Kenora Great War Project

 

Personal Details
Date of BirthAugust 15, 1898
Place of BirthArnprior, Renfrew County, Ontario
CountryCanada
Marital StatusSingle
Next of KinMrs. Alice Sarah Glenn Hodgins (mother), Roseisle, Manitoba
Trade / CallingRailroad worker
ReligionMethodist
Service Details
Regimental Number700588
Service RecordLink to Service Record
Battalion43rd Battalion
ForceCanadian Expeditionary Force
BranchCanadian Infantry
Enlisted / ConscriptedEnlisted
Place of EnlistmentWinnipeg, Manitoba
Address at EnlistmentRoseisle, Manitoba
Date of EnlistmentJanuary 4, 1916
Age at Enlistment17
Theatre of ServiceEurope
Prisoner of WarNo
Survived WarYes
Death Details
Date of DeathJanuary 2, 1961
Age at Death62

Hodgins, Stanley Morrison

Private Stanley Morrison Hodgins (aka Stanley Morris Hodgins) was 17 years old when he enlisted in January 1916. He served France and Belgium with the 43rd Battalion and was wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele.

Stanley was the oldest son of William Walter Lynn Hodgins and Alice Sarah Glenn. Walter and Alice were married in 1895 in Arnprior, Renfrew County, Ontario. Both were widowed at the time and both were born in the County of Pontiac, Quebec. Walter was a blacksmith and he and Alice had at least four children: Myrtle Lillian (1896), Stanley Morris (1898), William Bower McQueen (1901) and Muriel Verna (1909). Stanley was born in Arnprior on 15 August 1898. His younger brother William was also born in Arnprior. Sometime after that the family moved west to Manitoba and Muriel was born in the town of Carman. For the 1911 census they were in the community of Roseisle in the RM of Dufferin.

The war entered its second year in the summer of 1915 and Stanley and his father both enlisted that winter. Walter was 45 years old and he signed up with the Canadian Engineers in March 1916. He was sent to England in May and he served there as a blacksmith for a year. He was discharged from service in May 1917, due to being overage and having a hernia.

Stanley enlisted in Winnipeg on 4 January 1916, signing up with the 101st Battalion. He was 17 years old, a railroad worker living in Roseisle, and next of kin was his mother. His battalion was one of several units recruited in and around Winnipeg. The men trained in the city during the winter and at the end of May they moved to Camp Hughes, a military camp just east of Brandon. On 23 June they boarded trains bound for the east coast and during the stopover in Winnipeg about 5,000 people gathered at the station to see them on their way. A week later the battalion embarked from Halifax on the SS Olympic. Shortly after arriving in England the recruits were absorbed into the 17th Reserve Battalion, to be used as reinforcements for other units.

Stanley spent only three months training in England. On 9 September 1916 he was drafted to a front line unit, the 43rd Battalion, and sent to France. In early February 1917 he contracted rubella and he spent a month recovering at No. 12 Stationary Hospital. In August the battalion took part in the Battle of Hill 70, near Lens in France, and that fall they were moved north for the assault on Passchendaele Ridge. The Passchendaele operation was carried out in several phases starting on 26 October. The 43rd Battalion took part in the first phase, advancing up the Bellevue Spur very early on 26 October. Stanley was one of the casualties that day, suffering a shell wound to his back. He was evacuated to a field ambulance and from there to No. 2 Canadian General Hospital in Le Treport. He recovered in the hospital for two months, followed by a month at No. 3 Convalescent Depot.

In March 1918 Stanley became ill while he was on leave in England and he served there for the remainder of the war. He required treatment for vd from March to July and chronic trench mouth from August until December. Hostilities on the Western Front ended that November and Stanley embarked for Canada about a month later, arriving in Halifax on the SS Carmania on 30 December. He was discharged due to demobilization on 4 February 1919 in Winnipeg.

When the 1921 census was taken Stanley was enumerated in Wade Station, about 6 miles west of Redditt in northwestern Ontario. He was listed as a salesman. About two years later he and his parents moved to the U.S. and settled in the Los Angeles area in California. Stanley was married in Los Angeles on 1 August 1927. He was a chemist at the time and his wife, Naomi Phillio, was a teacher. She was born in Oklahoma in 1902, the daughter of William and Anna Phillio.

Stanley’s mother died in Los Angeles in 1927 and his father in 1937. When the 1940 census was taken he was employed in industrial steam cleaning in a steel mill and Naomi was a public school teacher. No children were listed with them in the 1930 and 1940 censuses. Stanley passed away in Los Angeles on 2 January 1961, at age 62, and his wife followed in 1979.

Stanley and his father are both commemorated on the Roseisle War Memorial in Roseisle, Manitoba, “In Memory of Our Brave Boys 1914-1918.” They are also remembered in the war service pages of the local history book, “The Rural Municipality of Dufferin, 1880-1980.”

By Becky Johnson

Photo of Stanley is from the 101st Battalion Souvenir Programme (1916).


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