People say smoking kills but in the case of Richard William Mercer, it saved his life.

On November 6, 1917, at the Battle of Passchendaele, the private was hit with shrapnel from a German artillery shell. The shards ripped through his Bible and dented his cigarette case. “There can be no doubt this thin case saved his life during his first of two woundings in the Great War,” said Dwight Mercer. “His children and grandchildren are only alive today because of this small miracle of this cigarette case.” At the time he was treated for a shell concussion and cuts. It was only days later that he noticed a tear in his uniform, where the shrapnel had entered.

Mercer enlisted in the 196th University Battalion from Saskatchewan in April 1916 at age nineteen with two friends from school, Walter A. Wylie and Thomas L. Tracy. Mercer and Tracy served in the Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade at Passchendaele, where Tracy was killed and Mercer was wounded. Wylie was wounded by shrapnel in the Battle of Amiens and survived.

Mercer also served at the Battle of Hill 70 and the Hundred Days Offensive. Towards the end of the war Mercer served with the Borden Motor Machine Gun Battery. By Christmas Eve in 1918, only three men from the unit were alive—Mercer, the captain (he later became a colonel) and another private. The colonel invited the two privates to spend one last Christmas dinner together. The rest of the unit had been wiped out during the Hundred Days Offensive. Mercer returned to Canada in 1919.

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.