An Unknown Soldier
by Bob Fisher

I would recognize his face if he came up to me in the street. I know his full name and the precise dates of his birth and death. I have seen a photograph of the rather ordinary wooden cross bearing the essential information — ncluding the undistinguished block letters "RIP" — that marks the spot in France where his body lies. But to me Paul Evan Gillespie, the son of a certain "Aunt Maggie," is still in many respects an unknown soldier. And with the relentless passage of time and the death of living memory it seems to me that he, like all soldiers killed in the Great War, or any war, may eventually become an unknown soldier.

When the much-used shoebox of odds and ends of family photographs sent by a cousin arrived finally — having been
misdirected by Canada Post — it contained a jumble of what initially seemed to be the residue of the lives of three generations of people directly or indirectly related to me. My penchant for putting things in order was the only real motive for attempting to make some kind of visual and archival sense of them. Sifting through the bits and pieces of unremarkable lives lived, I re-arranged in protective plastic images of my father, his siblings, my grandparents and great grandparents,their sundry friends

and acquaintances, cousins, and presumed neighbours. Brief and plain-speaking notations made by my grandmother on the back of many of the faded, torn, and often creased photos gave me enough of a sense of direction to create a sketchy visual record of what seemed like a few brief lives. The task was not onerous and I finished it in a rather perfunctory fashion. However, after figuring out the relatively simple genealogical connections and placing the various individuals and groups in appropriate plastic pockets, one rather annoying pile of seemingly unrelated and distant images remained. Having come this far, I could not just leave them on the fringe; the task demanded some definitive placement and an interim resolution. And so I began a final triage of the minor characters. The first photograph of Paul Evan Gillespie that I chose to "deal with" shows a young man lying in a canoe on some unknown body of water. The camera angle distorts the whole image, shooting the subject horizontally from between his spread knees so that his head and lower limbs seem as one, a body without a torso. His hands give the impression of being disconnected from his body and are clenching what I assume is a paddle placed across the the gunwale. I notice that his grip does not seem relaxed; the bony knuckles convey tension

in his hands, like those of a child on a swing set for the first time, hanging on instinctively with that primary grasping reflex typical of small children making their first timid sorties into the world. Just above the hands, his face appears almost like a cut-out from some other photograph. Half in light, half in shadow, his features are quite clearly exposed. It's an ordinary, pleasant, young man's face with a young man's common haircut. But there is a darkness about the eyes which are semi-closed, I assume because of the brightness of a summer day. But on closer examination, I become aware of a slightly worried look, shadows cast by the small muscles contracting his eyebrows. His mouth is set rather firmly, sullen. On what looks to have been a fine summer's day, Paul Evan Gillespie is frowning. There is suspicion in his demeanour.

I pick up a second photograph which initially is face down on the table. I am surprised to read on the back of it, written in pencil, on the diagonal, and on two separate lines — and in a somewhat haphazard way — "Paul

Gillespie Killed Arras Sept 7 1918." It is obvious that someone has also cropped this picture (to make it fit into some earlier album?) because most of the letter P in Paul and the last two digits of the date are missing. Under his name and again under the information revealing the circumstances of his death the writer has drawn a line as if to suggest some kind of emphasis but it is an emphasis that is tentative, even nonchalant. Turning the photograph over, I see the same young man — perhaps a bit younger but it's hard to tell — standing by the same or similar body of water. This time he is completely in shadow and looking quite awkward, uncertain even resentful. Semi-concealed behind a tree, his hands in the pockets of pants that are too short for him, his white shirt buttoned tightly against his throat and a boyishly misarranged tie on his narrow chest, Paul is looking at the camera almost defiantly as if he considered it intrusive. His position by the water — he is balanced on what appears to be a root of the tree — is slightly precarious. His body language communicates discomfort, dislike, and separateness.

The third photograph definitely takes me by surprise because it is the grave of Private P. E. Gillespie. His name is very prominent, juxtaposed with the blunt inscription "KILLED IN ACTION." As if directing someone to the grave, the sentence fragments on the back of the photograph indicate "Position of Grave Faubourg d'Amiens Cemetery Arras Nearest Railway Station Arras." I look at the photo again. It is an image of a simple, almost banal, wooden cross with four connecting supports each bearing official information; the kind of marker that could be put up quickly and often. The lettering is a rather old-fashioned typeface, obviously hand-painted, and done by someone who has had considerable practice. The spacing is accurate and even; a few minor stylistic flourishes attempt to embellish this common wooden cross. Thrust into rough dirt with clods of earth and spindly pieces of grass around it, the grave marker has been photographed by someone who knew consciously or subconsciously how to suggest perspective because behind it, rows of similar but not identical common crosses march silently off into the mists. There are no flowers, no carefully tended lawns. This place of the dead is one of utility and some haste; the war still has two months in which to run its course. There will be others to bury, other crosses to erect–not as many as in previous years, however, because attrition has slowed down the killing. Paul Evan Gillespie is one of the "next to last," among those who perhaps were the unluckiest. He was nineteen years old.

The reading room of the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa is well-lit, appropriately library-quiet with long wide tables on which a few other silent individuals have spread various documents, letters, and maps. I have sent a fax a month ago requesting access to Box 3541-69, which must be cleared through the Freedom of Access and Information Act. I wait patiently while the archivist locates my request, which had gone astray because my registration number had been pre-assigned and differed from that on my day pass. Paul's regimental number 329064 in the database also differs by one numeral from that on the cross in the photo. But it's only a minor discrepancy. I am eventually handed a modern, pristine, brown cardboard box identified by the label as an "Interim Container." It also has a barcode. It's the simplest of gestures on my part opening the box that contains the only other records of Paul Evan Gillespie that I have found. Inside there is a pot-pourri of common-looking official documents and annotated index cards, innocuous, like old school records, all giving off that musty smell of old paper.

I learn that Paul Evan Gillespie was born on January 9, 1899 and "died of his wounds" at Arras on September 7, 1918. Strangely, one of the documents in the box notes that this expression "is cancelled & the following substituted: Killed in Action." An "authorized" letter was sent to his "widowed" mother Mrs. Margaret Gillespie on September 20, 1918. Another document indicates that a telegram was sent on the day he died. Perhaps the letter gave some kind of explanation of the events of that day, the final events in Paul's life; the kind of "fleshing out" of the event that a terse official telegram simply could not communicate.

Paul enlisted in the "Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force" on February 16, 1917 in Guelph, Ontario. His Attestation Paper affirms that he solemnly declared that he was "willing to fulfil engagements by me now made, and I hereby engage and agree to serve ... and to be attached to any arm of the service therein, for the term of one year, or during the war now existing between Great Britain and Germany should the war last longer than one year..." He also swore allegiance to "His Majesty King George the Fifth" and on the form a magistrate appended his signature attesting to the fact that the "recruit" understood each question that was read to him. On a separate official form, the medical examiner — following the printed instructions "*Insert here ‘fit' or ‘unfit.'" — certified Paul as "fit" and noted that he had "transverse scars 3" long middle of anterior aspect right thigh. Large mole 1" to right of middle line Lumbar spines." Paul's hearing and vision were "normal." On the "Casualty Form–Active Service" it indicates that Paul was posted to the ninth regiment of the Canadian Army Medical (Ambulance) Corps, even though he listed himself as a "banker." Under "Theatre of War," is entered in careful script "France." A rubber stamp on the document declaring "Embarked Halifax 12-4-17, Disembarked Liverpool 29-4-17" confirms he had gone to war. An official record of his movements informs me that he was later "Taken On Strength ... as water detail" in Étaples, France.

Another standard form tells me a little bit more about him. Paul had a fair complexion with brown eyes and auburn hair and was a Presbyterian. He was 5 feet 8¾ inches in height, weighed 137 pounds and had a "minimum chest measurement" of 32 inches although his "maximum chest expansion" was 35 inches. His "apparent age" was "18 years 2 months" when he left Canada and he had no "congenital peculiarities or previous diseases." In several other documents he is again declared "fit." Handwritten comments on an index card state that he was "not elig. for 1914-15 Star" but that a P.& S. and a C. OF S. were forwarded to his mother as was $570 in back pay, although further payments to Aunt Maggie were "suspended" because Paul was not the "sole support" of his mother. This final payment, following the instructions in Paul's Form of Will he signed on April 12, 1917 was sent c/o the bank of Commerce in Iroquois, Ontario. "Aunt Maggie" I discover later was my grandmother's aunt. Paul and I might qualify as what in my family has been referred to as "shirt-tail cousins."

A few hours later — a brilliant October day, the fall colours still very much in evidence — I am standing before the recently inaugurated Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the base of The National War Memorial. It seems to me that from an aesthetic, conceptual, and historical point of view the Memorial is now finished. The three levels complete the thematic "flow" from the lofty symbols of honour, glory, and victory over death at the top, to the mid-level sculpture of soldiers in battle struggling to make some headway, and finally to the ground level where the exquisite and poignant granite sarcophagus containing the physical remains of a soldier of the Great War simply but emphatically confirms the hard truth. Here lies a real soldier, a true — although unknown — Canadian soldier who has finally been brought home.

Paul Evan Gillespie is not the soldier in this tomb but despite the few additional traces I have discovered of his existence and of our very tenuous connection, in many ways he could be because for all intents and purposes he is still unknown to me. I do not know how he lived his 19 years, what he liked or disliked, whether he was happy or sad, or if in his short adolescence he had achieved a strong sense of himself. I can speculate about him and imagine his hopes and certainly his fears. I realize that if he had lived and even managed to reach a very old age, he would today be 101, but such a speculation seems quite futile. The full life he might have had, his full potential is what is eternally unknown because Paul was and forever will be only 19. The realization depresses me.
 

Having done all that it seems there is to do, I return to my hotel feeling what I can only describe as vacant. Fortunately, that evening I have arranged to have dinner with Matthew, a former student of mine now enrolled at the University of Ottawa. A bright, compassionate, and very sensitive young man, Matthew is also 19 and already has demonstrated through his desire for truth and self-determination, the covenant of youth that we attribute to each new generation. I show him the photographs and photocopies of the archival material and we talk about Paul Evan Gillespie, as if he were somewhere about. Matthew understands intuitively what I have sensed in this brief excursion and is able to reflect and augment my thoughts and feelings. Having recently begun the next big passage in his own life, Matthew understands the enormous transition that was forced upon Paul Evan Gillespie and the consequence. Talking this through with Matthew, the sense of disembodiment, disconnectedness, and dispersal that my "encounter" with Paul Evan Gillespie elicited begins to abate. As has been the case so often with so many of my former students whom I have come to know well, Matthew's fresh presence of mind and youthful perspective create a

generational connection, an understanding that underscores why I have attempted to realize this belated bond with Paul. The regeneration induced by honest and timely communication with young people replenishes my need for a belief in innocence, hope, and humanity.

Paul, if we have forgotten you, I regret deeply that senseless neglect. If we were not able to control events so that you became your full self and lived a complete existence, I am deeply sorry. I mourn your loss which ultimately of course is our own. I can only hope that you will now be a little less unknown and that those who lived and died as you did will not have done so for nothing.