The Allies

Flags of the major Allies in the First World War.  The United States did not join the Allies until 1917, but the presence of American soldiers, including Alf Leonard, in France in time to stop the German army's offensive in the spring of 1918 was a major factor in the Allies ultimate victory.

By the time that Alf Leonard joined the 15th Cavalry at either the beginning or the end of 1917, the rest of the world was already long at war.  His fellow Great War veterans Cyril Hatchard, a Legion comrade of Leonard’s who arrived in Nakina in 1923, and William A. Grant, who would lend his name to the branch, had already been serving in the trenches of France and Flanders for over two years.  Millions others were already casualties.  At the 1916 Battle of the Somme alone, 146 431 Allied soldiers had been killed, nearly 30 000 more than the number of American soldiers killed in the slightly more than 19 months that the United States was at war.  Nevertheless, the arrival of American Doughboys -- the origin of this nickname for American soldiers is unclear, though I prefer the quip that they were "kneaded" in 1914 but didn't rise until 1917 -- at the rate of 10 000 per day helped to stem the Ludendorff offensive in the spring of 1918 and to drive the German armies back to the Hindenburg Line.  

Slow to rise they might have been, but the Doughboys helped ensure that the First World War did not drag on into 1919.  If I was to be successful in my efforts to ensure the commemoration of Leonard’s service in this war, I too would have to rely on American aid.

Once I had resigned myself to seeking assistance, I planned to do so in my typical fashion.  That is to say, in the least personable and most antiquated method I could think of: I sent a letter.  Specifically, sent a letter to the editor of the Berkshire Eagle, the newspaper serving the northwest corner of Massachusetts that includes Leonard’s birthplace of Williamstown.  The letter included all of the information, and most of the prose, of the first entry in this blog, ending with the appeal “Anyone with information about… Leonard is encouraged to contact [me]… Your knowledge may be the key to completing his story and to ensuring that his heroism and adventures… continue to be remembered and honoured.”   As of the time of publishing, no word has been heard from either the Eagle or its readers.  Perhaps the letter was not printed.  Perhaps, as in the case of Nakina, there just aren’t enough people left who remember him.

American State Teachers of the Year and science, technology
and engineering teachers from around the world at
International Space Camp for Educators at the US Space
and Rocket Center in Huntsville AL.  I am third from the right 
in the back row.

My attempt to remain reclusive having been stymied, I reached out across the border to people I knew were equally proud of their nation as they were of their vocation as public educators.  In the summer of 2016, I had the opportunity of a lifetime: with a contingent of two high school students, I represented Canada at International Space Camp at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville AL, home of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and the once and future production location of the world’s most powerful rockets.  I joined teachers and students from a myriad of countries across the world, from Australia to Norway and from India to Bulgaria, as well as nearly every American state and territory.  Throughout the course of a weeklong immersion in space missions, astronaut simulations and roundtables on the latest pedagogical methodology, I worked with a team of dedicated international science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers as well as what one Space Camp crew leader referred to as “The Extroverts.”  These were the Teachers of the Year, the absolute finest representatives of the American public education profession.

Founded in 1952, the National Teacher of the Year (abbreviated as NTOY) Program is the oldest and most prestigious honour for American teachers.  Chosen from among the State Teachers of the Year by a National Selection Committee, the National Teacher of the Year is equal parts spokesperson and role model and represents the best of the initiative, caring and dedicated exemplified by public school teachers throughout the United States.  I knew that if I needed Leonard to have an advocate in his home country, the state Teachers of the Year were the people that I needed in my corner.

Audrey Jackson, Massachusetts's 2016
Teacher of the Year.  Jackson attended college
in Leonard's hometown of Williamstown MA.

I began by contacting Audrey Jackson, the 2016 Massachusetts state Teacher of the Year.  A celebrated and empathetic educator specializing in the teaching of children who have experienced emotional trauma, Jackson is an alumna of Williams College, a liberal arts college in Leonard’s birthplace of Williamstown and was eager to help when I contacted her.  She enlisted the help of Ryan Kaiser, Maryland’s 2016 Teacher of the year who, in Jackson’s words, “teaches social studies and is a history/records guru.... [and would] be happy to help look into [Leonard’s records]...”  Kaiser, a 16-year veteran teacher working in Baltimore who serves as the communications coordinator for the Maryland Council for Social Studies, is presently working with the American Battle Monuments Commission on similar projects, and enthusiastically -- “This is incredibly awesome!” were his exact words -- lent his assistance.

Ryan Kaiser, 2016 Maryland Teacher of the Year
and history/records  guru who set me on
the right path looking for Leonard's records.

Kasier contacted Mr. John Jewitt of the Maryland State Library Resource Center.  Jewitt is the manager of the Social Science and History Department of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore and not the sailor of the same name who was captured and kept for twenty-eight months as a slave from 1803-1805 by the Nookta of what is now Canada’s British Columbia province.  Jewitt was an immeasurable help, quickly making contact to inform me that he had “found an Alfred Leonard born on the same date in the same town [Williamstown MA] as your individual, listed with parents and siblings.”

Truthfully, I was almost disappointed.  Even at this time, Leonard had become for me a compulsion, a mystery deep and compelling, and part of the intrigue was undoubtedly the idea that the mystery might never be solved.  There is great satisfaction to be had in solving mysteries, but in doing so, something intangible is irrevocably lost: the fate of Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition is still enthralling, but not as much as before his two ships, HMS Erebus and Terror, were found in the waters off King William Island in Canada’s arctic, and if Atlantis is ever found, the legends and the wonder will almost certainly not measure up to reality.  Leonard’s mystery, however, was not quite so easily solved.

The Enoch Pratt Free Library, home of the immeasurably
helpful John Jewitt and one of the oldest free public
libraries in the United States.

“He only appears in a birth record,” Jewitt continued, “and in the 1910 census, at the age of 10. His mother dies [sic] in 1911.”  After that point, Leonard disappears from the record.  

“He may…” said Jewitt, “have changed his location and / or the household he was living in, either before the war or certainly... afterwards.”

According to his Legion applications, Leonard enlisted in the US Army sometime in 1917 and served in Mexico and France as well as in the United States before being discharged at Camp Devins MA in 1919.  His burial certificate proves that he died in Geraldton, the largest of the communities that make up Greenstone ON and the site of the closest hospital to Nakina where he lived out his days, in 1982.  Apart from a few tantalizing photos and rumours that would place him in Canada, at least temporarily, before 1936, there is no further record of his life until then.

NB: This blog installment depicts events in the search for Alf Leonard’s record of service as they occurred.  I am pleased to say that additional information on Leonard has been unearthed -- deliciously, this only adds to the mysteriousness of the case -- and this will be reflected in future posts.  At time, the investigation has outpaced my ability to document the events thereof.  In other words, read on.