat of Gordon Brown
Crazy Canucks: British MP banned from Canada on national security grounds
Happy St. Patrick's: Will Ireland ever return to the Commonwealth?
Voyage Through the Commonwealth: World cruise around the faded bits of pink.
No Queen for the Green: The Green Party of Canada votes to dispense with monarchy.
"Sir Edward Kennedy": The Queen has awarded the senator an honorary Knighthood.
President Obama: Hates Britain, but is keen to meet the Queen?
The Princess Royal: Princess Anne "outstanding" in Australia.
H.M.S. Victory: In 1744, 1000 sailors went down with a cargo of gold.
Queen's Commonwealth: Britain is letting the Commonwealth die.
Justice Kirby: His support for monarchy almost lost him appointment to High Court
Royal Military Academy: Sandhurst abolishes the Apostles' Creed.
Air Marshal Alec Maisner, R.I.P. Half Polish, half German and 100% British.
Cherie Blair: Not a vain, self regarding, shallow thinking viper after all.
Harry Potter: Celebrated rich kid thinks the Royals should not be celebrated
The Royal Jelly: A new king has been coronated, and his subjects are in a merry mood
Victoria Cross: Australian TROOPER MARK DONALDSON awarded the VC
Godless Buses: Royal Navy veteran, Ron Heather, refuses to drive his bus
Labour's Class War: To expunge those with the slightest pretensions to gentility
100 Top English Novels of All Time: The Essential Fictional Library
BIG BEN: Celebrating 150 Years of the Clock Tower

Tuesday 27 February 2007

Lloyd Clemett, A Soldier of the Great War

by Sandra Martin

Lloyd Clemett, one of three surviving Canadian veterans of the First World War, died late Wednesday at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. He was 107.

Technically too young to fight for king and country in the war to end all wars, a teenaged Mr. Clemett lied about his age to follow his older brothers to battle, which is why there are actually two First World War veterans named Lloyd Clemett – both were born in Toronto, both have scars in the middle of their foreheads and both enlisted in Peterborough, Ont., in January of 1916 to fight the Germans on behalf of King George V. But one of them didn't really exist. That is because the real Mr. Clemett signed an attestation paper in his copperplate script swearing that he was born Jan. 10, 1898, although his actual birth date was Dec. 10, 1899.

He wasn't the only young man, of the 620,000 Canadians who enlisted in the First World War, who used a ruse to rush to the front.

”In English Canada, the social pressure was to enlist; in Quebec, the social pressure was not to enlist,” military historian J.L. Granatstein said in a telephone interview Thursday morning. ”It was a great adventure, although there were huge casualties, which people knew about because the names were printed in the newspapers, but it was still an adventure and [being wounded or killed] always happened to somebody else...It was empire, king and crown, the evil Hun and all those things, so even simple unsophisticated people were caught up in it,” he said.

Continue reading Sandra Martin's obituary on Lloyd Clemett...

Photo: Lloyd Clemett at 16 after he joined the army as a private in the 109th Battlion. The army made him a bugle boy when he enlisted for the First World War in January, 1916.

2 comments:

The Monarchist said...

The craziest longevity story I think I ever read was a widow who is still collecting an American Civil War pension!! I think she was 100 or so and had married an old civil war vet in the early 1920s. He's been dead since 1930 or so, and she's been collecting his pension ever since.

adams said...

Yes, this was common back in the day. A 20 year old girl would mary a civil war vet in his 70s or 80s. Not a bad deal, the vet got a nice looking girl to ease his final years and the woman got the pension for life.

It reminds be of that french woman who lived to be 127. Back in the 50s she had entered into an agreement with a chap in his 30s where by he paid a small sum in advance and got her appartment when she died. She out lived him.