Canadian Expeditionary Force Study Group

Nicholson reports on the 1st Infantry Battalion on the following pages (see the Matrix Nicholson Transcriptions):

Festubert 98-100, 102
Tor Top 153
Somme 177, 184-185
Vimy Ridge 253-254
Hugo Trench 400-401
Drocourt Quéant Line 436

From Library and Archives Canada:

The 16th Canadian Infantry Battalion was organized at Valcartier under Camp Order 241 of 2 September 1914 and was composed of recruits from Victoria, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Hamilton. The battalion was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel R.G.E. Leckie.

The battalion embarked at Quebec on 30 September 1914 aboard ANDANIA, disembarking in England on 14 October 1914. Its strength was 47 officers, 1111 other ranks. The battalion arrived in France on 7 February 1915, becoming part of the 1st Canadian Division, 3rd Infantry Brigade. It was later reinforced by the 14th Canadian Reserve Battalion, and later by the 11th Canadian Reserve Battalion. The battalion returned to England on 27 March 1919, disembarked in Canada on 4 May 1919, was demobilized on 8 May 1919, and was disbanded by General Order 149 of 15 September 1920.

The battalion mascot was a goat. The battalion published "The Brazier" between 15 Feb 1916 and 1 April 1917 (see RG 9III, Vol. 5077) and also published the "Canadian Scottish". The battalion supported a pipe band and had a concert party in France (see the War Diary of the 1st Labour Battalion, 25 Jan 1918). Its air was "Blue bonnets over the border". The battalion colours were transferred to the 72nd Seaforth Highlanders on 17 July 1919.

The 16th Canadian Infantry Battalion was perpetuated by The Canadian Scottish Regiment.

See also the University of Victoria Internet Reference:

Administrative History

The large and powerful pro-Scottish citizenry of Victoria appealed for the formation of a Highland Regiment in Victoria to augment the 88th Regiment (Victoria Fusiliers) which had been formed on 3 September 1912. Therefore, on 15 August 1913 the 50th Regiment was authorized. The 88th Regiment and the 50th Regiment were placed on active service on 10 August 1914 for local protective duty. These regiments contributed respectively to the 7th and 16th Battalions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. The 16th Battalion (The Canadian Scottish) was formed from four companies of unrelated Highland regiments. On the sea voyage to England, the Regiment was still dressed in four different styles, tartans, and badges.

When the first Canadian Contingent sailed for England on 3 October 1914, the 16th Battalion was part of the 3rd Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division. It was on 16 December, on Salisbury Plain, that the Battalion was sub-titled "The Canadian Scottish". The Battalion sailed for France on 12 February 1915 and disembarked at St. Naziaire three days later. The 16th Battalion took part in all the major engagements of the Canadian corps, including the battles of Ypres, the Somme, Vimy Ridge, and Passchendale. Honours and awards included four Victoria Crosses, 9 DSOs, 40 MCs, 30 DCMs, and 204 MMs. The War cost the 16th Battalion 5,491 casualties, of which 1,412 were fatal. On 15 December in 1915, the Regiment was specially authorized by King George V to wear the Oak Leaf and Acorn Canadian Scottish shoulder titles in commemoration of its courage at the Battle of St. Julien (Kitchener's Wood).

The 16th Battalion returned on the "Empress of Britain" on 4 May 1919 to find, that like most Canadian Expeditionary Force battalions, it had no regimental home. On 7 May, in Winnipeg the Battalion was demobilized. However, General Order No. 30, issued on 15 March 1920, reorganized Victoria's 88th and 50th Regiments into the Canadian Scottish Regiment Non-Permanent Active Militia.

 

An interesting story relating to the 16th Battalion appeared in the Vancouver Sun on October 2, 2006.  Thanks to EJD for bringing this to our attention:

War hero's bagpipes coming home
Chilliwack's James Richardson earned a posthumous Victoria Cross for his bravery 
Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, October 02, 2006 

The bagpipes a Chilliwack teenager played to turn the tide in one of the most desperate fights of the First World War are coming home, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

Piper James Cleland Richardson's courage on that bloody day in 1916 earned him the Victoria Cross but his pipes, the most famous in Canadian history, lay unidentified in a dusty school display cabinet in the Scottish highlands for almost three-quarters of a century.

The Canadian Club of Vancouver has purchased them from Ardvreck School in Crieff, Scotland for an undisclosed price.

It plans to present them to Premier Gordon Campbell and Speaker Bill Barisoff as a gift to British Columbians in a November ceremony at the provincial legislature.

Richardson's pipes will be permanently displayed in the legislature's rotunda, confirms Chilliwack MLA and Environment Minister Barry Penner.

The return of the pipes follows years of research by Pipe Major Roger Maguire of the Canadian Scottish Regiment. Maguire matched a rare family tartan used only by pipers from Richardson's unit with a scrap found on the broken pipes.

A delegation led by Patrick Reid and including MLAs Penner and Solicitor-General John Les, Pipe Major Maguire and Dan Richardson of Ottawa, the famous piper's grand-nephew, will travel to Scotland later this week to take official possession.

The bagpipes had been left in safekeeping at Ardvreck by Maj. Edward Yeld Bate, a teacher at the school. He found them in 1917 while serving as a British army chaplain where Piper Richardson was killed.

The ceremony at Ardvreck on Oct. 8 marks the 90th anniversary of the day on which the pipes were lost at Courcelette, France, during the grisly battle of the Somme. Total casualties in that battle numbered more than a million men, of whom 310,486 were killed or missing in action.

Richardson enlisted with B.C.'s 72nd Seaforth Highlanders in August 1914, but served with the 16th Battalion, Canadian Scottish after it was cobbled together from the Seaforths, Victoria's Gordon Highlanders, Winnipeg's Cameron Highlanders and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders from Hamilton.

When Canadian Scottish went to France in 1915, its men still wore the assorted tartans of the regiments with which they had originally enlisted. For Richardson, that meant the Lennox tartan adorned his pipes. It was the tartan of the Scottish family to which the wife of the Seaforths' commanding officer, Lt.-Col. Edward Leckie, belonged.

After 1917, the Canadian Scottish adopted different tartans. So the Lennox tartan on the pipes at Ardvreck was Maguire's key. Only Richardson is known to have piped his battalion to battle at Courcelette. Only Seaforth pipes were decorated with the Lennox tartan.

On Oct. 8, 1916, Richardson's battalion was being slaughtered after an advance had stalled before a maze of barbed wire protecting a German stronghold named Regina Trench.

Most of the officers were dead or wounded. Survivors flattened themselves in depressions to avoid the bullets that snapped overhead like millions of angry hornets.

"The conditions were those of indescribable peril and terror," wrote Lt.-Col. Cyrus Peck, in a memoir. He himself won the Victoria Cross for bravery in 1918.

Just how perilous the Canadian Scottish position was is evident in the battalion's muster rolls. Three days later, when it was withdrawn, the battalion of about 1,000 had suffered 867 casualties and of its commissioned officers, only one lieutenant survived.

At a moment when all seemed lost, the Chilliwack teenager rose like a dirty ghost. He tucked his bagpipes under his elbow and swaggered through a storm of shrapnel and bullets as he played "with the greatest coolness," says the official military citation.

First he played the Ruidhle Thulaichean, a stirring dance tune favoured by highland warriors. Then he played The Devil in the Kitchen, a tune he perhaps chose as ironic comment on the men's desperate predicament.

Peck later called Richardson's piping "One of the great deeds of the war . . . The lad's whole soul was bound up in the glory of piping."

"The effect was instantaneous," says Richardson's Victoria Cross citation. Survivors of the Canadian Scottish rose behind their 19-year-old piper. Observers said they leaned into enemy fire like men in a strong wind. They crossed 700 metres of barbed wire, shellfire and machine gun bullets and swept the enemy from Regina Trench in furious hand-to-hand fighting.

Piper Richardson was later detailed to escort a wounded sergeant-major and some prisoners to the rear. When he realized he'd forgotten his pipes, he insisted on returning for them. He vanished into the maelstrom of shellfire and was never seen again.

Today, the brave Chilliwack teenager is forever a part of France.

But the pipes for which he cared so deeply that he sacrificed his life to recover them are coming home in his place to serve as a reminder, says Penner, not of the glory of war, but of its intolerable price.