Brandon soldier killed in WWI identified

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This article was published 03/10/2024 (576 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The grave of a First World War soldier in Ypres, Belgium, has been confirmed to be that of a man who went to school and worked in Brandon, the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces announced Wednesday.

The soldier’s identity was confirmed through historical research involving war diaries, service records, casualty registers and grave exhumation and relocation reports, the department said in a press release.

Cpl. William Benjamin Cunningham was born near Hayfield (a former village in what is now the Municipality of Souris-Glenwood) in 1895. He worked as a clerk in Brandon and served in the 99th Manitoba Rangers militia unit before enlisting with the 181st Overseas Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force. In 1917, he arrived in England to train and was taken on by the 44th Canadian Infantry Battalion. He then joined his unit in France and was promoted to the rank of corporal.

In October 1917, during the Third Battle of Ypres (also known as the Battle of Passchendaele), 45 members of the 44th Battalion were killed; 29 of those were declared missing with no known grave.

According to his files, Cunningham was killed in action on Oct. 27, 1917, during intense shelling while fighting at an outpost past the Canadians’ front lines, the release said. He was 21 years old.

In a letter addressed to Cunningham’s mother, Sylinda Harper Cunningham, a chaplain from the 44th Battalion, George Farquhar, wrote that Cunningham was killed by a sniper’s bullet and died instantly.

“In your sorrow may there be brightness of remembering that he gave his life, bravely in the discharge of his duty, in one of the fights that will be famous for the bold advance in the face of very great difficulties,” Farquhar wrote.

According to the Nov. 13, 1917 edition of The Brandon Sun, his mother had just sent a Christmas box to her son, when she received the news of his death. Cunningham came to Brandon to take his first year’s arts course at Brandon College and enlisted as soon as he was military age.

Cunningham had two brothers — one worked on a farm and the other was attending a business college.

The Canadian Armed Forces said it has notified Cunningham’s family of his identification. A headstone rededication ceremony will take place at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium, the release said.

Cunningham is commemorated on Panel 28 of the Ypres Memorial, which honours the soldiers killed in the Ypres Salient in Belgium during the First World War who have no known grave. He is also commemorated on his family headstone, located in the Brandon Municipal Cemetery.

In 1920, a grave managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), registered as “a corporal of the Great War — 44th Battalion Canadian Infantry — known unto God,” was relocated to Tyne Cot Cemetery in Ypres. One hundred years later in April 2020, the Directorate of History and Heritage (DHH) received a research report from the CWGC submitted to them by independent researchers detailing the potential identification of the grave.

Research by the CWGC and DHH confirmed that the grave was that of Cunningham.

In November 2023, the Casualty Identification Review Board confirmed Cunningham’s identification.

Since it was founded in 2007, the CAF’s casualty identification program has identified the remains of 36 Canadians. In 2019, the program officially took on the additional responsibility of identifying the graves of Canadian service members buried as unknowns and has since identified 12.

There are currently 40 active investigations involving remains, and 38 involving graves.

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