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Tag Archives: Frederick William Hall


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Death of Frederick William Hall, Victoria Cross Recipient

Frederick William Hall, VC, Irish Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, dies on April 24, 1915, at Poelcappelle, Belgium.

Hall is born in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, on February 21, 1885. His father is a British Army soldier from London. He emigrates to Canada around 1910, and lives on Pine Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is 30 years old, and a company sergeant major (CSM) in the 8th (Winnipeg Rifles) Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I when he performs a deed for which he is awarded the Victoria Cross.

It is on the night of April 23, 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium that Hall discovers a number of men are missing. On the ridge above he can hear the moans of the wounded men. Under cover of darkness, he goes to the top of the ridge on two separate occasions and returns each time with a wounded man.

By nine o’clock on the morning of April 24 there are still men missing. In full daylight and under sustained and intense enemy fire, Hall, Cpl. Payne and Pvt. Rogerson crawl out toward the wounded. Payne and Rogerson are both wounded but return to the shelter of the front line. When a wounded man who is lying some 15 yards from the trench calls for help, Company Sergeant-Major Hall endeavors to reach him in the face of very heavy enfilade fire by the enemy. He then makes a second most gallant attempt and is in the act of lifting up the wounded man to bring him in when he falls, mortally wounded in the head. The soldier he is attempting to help is also shot and killed.

Hall’s name can be found on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing war memorial in Ypres, Belgium, honouring 56,000 troops from Britain, Australia, Canada and India whose final resting place in the Ypres salient is unknown.

In 1925, Pine Street in Winnipeg is renamed Valour Road because three of Canada’s Victoria Cross recipients resided on the same 700 block of that street: Frederick Hall, Leo Clarke and Robert Shankland. It is believed to be the only street in the British Commonwealth to have three Victoria Cross recipients to live on it, let alone the same block. A bronze plaque is mounted on a street lamp at the corner of Portage Avenue and Valour Road to tell the tale of these three men.


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Anzac Day Centenary Services in Dublin

Some 600 people turn out on April 25, 2015 for the annual Anzac Day service at Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin to mark the 100th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. The crowd is three times that which usually attends the service and reflects the increased interest in the Gallipoli campaign on the centenary of the military debacle.

The Australian ambassador to Ireland Dr. Ruth Adler and British ambassador to Ireland Dominick Chilcott are both at the ceremony along with diplomatic representatives from both New Zealand and Turkey. The Irish Government is represented by Tánaiste Joan Burton, Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Rersources Alex White and Minister of State for Communities, Culture and Equality Aodhán Ó Ríordáin. Poems and prayers are recited and ten schoolchildren read out the names of Anzac troops who drowned when the RMS Leinster was torpedoed off the Irish coast on October 10, 1918.

Burton says so many people from all the nations involved in the Gallipoli campaign lost relatives there and it is important that such an event should never happen again.

Ó Ríordáin says his own great-uncle James Sheridan was killed at Gallipoli five days after the landings and now lies for eternity in V Beach Cemetery. He adds that the decade of centenaries has sought to “reawaken the dormant memories, the forgotten, the unspoken and maybe even dispel some of the shame there that might have existed. Like so many other Irish families I too have discovered in recent years to those who fought in World War I as well as those who fought for Irish freedom here”.

A wreath is laid at Grangegorman Military Cemetery on behalf of the people of Ireland by Minister for Communications White.

Later White and the British ambassador unveil at Glasnevin Cemetery eight paving stones commemorating Irish-born soldiers who won the Victoria Cross (VC) during the war. Four of the soldiers involved, Pte. William Kenealy from the Lancashire Fusiliers, Pte. William Cosgrove from the Royal Munster Fusiliers, Capt. Gerald O’Sullivan from the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and Sgt. James Somers also from the Royal Inniskilling, won theirs at Gallipoli.

Among those present at Glasnevin Cemetery is Joe Day, a relation of Corporal William Cosgrove.

At the unveiling ceremony in Glasnevin Cemetery, White reveals that he had two great-uncles who were killed at the Somme. He says a “great silence” had descended on Ireland after the first World War but he hoped that silence has now ended.

Chilcott says nine million soldiers served in the British Imperial Forces during World War I and only 628 were awarded the Victoria Cross, the equivalent of less than one in 10,000 of those who fought. “Those who earn it are certainly the bravest of the brave. These men are very special. That is why we honour them,” he says.

The other Irish VC winners who are honoured with paving stones are Lieuteant George Roupell from the Royal Irish Fusiliers, CSM Frederick Hall from the Canadian (Winnipeg Rifles), Major David Nelson from the Royal Artillery and William Kenny from the Gordon Highlanders.

The paving stones are paid for by the British Government and all 34 awarded to those who were from what is now the Republic of Ireland are placed around the Cross of Sacrifice in Glasnevin Cemetery.

(From: “Hundreds attend Anzac service in Dublin to remember Gallipoli dead” by Ronan McGreevy, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, April 25, 2015. Pictured: British Ambassador to Ireland Dominick Chilcott (right) meets Joe Day from Whitegate in Cork, whose grand uncle William Cosgrove VC survived Gallipoli, at the Glasnevin Cemetery commemoration to mark the 100th Anzac anniversary. Photograph: Peter Houlihan/Fennells)