William Marshall Downey was knocked down from a bomb that exploded nearby and thrown into a pile of bodies. Thinking he was dead, some fellow soldiers went to move him, heard him groan and realized he was alive.

William enlisted in October 1915 and lied about his age—he said he was eighteen when he was seventeen. His family believes he enlisted so young to get away from his stepmother who didn’t like him.

The private served with the 95th Battalion at Vimy.

He survived the war and returned to Alliston, Ontario, and married Bernice (née Murphy), who had served in the Ontario Farm Service Corps during the summer of 1918. Women who joined were known as “Farmerettes” and worked jobs normally held at the time by men, picking fruit, harvesting grains and tending to livestock.

After the war she returned to being a stay-at-home mom, despite being related to Canadian women’s rights activist Emily Murphy. Murphy was part of the Famous Five, a group of women who successfully fought to have women recognized as persons and thus be able to sit in the senate.

William and Bernice married in 1923 and had four kids—Don, Joe, Marybelle and Roseanne. William ran a menswear store and lost it during the Depression because he loaned his friends money and they couldn’t pay him back. “Times were tough,” recalls daughter Roseanne Beyers. “The four of us kids had a birthday party to go to and all mom had was four quarters so each of us got a quarter to give to the birthday person.”

During the Second World War, he worked as a rubber inspector. He died in the 1970s.

Do you have an ancestor who served in the Great War? Submit their story and it could be included on this Great War Album website.