{"id":10837,"date":"2015-03-18T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T10:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.royalmontrealregiment.com\/?p=10837"},"modified":"2015-03-18T06:00:04","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T10:00:04","slug":"careless-rmr-soldier-killed-by-german-sniper-in-1915","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/careless-rmr-soldier-killed-by-german-sniper-in-1915\/","title":{"rendered":""Careless" RMR soldier killed by German sniper in 1915"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday, March 18, 1915<\/i><\/p>\n

In Trenches, Rue\u00a0Petillon<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Battalion War Diarist wrote for this day: \u201cFairly quiet.\u00a0 One man killed and two wounded by snipers.\u00a0 Enemy evidently searching for our batteries as they fired six heavy shells into a field near corner of Rue Du Bois and Sailly-Fromelles Road, but there was no battery anywhere near that spot.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

The Battalion history notes: – \u201cThe three day tour that followed was marked by appreciable activity, the enemy sniping persistently and shelling at intervals. One man was killed by a sniper on March 18th<\/sup> …\u201d<\/p>\n

THIS DAY IN RMR HISTORY:\u00a0\u201cAlthough the Canadians were in a quiet sector, the threat of danger was constant.\u00a0 Units suffered a dozen or more casualties a week.\u00a0 Night patrols, sent to explore enemy defences or find gaps in the wire, tested men\u2019s nerves for at any moment they were apt to be exposed by flares in no man\u2019s land and subjected to deadly machine-gun fire.\u00a0 German snipers, with their telescopic sights on their rifles, were especially adept at picking off the unwary.\u00a0 W. Stevens (14th<\/sup> Battalion) described what happened to one of his careless mates:\u00a0 \u201cPat Rattigan, he was on top of the trench pounding down some sandbags and somebody said, \u2018You crazy something, get down out of there,\u2019 and the next thing some of us heard was a \u2018crack, phut,\u2019 and Pat got it in the tummy and that was our first man.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0 [3]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"No.<\/a>
No. 25997 – Private John Patrick Rattigan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rattigan was born March 17th<\/sup>, 1884 at Liverpool, England, and had come to Canada where he worked as a \u201cwire drawer.\u201d \u00a0When war was declared he joined up with the Victoria Rifles of Canada and was one of the 349 men , and twelve officers, transferred from the \u2018Vics\u2019 to the 14th<\/sup> Battalion (RMR) on the creation of the latter unit. [5]<\/a>\u00a0 He signed his attestation papers at Valcartier September 21, 1914, and was assigned to D Coy. of the 14th<\/sup>(RMR). \u00a0 Killed in the trenches south-east of Fleurbaix on March 18, 1914, he was initially buried near where he fell.\u00a0 His remains were later exhumed from a \u201cwater-girt orchard of the farm on the western side of the Rue Petillon about 350 yards north of the intersection of the Rue Petillon and the Rue Delvas, a short distance behind the [then] present support line, 2 \u00bd miles east of Laventie, and was re-buried along with four others of the 14th<\/sup> Battalion in Le Trou Aid Post Cemetery.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 [6]<\/a><\/p>\n

*\u00a0 Note:\u00a0 In actual fact Rattigan was not the first member of the 14th<\/sup> Battalion to be killed in action, as five others had been killed in action between March 4th<\/sup> and March 10th<\/sup>, 1915<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 War Diary, 14th<\/sup> Canadian Battalion, The Royal Montreal Regiment<\/em>, March 18, 1915.\u00a0 Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa,\u00a0http:\/\/data2.collectionscanada.ca\/e\/e044\/e001089701.jpg<\/a><\/pre>\n
[2]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 R.C. Featherstonhaugh, The Royal Montreal Regiment 14th<\/sup> Battalion C.E.F. 1914-1925<\/em>, Montreal, The Gazette, Printing Co., Ltd., 1927, pg. 32.<\/pre>\n
[3]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 W. Stevens as told in \u201cFlanders Fields : Canada Answers the Call,\u201d<\/em> a 17 part radio series produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1964, Program 4, transcript pg. 17.\u00a0 Transcripts now held by Library and Archives Canada, RG 41, Vol. 6; as quoted by George H. Cassar, \u201cHell in Flanders \u2013 Canadians at the Second Battle of Ypres, Toronto, Dundurn Press, 2010, pg. 69.<\/pre>\n
[4]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/www.veterans.gc.ca\/eng\/remembrance\/memorials\/canadian-virtual-war-memorial\/detail\/303204<\/pre>\n
[5]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 War Diary, 14th<\/sup> Canadian Battalion, The Royal Montreal Regiment<\/em>, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa,\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/data2.collectionscanada.ca\/e\/e044\/e001089672.jpg<\/a><\/pre>\n
[6]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Commonwealth War Graves Burial Registers\u00a0 -\u00a0 http:\/\/www.bac-lac.gc.ca\/eng\/discover\/mass-digitized-archives\/commonwealth-war-graves-registers\/Pages\/item.aspx?PageId=168589<\/a><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday, March 18, 1915 In Trenches, Rue\u00a0Petillon The Battalion War Diarist wrote for this day: \u201cFairly quiet.\u00a0 One man killed and two wounded by snipers.\u00a0 Enemy evidently searching for our<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-day-in-rmr-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}