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Going Over A Nova Scotian Soldier in World War 1
Going Over is the biography of Titus Mossman, a veteran of the “Great War” who served with the 85 th Canadian Infantry Battalion (Nova Scotia Highlanders) on the Western Front. This book blends social, political and historical issues of those turbulent times with the story of one young Canadian turned soldier, caught at the sharp edge of history. A sixth-generation Nova Scotian, born in 1894 in Upper Kingsburg, Lunenburg County , Titus survives an austere upbringing in a family of twelve and goes to sea at thirteen, a basic training in survival which would serve him well as he rose through the ranks to Company Sergeant Major (CSM) in the 85 th Battalion. Against an overview of trench warfare, the campaigns undertaken by the 85 th Battalion unroll. Titus dodges death throughout, earning the Military Medal at Amiens and further commendation for his actions at Dury. As Company Sergeant Major, Titus has the task of resolving life and death issues throughout the conflict. It is a terrifying job, with almost every action opposing the instinct for self-preservation. At war’s end he is one of about a hundred “old originals” in his battalion, a military unit which started out as 1,115 soldiers. Of that total, 614 were killed while on “trench tours” and hundreds more were wounded. Going Over describes the activities of the 85 th in Belgium and France during the months following war’s end as well as the celebrations and homecoming on June 8, 1919 . Physically unscathed, Titus accepts his severance package of $420 and returns to sea on the Grand Banks schooners. As a sea cook and family man, his humble life continues, interspersed with nightmares and recurrent domestic violence, due to stress experienced during trench warfare. This dramatic story underscores the close kinship among soldiers, the tremendous self-sacrifice, the costs and dubious glory of war, and the after-effects on soldiers, their families and succeeding generations. Just beyond the realm of living memory, the experiences and lessons of the Great War haunt us still. David Mossman, a seventh-generation Canadian, was born in Rose Bay, Nova Scotia. He makes his home with his wife in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. A geologist by choice, he has taught geoscience most recently at Mount Allison University where he is research professor emeritus. He has written biographies of noted geologists and articles on topics ranging from Nova Scotia gold, tidal phenomena, carbonaceous meteorites, and extinct animals.
212 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2014
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September 17, 2019
Titus Mossman was one of the young men from Atlantic Canada who volunteered to fight for Britain in the Great War. His son David has written an interesting and informative biography about his father focusing on his wartime experience, the effect it had on him as a man and on the family he returned to when the war was over. David wanted to honor his father’s service in the 85th Battalion of the Nova Scotia Highlanders and to ensure that his service and that of men like him, simple farmers and fishermen who took up arms to fight for their country, are not forgotten.
Mossman lays out his narrative in three parts: the first titled “The Background”, describes the events leading up to the war; the second “In the Line” describes the battles on the Western Front and includes a scathing commentary on Sir Douglas Haig, Commander of the Commonwealth Forces whose stubbornness and poor leadership cost many men their lives; and the third and final section titled “The Aftermath” brings the book to a close describing the difficulties Titus and his family experienced after he returned home.
Titus was born in the late 1800s in Kingsburg Lunenburg County, an isolated, religiously strict, conservative community. Titus had six brothers and four sisters and like others at that time in Atlantic Canada, led a hard life with little time for leisure. Obtaining an education was often a combination of family financing and luck as there were few teachers and even fewer books. Most children had fishing and farming duties, so even when schooling was available their attendance was spotty and short. So Titus had little formal education but had good common sense, was resourceful and worked hard.
Like most young boys in coastal communities Titus was encouraged to go to sea, but rather than stay home and take up shore fishing, he began a career at thirteen as a cook on the big schooners that shipped out of Lunenburg for the Grand Banks. It was hard work and every season came with its calamities and close calls, excellent training for his future experience as a soldier.
In August of 1914 a complex mix of nationalism, territorial disputes, arms races, defensive alliances and rivalries for strength, prestige and wealth among the great powers led to the Great War. The main battlegrounds were the Western Front in France and Belgium and The Eastern Front in Russia. When Britain declared War, Canada a member of the British Empire was automatically at war as well. Young people received the news with a mix of passionate enthusiasm and suppressed anxiety. No one on either side believed the conflict would last longer than three or four months and each side predicted an early victory as they battled for what they wanted: Britain to preserve its Empire, Germany to gain territory and establish dominance in Europe and France to regain Alscace-Lorraine, lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War.
Like many other young men in his small rural community, Titus volunteered to fight and signed up in October 1915 becoming a member of the 85th Canadian Infantry Battalion, one of the many units in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF). He was only twenty-one.
After several months of basic training in Halifax and camp Aldershot in the Annapolis Valley, Titus was shipped overseas in October of 1916, arrived in Liverpool and then headed out to Whitley Camp, one of the four Canadian Camps in England. There he endured another four months of ceaseless drill before setting out for France. By that time he and his comrades were spoiling for a fight, having morphed from gentle down home folk to men with a will to kill, their greatest concern that the war would be over before they got to France.
General Sir David Haig was the Supreme Commander of the Commonwealth Forces. He was a stubborn man whose erroneous beliefs cost hundreds of lives and caused thousands of casualties. He believed infantry men could defeat the machine gun and so few were used. He also argued against the use of steel helmets so soldiers wore wool or leather caps which gave them little protection from shrapnel exploding overhead. Haig had an uncanny knack for seeking out the best defended German targets to attack leading to disasters at the Somme and Passchendaele. He was a brutal man whose rigid ways extended days of pointless losses on several battlefields, unable to rescind his orders without admitting failure on a murderous scale. Instead he played down allied loses insisting their casualties were less than those of the Germans. As a member of High Command, Haig remained completely unconnected to reality on the front lines. He purposefully remained well behind enemy lines so his men never saw him and he never visited the wounded. His men called him “The Butcher of the Somme” a moniker that was well earned. His record lies in stark contrast to that of the Canadians, Lt. General Sir Julian H.G. Bying, the Commander of the Canadian Corps at Vimy and his senior commander Major General Arthur W. Currie who were both all over the battlefields. They maintained close communication with their troops and were often in the field, instructing and encouraging both officers and privates. They made sure their fighting men had maps, were informed about battle plans and understood their role, unlike the British forces who knew nothing about their commander’s plans or what they were trying to achieve.
Mossman describes life in the trenches as one of unmitigated squalor. Young men who enlisted expecting to see the world and play a part in a heroic war in a distant land found themselves crouched, terrified and helpless in filthy trenches, watching their comrades suffer from horrific wounds and waiting for their own death. They remained in the trenches for days at a time, surrounded by sweat, vomit, blood, dead carcasses and overflowing latrines, easy targets for the spread of disease. They shared their spaces with rats which grew as large as cats feasting on the protein rich bodies of dead soldiers. Lice bred quickly through these unsanitary conditions and trench foot caused by the constant exposure to cold wet conditions was always a threat. Left unattended, it quickly led to gangrene and required amputation. Gas gangrene from bacteria hidden in the surrounding clay rich soils used for farming for hundreds of years was also a threat as was trench mouth, caused by stress, poor food, inadequate oral hygiene and heavy smoking. At the time, the was little appreciation of germ theory and non-sterile surgery was carried out in field hospitals, encouraging the spread of infection even further. Antibiotics were still not in widespread use and the science of blood transfusions were still in the development stage.
Trench warfare was vicious as men slogged their way through a storm of metal, poison gas, barbed wire entanglements and then on to bayonet fighting or hand to hand combat. The trenches required constant repair which put soldiers at risk from German snipers and so was carried out at night. As the soldiers battled the mud, the rain and the squalid conditions, they endured long periods of boredom broken by abject terror when the attacks began. Titus rarely spoke of the terrors of trench war but they remained deep in his memories.
Mossman describes several battlefields including those at the well-known locations of the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and those around the Hindendberg Line. He also outlines battle techniques including “trench raids” and the practice of “fragging”, killing an officer with a grenade while going over the top of the trenches. It was the ideal solution for anyone wanting to get rid of an unpopular leader or one who was viewed as reckless or incompetent.
In March 1917 before the battle of Passchendaele, Titus was granted a ten day leave which he spent in Paris. Like many young men he was unable to resist the offers for cheap sex available on every street corner, restaurant and bar. With money to spend, knowing he might well be killed in the coming weeks, he like many other soldiers did not want to die a virgin. He paid the price and contracted venereal disease, the treatment of which was painful and undignified, requiring a fifty to sixty day hospital stay. In some ways Titus was lucky. His hospital stay meant he missed Haig’s “big push” at Passchendaele where once again the Canadians experienced huge losses. Like the Somme, it was another of Haig’s huge miscalculations, a tragedy that cost more than 300,000 casualties.
The war on the Western front cost 6 million civilians their lives. Over sixty million men fought, 8 million were killed, 2 million died of disease and 7 million were taken prisoner or went missing. These of course are only estimates and the exact figures will never be known.
David was never close to his father who returned from his war experience without any devastating physical injuries but was greatly affected by the experience, suffering from what was then known as “shell shock”. Today it is much better understood and is recognized as PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was the psychological price peace loving men paid when they were forced to learn to kill to survive. As a result, Titus was often grumpy, moody, uncommunicative and prone to sudden fits of rage. He suffered from terrible nightmares which never stopped, the most disturbing the one of his best friend Billy, running towards the enemy while his head was blown off and bits of brain tissue and blood were scattered everywhere. Titus could still picture Billy’s headless body continuing towards enemy lines until he finally fell. It was a scene he could never forget, one that stayed with him until his dying day.
Titus’ relationship with his wife Helen deteriorated after his return home and the two often threw insults at each other and had violent screaming matches. Although Titus would raise his hand, he never hit his wife but the family endured a domestic life that at times seemed on the edge of hurtling out of control. During his rages Titus would threaten to “do himself in”, a credible threat no one could comfortably discount. The children, frightened and confused by these noisy outbreaks, tried to stay out of the way or lay low and out of sight, not a comfortable context for a healthy family life.
Final Thoughts:
This is an interesting memoir about a simple man who volunteered to defend his country overseas and returned with a heavy heart and a mind full of dreadful memories. Mossman provides his readers with a well organized manuscript, including a bibliography, a timeline of events and several photographs which enhance the narrative. It is a book which will interest those who enjoy memoirs and biographies as well as those interested in the experience of war veterans, especially those who come from the Canadian Maritime Provinces.
I applaud Lesley Choyce at Pottersfield Press who supported this effort and published Mossman’s book. It may have a limited readership but it serves as an important personal and historical document.
Mossman lays out his narrative in three parts: the first titled “The Background”, describes the events leading up to the war; the second “In the Line” describes the battles on the Western Front and includes a scathing commentary on Sir Douglas Haig, Commander of the Commonwealth Forces whose stubbornness and poor leadership cost many men their lives; and the third and final section titled “The Aftermath” brings the book to a close describing the difficulties Titus and his family experienced after he returned home.
Titus was born in the late 1800s in Kingsburg Lunenburg County, an isolated, religiously strict, conservative community. Titus had six brothers and four sisters and like others at that time in Atlantic Canada, led a hard life with little time for leisure. Obtaining an education was often a combination of family financing and luck as there were few teachers and even fewer books. Most children had fishing and farming duties, so even when schooling was available their attendance was spotty and short. So Titus had little formal education but had good common sense, was resourceful and worked hard.
Like most young boys in coastal communities Titus was encouraged to go to sea, but rather than stay home and take up shore fishing, he began a career at thirteen as a cook on the big schooners that shipped out of Lunenburg for the Grand Banks. It was hard work and every season came with its calamities and close calls, excellent training for his future experience as a soldier.
In August of 1914 a complex mix of nationalism, territorial disputes, arms races, defensive alliances and rivalries for strength, prestige and wealth among the great powers led to the Great War. The main battlegrounds were the Western Front in France and Belgium and The Eastern Front in Russia. When Britain declared War, Canada a member of the British Empire was automatically at war as well. Young people received the news with a mix of passionate enthusiasm and suppressed anxiety. No one on either side believed the conflict would last longer than three or four months and each side predicted an early victory as they battled for what they wanted: Britain to preserve its Empire, Germany to gain territory and establish dominance in Europe and France to regain Alscace-Lorraine, lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War.
Like many other young men in his small rural community, Titus volunteered to fight and signed up in October 1915 becoming a member of the 85th Canadian Infantry Battalion, one of the many units in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF). He was only twenty-one.
After several months of basic training in Halifax and camp Aldershot in the Annapolis Valley, Titus was shipped overseas in October of 1916, arrived in Liverpool and then headed out to Whitley Camp, one of the four Canadian Camps in England. There he endured another four months of ceaseless drill before setting out for France. By that time he and his comrades were spoiling for a fight, having morphed from gentle down home folk to men with a will to kill, their greatest concern that the war would be over before they got to France.
General Sir David Haig was the Supreme Commander of the Commonwealth Forces. He was a stubborn man whose erroneous beliefs cost hundreds of lives and caused thousands of casualties. He believed infantry men could defeat the machine gun and so few were used. He also argued against the use of steel helmets so soldiers wore wool or leather caps which gave them little protection from shrapnel exploding overhead. Haig had an uncanny knack for seeking out the best defended German targets to attack leading to disasters at the Somme and Passchendaele. He was a brutal man whose rigid ways extended days of pointless losses on several battlefields, unable to rescind his orders without admitting failure on a murderous scale. Instead he played down allied loses insisting their casualties were less than those of the Germans. As a member of High Command, Haig remained completely unconnected to reality on the front lines. He purposefully remained well behind enemy lines so his men never saw him and he never visited the wounded. His men called him “The Butcher of the Somme” a moniker that was well earned. His record lies in stark contrast to that of the Canadians, Lt. General Sir Julian H.G. Bying, the Commander of the Canadian Corps at Vimy and his senior commander Major General Arthur W. Currie who were both all over the battlefields. They maintained close communication with their troops and were often in the field, instructing and encouraging both officers and privates. They made sure their fighting men had maps, were informed about battle plans and understood their role, unlike the British forces who knew nothing about their commander’s plans or what they were trying to achieve.
Mossman describes life in the trenches as one of unmitigated squalor. Young men who enlisted expecting to see the world and play a part in a heroic war in a distant land found themselves crouched, terrified and helpless in filthy trenches, watching their comrades suffer from horrific wounds and waiting for their own death. They remained in the trenches for days at a time, surrounded by sweat, vomit, blood, dead carcasses and overflowing latrines, easy targets for the spread of disease. They shared their spaces with rats which grew as large as cats feasting on the protein rich bodies of dead soldiers. Lice bred quickly through these unsanitary conditions and trench foot caused by the constant exposure to cold wet conditions was always a threat. Left unattended, it quickly led to gangrene and required amputation. Gas gangrene from bacteria hidden in the surrounding clay rich soils used for farming for hundreds of years was also a threat as was trench mouth, caused by stress, poor food, inadequate oral hygiene and heavy smoking. At the time, the was little appreciation of germ theory and non-sterile surgery was carried out in field hospitals, encouraging the spread of infection even further. Antibiotics were still not in widespread use and the science of blood transfusions were still in the development stage.
Trench warfare was vicious as men slogged their way through a storm of metal, poison gas, barbed wire entanglements and then on to bayonet fighting or hand to hand combat. The trenches required constant repair which put soldiers at risk from German snipers and so was carried out at night. As the soldiers battled the mud, the rain and the squalid conditions, they endured long periods of boredom broken by abject terror when the attacks began. Titus rarely spoke of the terrors of trench war but they remained deep in his memories.
Mossman describes several battlefields including those at the well-known locations of the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and those around the Hindendberg Line. He also outlines battle techniques including “trench raids” and the practice of “fragging”, killing an officer with a grenade while going over the top of the trenches. It was the ideal solution for anyone wanting to get rid of an unpopular leader or one who was viewed as reckless or incompetent.
In March 1917 before the battle of Passchendaele, Titus was granted a ten day leave which he spent in Paris. Like many young men he was unable to resist the offers for cheap sex available on every street corner, restaurant and bar. With money to spend, knowing he might well be killed in the coming weeks, he like many other soldiers did not want to die a virgin. He paid the price and contracted venereal disease, the treatment of which was painful and undignified, requiring a fifty to sixty day hospital stay. In some ways Titus was lucky. His hospital stay meant he missed Haig’s “big push” at Passchendaele where once again the Canadians experienced huge losses. Like the Somme, it was another of Haig’s huge miscalculations, a tragedy that cost more than 300,000 casualties.
The war on the Western front cost 6 million civilians their lives. Over sixty million men fought, 8 million were killed, 2 million died of disease and 7 million were taken prisoner or went missing. These of course are only estimates and the exact figures will never be known.
David was never close to his father who returned from his war experience without any devastating physical injuries but was greatly affected by the experience, suffering from what was then known as “shell shock”. Today it is much better understood and is recognized as PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was the psychological price peace loving men paid when they were forced to learn to kill to survive. As a result, Titus was often grumpy, moody, uncommunicative and prone to sudden fits of rage. He suffered from terrible nightmares which never stopped, the most disturbing the one of his best friend Billy, running towards the enemy while his head was blown off and bits of brain tissue and blood were scattered everywhere. Titus could still picture Billy’s headless body continuing towards enemy lines until he finally fell. It was a scene he could never forget, one that stayed with him until his dying day.
Titus’ relationship with his wife Helen deteriorated after his return home and the two often threw insults at each other and had violent screaming matches. Although Titus would raise his hand, he never hit his wife but the family endured a domestic life that at times seemed on the edge of hurtling out of control. During his rages Titus would threaten to “do himself in”, a credible threat no one could comfortably discount. The children, frightened and confused by these noisy outbreaks, tried to stay out of the way or lay low and out of sight, not a comfortable context for a healthy family life.
Final Thoughts:
This is an interesting memoir about a simple man who volunteered to defend his country overseas and returned with a heavy heart and a mind full of dreadful memories. Mossman provides his readers with a well organized manuscript, including a bibliography, a timeline of events and several photographs which enhance the narrative. It is a book which will interest those who enjoy memoirs and biographies as well as those interested in the experience of war veterans, especially those who come from the Canadian Maritime Provinces.
I applaud Lesley Choyce at Pottersfield Press who supported this effort and published Mossman’s book. It may have a limited readership but it serves as an important personal and historical document.
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