Harold Stafford Lidstone

Heroes Remember

Harold Stafford Lidstone

Transcript

We didn’t dig any new trenches. That was left to the infantry and that. If a shell would land in a trench and blow it out, we’d go up and repair that so they could use it again, and the trench infantry would follow right along, you know. The trench men would open it up and they couldn’t go from one part of it to the other, and we’d repair the damage back into the condition it was before. Oh, it was about two feet wide at the bottom and about four feet wide at the top. A firing step, it was up about two feet high and then you’d step off that, down onto the communication part of it to walk along. That would be deep enough so that your head would be down below the surface of the ground. If you showed your head above the ground, a sniper would get ya.

Description

Mr. Lidstone describes the role of the Battalion Engineering Corps in repairing damaged trenches.

Harold Lidstone

Harold Lidstone was born in Waltham, Massachusetts on March 4, 1896. He moved, with his family, to Prince Edward Island around 1905 where his father began a farm operation at Mount Royal, PEI. At the age of 19, Mr. Lidstone went to Summerside to enlist in the Canadian Army, joining the 82nd Battalion which became the 105th Battalion comprised entirely of men from Prince Edward Island.

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