A soldier killed in the Battle of Passchendaele during the First World War has been identified as a Manitoba corporal.
William Benjamin Cunningham, 21, was killed in October 1917. He was buried as an unknown soldier in Tyne Cot cemetery in Ypres, Belgium, in 1920.
The Department of National Defence announced his identity Wednesday.
The Canadian Armed Forces have notified Cunningham’s relatives. A headstone rededication ceremony will take place at the cemetery in the future.
“More than a century ago, a young man from Manitoba courageously sought to serve his country in wartime. As we honour Cpl. Cunningham for his dedication, we assure his family that Canada will forever be grateful for his service,” National Defence Minister Bill Blair said in a news release.
Cunningham was born near Hayfield on Dec. 30, 1895. He worked as a clerk in Brandon, attended Brandon College and served in the 99th Manitoba Rangers militia unit before enlisting with the 181st Battalion, a unit in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
Cunningham arrived in England for training in April 1917. He joined his unit in France that August and was promoted to corporal the next month.
Cunningham’s military files indicate he was killed in action on Oct. 27. He was past the front lines during the Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres.
“For unknown reasons, his remains were not identified,” the release said.
A letter to Cunningham’s mother from an infantry chaplain informing her of his death said the fighting was the worst he had seen.
“Your son was in the front line with his men. He fell from the bullet of a sniper. Death came instantly, so that he was spared suffering,” George Farquhar wrote.
Cunningham’s identity was confirmed through historical research, including war diaries, service records, casualty registers, and grave exhumation and relocation reports.
The grave of a corporal was moved to the Tyne Cot cemetery in 1920. A report by independent researchers on the potential identification of the remains was filed 100 years later, in April 2020. The “extensive research” that followed confirmed the grave could only be Cunningham’s.
The Casualty Identification Review Board, founded in 2007, has identified the remains of 36 Canadians killed in wartime, including more than a dozen Manitobans who were fighting in the First World War.
Cpl. Frederick Percival Bousfield was killed in the Battle of Mount Sorrel in Belgium in June 1916.
Four Canadian soldiers from Manitoba — Sgt. Archibald Wilson, Pte. William Donegan, Pte. Reginald Joseph Winfield Johnston and Pte. Henry Priddle — were killed during the Battle of Hill 70 in France in August 1917.
Five soldiers — Lance Sgt. John Oscar Lindell, Lt. Clifford Neelands, Pte. Sidney Halliday, Pte. Lachlan McKinnon and Pte. William Simms — were killed in the Battle of Amiens in France in August 1918.
Lance-Cpl. Morgan Jones Jenkins was killed in the Second Battle of Arras in France in August 1918.
Corporal George Herbert Ledingham and Pte. Alexander Johnson, who was not from Manitoba but served with the Winnipeg Grenadiers, were killed in fighting near Cambrai, France, in September 1918.
adam.treusch@freepress.mb.ca