This Remembrance Day, the Ross Bay Villa Society remembers how the small and personal aspects of local history connect in unexpected ways to the movement of world events.
Recent research by Greg Scott, with files from Quinn MacTavish and other Villa volunteers, has revealed a surprising connection between our mid-Victorian era historic house in Western Canada, a lawyer living in South Africa, and the battle of Passchendaele during the First World War.
Thomas Le Breton Roscoe was the youngest child and second son of Frances Roscoe and Letitia Le Breton Roscoe, born just 5 months prior to his father’s unexpected death and the subsequent emigration with his mother and four sisters to England in January of 1879.
Thomas spent his childhood in Hampstead and Birmingham. He attended Bath College and later Clare College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1900. He began his career as a schoolmaster in Wales and Kent before earning a law degree and emigrating to South Africa, where he joined the civil service as a lawyer. In 1908, he married Helen Kathleen “Bunny” Powell, and they settled in Murraysburg, South Africa.
During World War I, Thomas enlisted in the First South African Infantry in December 1916 at age 38. According to his Attestation Papers and Medical Exam, he was age 38, 6-foot tall, dark hair, gray eyes, with fair complexion. He stated his religion as Agnostic and his occupation as an advocate.
He trained in Potchefstroom, South Africa, and Bordon, England, before joining the 1st Battalion in France. He participated in the Battle of Menin Road, part of the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), where he was killed in action on September 20, 1917.
Private Reg Lawrence’s account of the battle includes references to his friend Thomas:
“We got everything ready for the fray and made our last wills and testaments. We sat and watched the troops coming up in little columns. Against the skyline they look like lines of ants. Roscoe remarked that he didn’t mind dying if it was sudden, but he hated pain. “But what about Bunny? “ I asked him, and he replied “Oh, she’ll get over it in time.[…]
Just as we started off, Roscoe stopped and turned and shook hands with me. The first few yards we went over were churned up by weeks of shellfire and unburied and half buried fragments of men simply littered the ground. […]
The Germans were streaming machine-gun fire from the tops of a pillbox. We made for it in short rushes, but about 30 yards from it I saw Roscoe fall sideways into the crater. I ran back to find he was shot under the collar bone. We put on a tourniquet, but he just shook his head. He tried to say something, but I could hear nothing in the fearful din. I knew, though, that it must be about Bunny his wife. I went off to find some stretcher-bearers , but when I got back, I found Puckrin with tears running down his face, and I didn’t need a second look to know that Roscoe was dead. We placed his helmet over his face, hiding his twisted lips and his kind eyes and left him with the rifle inverted in the ground at his head – like a gentleman and a soldier.”
In October 1923, six years after Thomas’ death, Helen Roscoe would receive a letter from the South African Government advising her that Thomas had no known grave:
“As it is definitely established that your husband was killed in action during the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as the Battle of Menin Road, and that he was buried within the zone, the intensive and prolonged bombardment which was carried out in the “Salient” obliterated all isolated and group graves also cemeteries and you will therefore realize that the effort to identify graves and remains was confronted with super difficulty.”
Extract from letter dated October 13, 1923 from War Records, Pretoria South Africa sent to Mrs. H. Roscoe
It also stated that he was to be commemorated on a memorial yet to be erected. This memorial, unveiled in 1927, was the Menin Gate Memorial of the Missing, dedicated to 54,593 BEF casualties in the Ypres sector with no known graves. Thomas has also been commemorated on plaques and scrolls in Penarth and Bath as well as a listing by Clare College, Cambridge and on the Roll of Honour, Eastbourne Sussex.
Thomas was born in Victoria, but left as a baby. He would not have had memories of the Villa or his father’s passing, but would have grown up with stories of Victoria from his mother and siblings. On this day of Remembrance, we hope this addition to the many stories of the War, and the Villa itself, may bring you a moment of reflection.