Ursula A. Kelly - The Foresters Scribe Remembering the Newfoundland Forestry Companies Through the First World War Letters of Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant John A. Barrett

Members of the Newfoundland Forestry Companies, Craigvinean, Dunkeld, Scotland, 1917.
(Courtesy of The Rooms Provincial Archives Division, VA 55-5.1)

THE FORESTERS SCRIBE

Remembering the Newfoundland Forestry
Companies Through the First World War Letters of
Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant John A. Barrett

URSULA A. KELLY

2020 Ursula A. Kelly

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Title: The foresters scribe : remembering the Newfoundland Forestry Companies through the First World War letters of Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant John A. Barrett / Ursula A. Kelly.

Names: Kelly, Ursula A. (Ursula Anne), 1956- author. | Container of (work): Barrett, John A., 1872-1955. Correspondence. Selections.

Series: Social and economic studies (St. Johns, N.L.) ; no. 87.

Description: Series statement: Social and economic studies ; no. 87 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200355082 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200355880 | ISBN 9781894725736 (softcover) | ISBN 9781894725842 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781894725859 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781894725866 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Barrett, John A., 1872-1955Correspondence. | LCSH: Great Britain. Army. Newfoundland Forestry CompaniesHistory. | LCSH: World War, 1914-1918Regimental historiesGreat Britain. | LCSH: World War, 1914-1918Personal narratives, Canadian. | LCSH: World War, 1914-1918War workGreat Britain. | LCSH: World War, 1914-1918War workNewfoundland and Labrador. | LCSH: LumbermenNewfoundland and LabradorBiography.

Classification: LCC D547.N55 K45 2020 | DDC 940.4/12718dc23

Front cover images: Postcard portrait of Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant John A. Barrett by A.F. MacKenzie, Birnam, Scotland, 1918. (Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, World War One Artifacts 09.01.004, Memorial University of Newfoundland). Newfoundland Forestry Companies shoulder badge. (Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, World War One Artifacts 04.03.007, Memorial University of Newfoundland).

Back cover images: Newfoundland Regiment caribou pin. (Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections, World War One Artifacts 23.03.012, Memorial University of Newfoundland). Original letters of Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant John A. Barrett. (Courtesy of the Barrett family).

Copy editing: Sandy Newton

Cover design, page design and typesetting: Alison Carr

Published by ISER Books

Institute of Social and Economic Research

Memorial University of Newfoundland

PO Box 4200

St. Johns, NL A1C 5S7

www.hss.mun.ca/iserbooks/

Printed in Canada

26 25 24 23 22 21 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Funded by the Government of Canada

Newfoundland and Labrador does not yet have a balanced historical overview of its participation in and contribution to the United Kingdoms effort in the First World War, an account that would be what St. Johns journalist Sir Patrick T. McGrath (1928) called a real record for all time of the part Newfoundland played, on sea and on land, abroad and at home, in the great struggle (p. 2). In this regard, until the publication in 1964 of the government-commissioned history by Gerald W.L. NicholsonThe Fighting Newfoundlanderon the 50th anniversary of the start of the war, several previous efforts to produce a general account had fallen short. What had been completed and published generally concentrated on the gallant efforts of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment (RNR) and its heroic participation in the Battle of the Somme at Beaumont-Hamel on July 1, 1916. That tragedy, resulting in the near depletion of the Regiments ranks, has received the most attention and understanding.

As historian James Candow (2016) recently observed in his review of The Rooms major centenary commemoration of the war and postwar Newfoundland and Labrador, public memory is dominated by an emphasis on the Royal Newfoundland Regiment and Beaumont-Hamel. There has not been much commemoration for the thousands of other Newfoundland men and women who served in other branches of the countrys military. There is much still to be known of all who served in the Newfoundland war effortnot only the soldiers of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, but also the naval volunteers, merchant seamen, medical doctors, nurses, and airmen, as well as those who served directly in the armed forces of the UK, Canada, and the United States.

In The Fighting Newfoundlander (running to over 500 pages), Gerald Nicholson devoted nine pages, about 3,700 words, to one little-known aspect of the Newfoundland war effort, the Newfoundland Forestry Companies (NFC). Their service to King and Country has now been documented in Ursula Kellys The Foresters Scribe, which provides a welcome contribution to our understanding of another aspect of the Newfoundland war effort.

Newfoundland loggers in 1917 were needed to harvest forests in Scotland for the war, a safer alternative to the UKs dependence, now threatened by German submarines, on importing timber by sea from Norway, Finland, Sweden, Portugal, Canada, and the United States. Kelly provides a historical overview showing how the unit was established and the foresters were recruited, as well as detailed information on the controversies over commissions and other aspects of the NFCs formation. There is information on the recruits transport to Scotland and life there, including their work and off-hours activities, their relationship to Canadian foresters, their ability to adapt their logging methods to meet local conditions, and their re-integration into civilian life in Newfoundland.

Kelly has published widely on the twentieth-century history of local loggers. Her latest effort is based on the published writings of Curling resident John A. Barrett, a journalist and forester who also served the Forestry Companies as their press correspondent, from its formation in April 1917 to the foresters return to Newfoundland and the units disbandment in August 1919. Captain Leo Murphy did similar yeoman duty as a reporter for the Newfoundland Regiment. Kelly has compiled from the Newfoundland press Barretts letters for the 191719 period, which describe the departure of the first foresters from Newfoundland to Scotland and their living and working conditions in Scotland. Kelly provides an analysis of the content of these letters as well as a biographical essay on Barrett, wholike several forestersreturned with a Scottish war bride.

Barretts letters provided reassurances to those on the home front. On November 18, 1917, Barrett informed his Newfoundland readers that the foresters were well supplied with dried cod and that ten quintals had recently been received as a free gift from Bowring Brothers of Liverpool. It is quite a treat, he wrote, to have some of our own codfish served up to us once or twice a week, and it being such a palatable article, is much enjoyed in the mess. A month later, the foresters were visited at their work camps by Newfoundland Governor Sir William Davidson and Prime Minister Sir Edward Morris, who had gone first to France to visit the soldiers of the Newfoundland Regiment. The Governor informed the public on his return to Newfoundland that the foresters have done their work thoroughly well. The Newfoundlanders had introduced a number of improvements previously unknown in Scotland and looked upon as welcome novelties, and the output was many times as great as the output would have been under normal conditions, if the work had been placed in the hands of local woodsmen.