“After he was wounded in the temple he was bound up and continued to encourage the men and cheer them on. He appeared not to suffer pain, but his strength gradually failed, and, as he said, all gradually became ‘dark.’ ” — Military official’s letter to Bertram’s wife

“When he had lasted for nine days after the operation, they began to hope he might recover, but tetanus set in and he died of it.” — Hélène Casbille, who helped Bertram Denison

In a war rife with brutality, it is unreasonable to categorize one soldier’s demise as more harrowing than another’s, or his grace in dying as more admirable than that of those who fell around him.

So the horrible circumstances surrounding the death of Bertram Denison, Toronto’s first casualty of the First World War, and the kindness he demonstrated in his final days, didn’t exceed those of his fellow servicemen. They exemplified them.

Blinded by a bullet that ripped into his skull, Denison was left for dead in the early morning hours at the battle of Le Cateau — part of a British retreat from Mons, Belgium — on Aug. 26, 1914. There, on the blood-soaked killing fields of northern France, amid the carcasses of men and horses, the dashing Lt. Denison lingered in the unbearable summer heat .

He remained through the rest of the day, that night and into the next day before he was taken prisoner by the Germans, who transported him first to a church for three days, then to a makeshift hospital.

The Star’s First World War anniversary coverage

So overwhelming was the carnage when the outnumbered Brits made a stand at Le Cateau — about 8,000 British troops were killed, wounded or missing — that it was assumed Denison was among those who perished.

Bertram’s father, Admiral John Denison, sent a cable to his brother, Toronto’s police magistrate George T. Denison. The straightforward message, “Bertram killed in action,” arrived on the morning of Sept. 2.

That afternoon, the front page of the Toronto Daily Star’s late edition carried the headline “Toronto’s First Victim of War.”

Toronto’s World War 1 Encyclopedia

In reality, the 30-year-old Denison was still alive and would survive for almost two more weeks before succumbing to tetanus on Sept. 15. At the improvised medical facility of L’École des Filles, he would show compassion for those being treated alongside him. At one point, he implored a doctor to bring morphine, not for the pain of infection that would ravage his body but, instead, for a young gunner suffering on the next mattress.

But the Great War was a selfless time for Canadians, whether born here or, like Denison, here temporarily. Class structure became irrelevant as young men from Toronto and across the nation marched off for what they thought would be a brief, glorious and righteous adventure.

Walking the Western Front

Bertram Denison, six feet tall with angular features and dark wavy hair, was from a prosperous and influential Anglo-Toronto family that had deep roots in the city. From the moment the first Denison arrived in the newly surveyed York in 1796 at the invitation of Governor John Graves Simcoe, the family name was part of the city’s growth as it represented Toronto’s largest landholders and wealthy habitués of the society pages. The Denisons gave their estates elegant monikers such as Rusholme and Bellevue — which, like Denison itself, live on as street names today. They maintained a private cemetery on the banks of the Humber River that continues to be restricted to family members.

From their participation as loyalists in the Rebellion of 1837 to fighting alongside General Isaac Brock in the War of 1812 — a Denison, the family story goes, shot the sniper who killed Brock at Queenston — military service was a proud part of the family heritage.

The legend told on Lake Muskoka’s Beachgrove Island, which is still owned by Denison descendants, is that Bertram was at the family’s idyllic summer playground when Britain declared war in August 1914. He was building footpaths but laid down his tools and departed to join his British regiment.

About 3,000 Torontonians died in the First World War; Global News has linked 2,910 casualties to city addresses.

One hundred years ago, Bertram Denison was the first.

Notwithstanding his family connections, Bertram was born not in Toronto but in Greenock, Scotland in 1883, where his Toronto-born father, Admiral John Denison, was in the Royal Navy. As a 5-year-old the boy was already dreaming of following in the footsteps of his father. John Denison was once commander of the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert and served with distinction on several ships.

In a touching letter — a treasured possession of Bertram Denison’s granddaughter Jocelyn Davidson-Arnott — written from HMS Firebrand in Shanghai, John Denison responds to his son’s ambitions, having learned about them in a Christmas note from home.

“Mother tells me you would like to be a sailor someday,” John writes. “If so, you will have to study very hard as the examinations are so difficult and you also must be very kind to your little sister. Sailors are always kind to girls. You see, they are not so strong as boys.”

Bertram took his father’s advice to heart. As a 13-year-old attending Harrow School in northwest London, he wrote his examinations to become a cadet on HMS Britannia. Bertram not only passed with the top marks, receiving a score of 1,987 out of a possible 2,250, but he was 500 points ahead of the next best entrant. That success came despite being bedridden during the exams with scarlet fever.

Bertram, at just 16, was also the top graduating cadet and was serving as a midshipman on HMS Doris at the outbreak of the second Boer War in South Africa in 1899.

Bertram was one of the officers who entered Pretoria when the Boers surrendered. He was mentioned in a report written by a superior officer to draw attention to meritorious behaviour, and was “recommended for advancement when qualified,” according to his naval records.

After the Boer war, early in the century, the brilliant seaman’s career took a surprising, and ultimately tragic, turn. The navy man who received commendation in signaling and navigation suffered from chronic seasickness.

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He transferred to the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.

“What is quite ironic is that after doing so well in navy training, when he actually went to sea, he found he was really, really seasick,” says his grandson, Robin Davidson-Arnott, a semi-retired professor of geography at the University of Guelph. “So he gave it up and went into the army. If he’d stayed in the navy, there were very few people killed, relatively speaking, in the First World War.”

In 1906 Bertram solidified his connection to his father’s hometown. He was sent to Toronto as a lieutenant in the Canadian Forces.

It was likely a grand life. Bertram, according to the 1908 city directory, lived at 7 Roxborough E. in posh Rosedale with his job listed as adjutant at the Royal Canadian Regiment Stanley Barracks. The seven limestone buildings of Stanley Barracks, where Bertram was an infantry instructor, were built on what is now Exhibition Place in 1841 and were intended to replace Fort York, where a Denison was once a commander, as Toronto’s garrison. The sole remaining building from the barracks is the officers’ quarters, better known to Torontonians as the one-time home of a Marine Museum.

Apart from Bertram’s official duties, it would have been a peaceful time of festive socializing. According to a book about the Stanley Barracks written by Aldona Sendzikas, British officers were perceived by Torontonians as highly educated and refined gentlemen, and they received frequent invitations to tea parties, dinners and dances. They were also seen as desirable potential husbands by the young women of Toronto and their families.

Bertram, known for his kind nature and quick wit, would have been popular, not only for his striking good looks but also his fluency in French and Italian, which gave him a worldly, exotic bearing. That his uncle George was the city’s chief magistrate whose colourful courtroom orations were regarded as fine theatre would have also opened doors for the officer, who was by now in his early 20s.

The name Bertram Denison appeared in the Society Blue Book, a social club directory of elite Toronto families, and there were the summers on Lake Muskoka. In his memoirs, Bertram’s uncle Septimus wrote of the campfires, fishing and swimming in water “as soft as rain water,” and “the inexplicable pleasure of wandering through a primeval forest where human foot has scarcely, if ever, trod before; where the woodsman’s axe has never been swung, leaving magnificent trees where they have stood for centuries.”

Part of the appeal for young men like Bertram was the primitive nature of the 17-acre island and the rustic accommodations that awaited after a train trip from the city and steamship ride from the mainland. It was a genuine escape.

It seems the only interruption to Bertram’s peaceful Canadian experience came when he helped command troops that marched into Hamilton after the mayor had read the riot act to quell an uprising during a streetcar strike in November 1906.

The zenith of Bertram’s happy stay in Toronto was Oct. 2, 1907, when he married Gladys May Nordheimer, whose father, Albert, lived on St. George St. and was part of the piano manufacturing family. In a lavish ceremony at St. James Cathedral, the altar and chancel, as described in the Social and Personal column of the Toronto Daily Star, “were decorated with tall palms, flags and white flowers . . . A detachment of soldiers, in all the glory of scarlet, lined the transcepts (sic), leaving space for the bride, her father and the small army of nine bridesmaids to pass between.”

The life of a gentleman soldier continued after he departed Toronto — though he would return for visits — in 1908 to rejoin the 2nd Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. While later stationed in Ireland, at one point he told an officer who arrived missing much of his kit not to fret. He said, “All you will require is morning dress and white tie as you will be invited to many festivities.”

War and all its horrors would change everything.

Great Britain declared war on Germany on Aug. 4, 1914. Bertram was at first assigned to an operational role in the War Office, helping to draw up strategic plans for the British Army. But five days into that post, he asked to rejoin his battalion. He soon sailed for France as part of the British Expeditionary Force, destined for the Western Front.

The battle that took place at Le Cateau has been described as a living hell for those involved. In one account, the men of the King’s Own regiment and another battalion, the 2nd Suffolks of 14th Brigade, were holding the line and “were literally pulverized by high explosive and shrapnel.” The regiment was given the task of holding ground while the other units retired. And while heavy losses were inflicted on the Germans, Bertram’s regiment alone had 600 of their 1,000 men killed, wounded or missing in what is described as a heroic stand.

Bertram was severely wounded after one of his regiment’s machine gun officers was killed and he was ordered to take his place as the battalion’s position was overrun by the Germans.

A Col. Bond later wrote to Bertram’s widow: “I have not failed to make special mention of Bertram’s splendid courage in the desperate last moments at Le Cateau. After he was wounded in the temple he was bound up and continued to encourage the men and cheer them on. He appeared not to suffer pain, but his strength gradually failed, and, as he said, all gradually became ‘dark.’ Still propped up against the side of the trench, he spoke to the men from time to time to cheer them on to hold out to the last, until he became insensible.”

There was much confusion in the premature Star article announcing the death, including uncertainty about Bertram’s rank, and whether he was attached to the War Office or the Yorkshire Light Infantry when killed. It did state, however, that he had been in Canada with his father visiting one of his uncles six weeks earlier.

So puzzling were the circumstances that on Oct. 19, the Denisons went to the Star to clarify that Bertram was indeed dead and not a German prisoner, as had been rumoured in Toronto.

When the war ended, John Denison and his wife, Florence, travelled to Le Cateau, visited their son’s grave, and toured the battlefield in an attempt to learn what happened to him.

In a letter to Bertram’s widow dated Sept. 26, 1919, John Denison describes the war-torn countryside around Le Cateau as being “in an awful state” with “no undamaged trees most being cut down or shot away.” He described the miles and miles of “wire entanglements and dumps of stores, projectiles, occasional wired-in enclosures for prisoners.”

Bertram’s parents were taken to the school where he died. A woman named Hélène Casbille, who had tended to Bertram, told the couple that “the bullet went in the back of the head near the left ear, the German doctor operated but did not remove it. She said that his left eye was blackened but that he was not at all disfigured, that he was not paralyzed and could talk very well, was cheerful and pleased with the cakes that they brought him. They knew he was seriously wounded but when he had lasted for nine days after the operation, they began to hope he might recover, but tetanus set in and he died of it.”

Both that letter and another to Gladys Bertram from a Zoe Gray, whose husband met Bertram at L’École des Filles, recounted how cheery and plucky Bertram remained in his final days.

“He was always thinking of the other wounded men in his room, far more than himself,” wrote Gray.

Her husband recounted that Bertram summoned him “to try and get something to soothe a dying gunner, who was lying on the next mattress and who was in great agony. He was so pleased when I was able to get our overworked Dr. Thomson to come and give the gunner some morphia . . . It will be I am sure a real comfort to know how brave and unselfish your husband’s conduct was.”

There is one other cherished piece of correspondence from the battlefield in the collection of granddaughter Jocelyn Davidson-Arnott: a postcard of a church with a message written hastily on the back from Bertram to his five-year-old daughter, Yvonne, from Le Cateau.

“I hope that you will like this postcard when you get it. It’s a nice picture of a church isn’t it? I hope you are enjoying yourself. Your loving Daddy.”

It was dated Aug. 20 and sent to their home in England, where she was now living with their mother, six days before he was shot. Saved by a French civilian, the postcard was delivered to Yvonne late in 1918, when peace was returning to the world.

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