A lost Canadian soldier finds a final resting place after 92 years

From Global News: A lost Canadian soldier finds a final resting place after 92 years

OTTAWA – It’s a song she’s played hundreds of times, but on Tuesday the military’s most well-known lament will take on new meaning for bugler Ann Gregory.

It’s then that The Last Post will ring out in Sailly, France marking the final goodbye for a Canadian soldier lost to his family and to time 92 years ago.

“It’s a piece that touches people like Amazing Grace does,” says Gregory, who is a bugler in the Governor General’s Foot Guards. “To me, the reveille at the end is like the person ascending to heaven.”

Nearly a century after he died in one of the First World War’s bloodiest battles, Private Alexander Johnston of Hamilton, Ont. will receive a military funeral and his Canadian descendents, including Gregory will be there to say goodbye.

“I think it is very appropriate for someone related to him to pay their last respects,” she says.

The family connection was unearthed when a First World War battlefield became a construction site, disturbing the remains of Johnston in July 2008. After realizing it was a Canadian soldier, National Defence set to work to uncover his identity.

It was detective work that took three years and lead to Don Gregory, Ann’s father.

“I was kind of their last hope in this respect and it worked out very well obviously,” says Gregory, an Ottawa man that spent most of his career in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Using military records and artifacts found with the body, National Defence investigators were able to narrow down which battalion the unknown soldier belonged to and determined he was one of two people.

Gregory was the final link. He shares mitochondrial DNA with Johnston, who turned out to be his great-uncle. It’s a strain of DNA that ends with him.

“It’s almost unreal, the odds against them coming down to be able to make a positive identification after 90-odd years,” says Gregory.

The discovery has reopened a buried chapter in family history.

“It wasn’t talked about very much in the family but that is an understandable thing because in the First World War, everyone lost somebody,” says Gregory.

For the Johnstons it was Alexander, a 33-year-old who was conscripted in January 1918. The timing lined up with the 100 days campaign, one of the bloodiest of the war.

The campaign lasted from Aug. 8, 1918 to the end of the war on Nov. 11, 1918.
“The Canadians broke through (the German lines), but they paid a terrible price,” says Tim Cook, a First World War historian at the National War Museum. “It is the most intense period of the war: 45,000 Canadians lost their lives during that time.”

Cook says the battle was vicious as soldiers moved out of the trenches and advanced over open ground straight into heavy shell power.

The entire war took 60,000 Canadian lives and saw 600,000 men enlist from the young country.

Johnston died on September 29, 1918 in the Battle of the Canal du Nord, a mere six weeks before the guns went silent.

“It continues to haunt this country and many Canadians,” says Cook. “This is one case in our ability to put a name to a face, and a face to a body, where we have the chance to reclaim a part of our history.”

For the Gregory family it’s a chance to honour a man they never met, but who was loved and cherished by generations past.

“Being a family member you can’t be detached. I’m obviously going to feel some emotion and I expect to,” he said, adding that at the very least he will feel emotion on behalf of his grandmother, Johnston’s sister.

Gregory also said the military funeral, which is expected to be attended by residents of nearby French villages, is a fitting closure for someone who paid the ultimate price.

For his daughter Ann, playing The Last Post always invokes feelings, and this time it will be a challenge to stay detached enough to keep it together when playing. Still, she hopes the rite of passage has the same impact for her family as it has for others in the past.

“It releases emotions and helps the families move on in some ways,” she says.