One Canadian’s life, love and legacy from Vimy battle

BY BRENT FOX

Kings County Register

He stood up out of the shell hole to shoot toward the enemy still on Vimy Ridge, was shot in the right hip and sent to England for treatment and convalescence.

So started a love story still spoken of today.

Wallace Frail was a divinity student at Acadia University and a valued member of the track team in February,1916, when he decided to join the army and take part in what became known as the Great War.

By the end of the year, he was in France as a private soldier in the 42nd Battalion, Royal Highland Regiment of Canada, the Black Watch.

By Easter weekend, 1917, with tens of thousands of other young Canadians in the Canadian Corps, he waited to go over the top and advance on Vimy Ridge as part of the Allied offensive at Arras.

Heavily fortified by the defending Germans, Vimy Ridge had defied capture for years by British and French forces.

Major Gen. Sir Arthur Currie, general officer commanding the First Canadian Division, made an intricate combined-arms plan to help ensure a Canadian victory with as few casualties as possible. As it was, some 3,600 Canadians died in the battle, and more than 7,000 - including Frail - were wounded.

Began with a barrage

Fighting as a full formation for the first time, the four divisions of the Canadian Corps - tens of thousands of young Canadians from across the country - waited in tunnels and bunkers Easter Monday, April 9; the offensive began with a massive barrage.

Frail's wound, as he advanced later that cold and rainy day, eventually brought him to the Ionic Street School - called the Ionic Street Military Hospital during the war - in Birkenhead, England.

While there, he met a 17-year-old Girl Guide volunteer, Mabel Issac, who was passing out apples to the patients. Mabel had been a student at the school and was then a member of Lady Baden Powell's First Rock Ferry Girl Guide Troop.

Wallace returned to the front after leaving the hospital. He soon received another wound, this time to his left shoulder, and retuned to the hospital to recover. He had also received a shrapnel wound through his right ear. It marked him for life - but that wasn't enough to get him sent to hospital.

Wallace returned to Canada in 1919, but continued to correspond with Mabel.

Settled in Centreville

The story is still told at the Ionic school of a former student who had fallen in love with a Canadian soldier and settled in Nova Scotia.

In 1921, at 21, Mabel came to Canada, became Mrs. Wallace Frail and settled on his family farm at Centreville, where they raised eight children. In doing so, she had to get used to things such as wood stoves and no indoor plumbing.

Mabel only got to visit home once in 1952, by which time her parents had passed away.

Veterans didn't get much in assistance after that war: Wallace got $10 a month. Many Canadians begrudged the little veterans got - a situation that changed only with the Second World War. Wallace helped his fellow veterans get their benefits.

His health prevented him from returning to his studies, but he built his farm, cooperage and nursery business and worked as a carpenter and postmaster. Mabel passed away in 1967, and Wallace followed in1983.

Son Malcolm “Mac” Frail recalls “my father would very seldom talk about the war.” In fact, he didn't wear his medals, choosing only to wear his Canadian Expeditionary Force Class 'A' Medal for service at the front. He was nervous after being blown some 50 feet in a shell explosion; the memory continued to upset him during thunder and lightening storms.

A merry Easter on Vimy Ridge ‘The whole Heavens were a blaze of light,’ veteran writes to his mom at home

Here are some excerpts from a letter Vimy veteran, the late Wallace Frail, sent to his mother in Scotch Village April 20, 1917, nine days after he was wounded in the battle.

Dear Mother -

I neglected writing to you this week because I was sent to hospital.

I suppose you heard before now that I was wounded. The minister told me he would write and tell you. I am not wounded very bad, just enough to get a good rest.

They had the X-rays on me yesterday; they brought the pictures in today, I could see the bullet quite plain. I was shot in the left hip, the bullet glanced and lodged in the lower part of the spine. I can feel it quite plainly. I got it from behind. It was in the big advance. I was just stepping up to fire when I got it. I thought it was one of our own bullets at first, but I can see from the picture it was a German bullet…

We took an important position. I am sending you some clippings from an English paper that will give you some idea. You know what I meant by the merry Easter now. We went into the trenches Saturday night… They had all of us who were going on the big offensive in a tunnel, an immense affair. The German shells would have no effect on us in there.

We were expecting to go over the next morning Easter Sunday, but we just stayed in there and rested. Our artillery shelled heavily for a little while each day, so the Germans did not know when we were going over.

We all got ready Sunday night... all formed up in the jumping off trenches at three in the morning, it was raining and nasty but we didn't think of that. We made ready, kicked holes in the side of the trench for our toes so we could get out easily. At the first dawn of day, our machine guns started. I could not describe what the fire was like. It sounded like rain dropping on a tin pan. No one could imagine what it was like without seeing it.

We climbed out of the trenches in no man's land. There, our artillery sounded as one gun. There never was such a barrage before…. My, it was a pretty sight. The whole Heavens were a blaze of light. The Germans were sending all sorts of funny signs with different kinds of star shells….

Then we got to the German trenches. They hardly looked like trenches, they were so battered to pieces. Nothing could live under our artillery fire, the ground was all torn to pieces. There wasn't a blade of grass, everything was as though it had been ploughed. We had woods to pass through, and that was so blown to pieces there was nothing left of it.…

Going over the top is a very different thing from what you would think it was. There are no orders given, every man knows his place and what he has to do. There is no excitement, all the boys were smiling and a good many were smoking cigarettes. That is always the first thing to enter a fellow's head under heavy fire.

I saw almost the whole scrap. I was wounded almost at the last minute…. The corporal and myself just got into a shell hole waiting for the barrage to lift. He told me there were some Germans ahead. I jumped up to take a shot when I got it. I thought I was struck with a rock and would be able to go on in a minute.…

The next morning, I was sent to Bologne, from there they sent me to England, so I am all right now. It will be a month or more before I am able to go back. I suppose I will be getting anxious to go back long before I am able to go.…

It is very hard to write lying in bed. You will have to excuse bad writing, as you have had to do so many times before, while I was at Acadia. Do not worry about me, because I am all right. I have a pair of white sheets to lie between, and four meals each day.

Good night,

Wallace

The full letter was published in The Advertiser in 1942. It was largely forgotten about until Wallace's son, Mac, was reminded by friends.