Lance Corporal Wilbert Gordon Lunan
745684
Born 1898 in Toronto ON
Lived at 78 Lake Front in Kew Beach
Enlisted with the 116th Battalion CEF
Died of pneumonia on Aug 21st, 1916
“Sir, yes Sir”
“Looking forward to it, Sir. I will not let you down, Sir!”
And with that short exchange, a young man walked away with something that nobody could ever take away from him. Pride.
Pride. That reaffirming feeling one gets when they achieve something…something that they really wanted, something they worked hard to attain and something that was of value…to them. On this morning, as his mates were busying themselves with jokes and cheerful conversation and getting ready to board the troop-ship SS Olympic this young soldier was standing before his senior officer and being asked to accept a leadership position on the team. The rank may have been only Lance Corporal, however for a lad barely out of high school it was a sign that his hard work, his attitude and his proficiency was noticed, appreciated and valued. As the 116th Battalion was to be in England in less than a week, the officers commanding men knew it was important to assemble a team and ensure they were ready to turn these men into soldiers as soon as possible.
This newest N.C.O. to serve in the 116th Battalion was Lance Corporal Wilbert Gordon Lunan. He was an 18 yrs old native of Toronto living in Kew Breach and had only just recently left high school. The young man was employed as a silversmith apprentice in the William Rogers & Son Silver Company when the lines began to form around Recruitment Centres across the country. Both Wilbert and his older brother John Conroy Lunan (745683) decided to make the trek up to the recruiting station in Whitby and join the battalion being raised by Lt. Col. Samuel Simpson Sharpe. Less than six months after putting his pen to paper, Lunan was boasting about being able to sew a chevron onto his sleeve to his unit mates.
The voyage from Halifax to Liverpool took seven days. Seven days where the young lad was feted by his mates. Seven days where they also teased him for the last seven last day he got to serve as an ordinary soldier. However, it was also seven days stuck in a hot, cramped, stale hold. Men stacked together where they slept elbow to elbow in bunk beds. Seven days spent eating and sleeping with the same lads, breathing the same air and provided scant few opportunities to go up to the upper decks and get some fresh air. Seven days was long enough for germs and viruses to pass along between the men and enough time for the cheerful banter of men to be replaced by the sound of coughing and hacking.
The SS Olympic pulled into Liverpool on the 31stof July 1916 and the men were immediately transported down to the Canadian Military Camp at Bramshott in Aldershot, Hampshire. This was situated south-west of London. And probably following the voyage to England from Canada where the young upstart began to experience the early stages of pneumonia. It would start with the hacking coughs and the feelings of exhaustion and lack of appetite. However, as time passed his coughs would intensify and lead to sharp stabbing pains in his chest. As he was a healthy young man, one can expect that he tried to shake it off and bully through the pain…however with each day the condition got more and more worse. By the 5th of August, probably through the concern of his mates, he checked himself into the infirmary. By this stage he would have been suffering from a high fever, drenched with bouts of sweat followed by body shaking chills. He would have looked like a ghost of a man.
Lunan was be admitted to Connaugh Military Hospital in Aldershot on the 5th of August. He would never recover. The pneumonia rapidly spread to his other lung and on the 21st of August, Lance Corporal Wilfred George Lunan would succumb to the infliction.
Soldier’s die…some are killed in combat, some die from accidents while training to become a solider, others die from infections they receive after living/trying to survive in the putrid, poisoned mud of Flanders…and some die before they get the chance to even put one foot down onto a battlefield. Wilfred Gordon Lunan, the 18 yr old newest, almost Lance Corporal was one of these men. He was the second soldier from the 116th Battalion to die after they arrived in England from Canada.
Remember him.