GRAVENHURST SOLDIERS SPREAD WORD OF END OF FIRST WORLD WAR 103 YEARS AGO
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — When the “Great War” ended 103 years ago tomorrow, word spread around the world thanks to two Gravenhurst soldiers.
Sam Scott and his “sidekick” Billy Waite strung the telegraph wire from the rail car in northern France where the German surrender and Armistice signing took place on Nov. 11, 1918, to end the First World War.
Scott, who was a boat builder with Ditchburn and Greavettes, recounted the story 19 years later in interview with Toronto Star reporter Stuart Keate.
His grandson Barry retold the story to me this week.
“It all happened by accident,” Sam said in his original 1939 account — ironically as the Second World War had just begun a few month before on Sept. 1.
“But I still get a thrill when I look back at that day. I was overseas with the Forestry Corps, you see. I had to slice four years off my age to get in the service. But I did it.
“On Nov. 10, 1918 (the eve of he signing 103 years ago today), we were ordered to move up to the Compiegne forest, through Paris.
“I’ll never forget that night. News that the Armistice was about to be signed had sifted out and the city was in an uproar. … The people were mad. Some were laughing, some were crying, some hugging each other. It got too much for us. Finally we decided to go to bed. …”
But the next day, on Nov. 11, they were at the Rethondes railway station and saw a train with seven cars pull in.
“We were standing there, the only British people in the place when a Frenchman jumped off the train suddenly and called: ‘Hello Canada — we’ve got them here at last!’
“We knew what he meant. But I just can’t tell you how I felt.”
Scott said he could see the Germans in the train windows.
“The parlour car of this special train had long glass windows, so you could see right in it. I had a great opportunity to study the German officials that had come to see what terms they would get with the Allies. There were two of them. Both were smoking cigarettes. …
“I admired those Germans and I still admire them. They were just like a pair of statues. They didn’t glance out of the car once. There wasn’t a trace of emotion on their faces. Frenchmen were buzzing around everywhere, excited and nervous. But the Germans were orderly, disciplined.”
Scott said “no official announcement was made at the time” about the arrival, talks or signing. “That was high military data. We ordinary soldiers weren’t supposed to know a thing.”
But “a genial Frenchmen yelled at me. ‘Hey, you, come here for a while. I want your help.’ I walked over with Billy Waite. He works in Gravenhurst today.’
“The Frenchmen gave us a long coil of wire. I fastened one end with a big spike and we unrolled it all the way to the car.
“So you see, Billy and I set up the wire that flashed one of the most important messages of all time. Everybody was waiting to hear that news. I’ll wager it brought more happiness to all the world than any other message.
“That’s really something, isn’t it? When you stop to think about it — it was really quite important, wasn’t it?”
Scott said that at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1939, he would shut his eyes and think for a few moments about the small part he played in history.
Where, wrote Keate, Scott wanted to “cry out and be happy, but couldn’t — because he mind had gone blank and he couldn’t realize” ‘It was all over.’”
Barry said his grandfather, who emigrated to Canada from Ireland at age 12, came back to Gravenhurst from the war and resumed his life raising his family and boat building.
“Bert Hawker designed the boats and my dad built them,” including some world-class racers like the Miss Canada racing series that set international records.
Ironically, Scott’s son Wilson ‘Wid’ Scott ended up working for CN; as did Barry who was a telegraph operator before retiring in 1999 and moving to Elliott Lake.
Wid was one of many fine Gravenhurst hockey players who won several Ontario championships with the intermediate Indians. And he really loved his hometown, as noted in his obituary below.
He was later president of the local legion. And several of his brothers were also Second World War veterans.
And he actually had an interesting local footnote during the Second World War when he helped capture six of seven German prisoners of war who escaped from Camp 20 in Gravenhurst. It was a big story as few got away.
They had fled the camp at the north end of town.
The Scott family was living in two homes just to the north of the Lookout.
And when Wid’s dog “Nipper,” a black and white spaniel found a white head covering used in the winter escape, war authorities knew where to concentrate their search. And they found more coverings that eventually led to their recapture.
It led to another story in the Toronto papers.
Barry says he and his wife will also be attending Remembrance Day services tomorrow at his legion with his wife Marlene, whose family are also veterans and they will remember them and his dad and Sam.
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