Introduction

"Recruiting for the P.P.C.L.I."

"The Whitehead family, Vancouver."

"Kelly at Fort William."

"Esquimalt Hospital, Victoria."

"Sgt-Maj Castleman, 51st Batt."

"Tibbs, 72nd Batt"

"Bert Antill."

"Tom Maxwell."

"Buck, Spider, Blake and Spud."

"Aldershot, 1916."

"Lady lost five sons"

"D'arcy Latimer"

"Henderson, at Tuxedo Hospital."

"Jim Price, Saskatchewan."

"Alwood at Tuxedo Hospital,Winnipeg."

"46th Batt."

"Frank Bannerman"

During the winter of 1998, while I was researching my Uncle Bill's experiences as a Canadian soldier in the First World War, I was lucky enough to come across his album of snapshots taken during his years in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. The album concludes with a series of photos of a British Legion return trip to the battlefields of the Western Front in 1928, and I was particularly struck by one picture (shown above) of an elderly lady whom Uncle Bill ran into during a visit to Ypres . She was wearing five sets of war service medals - 1914/15 Stars, British War Medals and Victory Medals - but Uncle Bill had not recorded her name. He had simply inscribed her photograph, "Lady Lost Five Sons, Ypres". I was curious to find out who the lady in the picture could be, and confident that someone who had lost five sons in the War must be well-documented and easy to trace through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. However, without knowing even the lady's surname, it was impossible to make use of CWGC records. For two years, I did not come across any source who could put a name to her face, and the lady in the picture remained "lady lost five sons". It was not until the winter of 2000 that I came across a chance reference in a senior citizens' magazine to "Canada's War Mother" - a C. S. Woods (sic), who had lost five sons in the Great War. Since then, I have spent a year researching the life of Charlotte Susan Wood and her family, including the five sons lost in the Great War, and this Web site presents the (as yet incomplete) results of that research. I am not a professional writer or researcher, and I have no commercial interest in telling this lady's story. It just struck me as a shame that someone could lose five sons in the service of their country and, just eighty years later, have almost no-one remember even her name.

C.D.S

7 December, 2001