In late January 1917, Leslie Hale wrote to Clara, his sister, back in Stoughton, Saskatchewan. Despite the winter weather and the rough conditions of the trenches, all Hale could think about was his nieces and nephews back home.

“Dear Sister … Tell children that I am sorry that I could not send them some Xmas presents,” he wrote. “Money is so scarce here, as I only get twenty cents per day. The rest of our money is kept for us until we get back.”

“Leslie was always closest to his nieces and nephews, always asking how they were,” said Grant Hale, Leslie’s grandnephew. “Here Leslie is, sitting in a trench and all he’s worried about is presents for his nephews and nieces. That’s what really hit me as I read this. Leslie was always the type of guy who thought of others.”

Sadly, the Hale family would experience more than its share of tragedy.

A sniper with the 46th Battalion, Leslie was badly wounded at Vimy Ridge in April 1917. Sent to England to recuperate, he returned to the front in mid-October only to be killed on November 3 at Ypres, Belgium. His body was never recovered. He was twenty-one-years-old.

Leslie’s brother Victor enlisted in 1916, one month shy of his thirty-ninth birthday. He was gassed during an attack somewhere at the front. “Although he did get back (to Canada),” Grant said, “he suffered a lot and died in 1921.”

Another brother, Gerald, enlisted in the 222nd Battalion. After the Armistice, he moved to the United States, never to be heard from again.

A fourth brother, Frank, never got a chance to serve. Grant Hale said Frank intended to enlist, but before he could, he was involved in a freak accident—his arm was mangled by a threshing machine during harvest. The day after the accident, it was amputated.

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