George Henry Harrington was paralyzed from the waist down after a bullet from a German machine gun entered his left hip and lodged in his spine. This was April 24, 1915, the first day of the Battle of St. Julien, northeast of Ypres, Belgium.
Harrington was sent to hospitals in France and England to be treated, but doctors deemed his injury inoperable because of its position near his spine.
A year later, the bullet miraculously moved and he regained full movement. However, the slug caused him pain for the rest of his life — a constant reminder of war’s horror. “I don’t think daddy every got over the war — a lot them didn’t,” said Florence Harrington, one of his six daughters.
Harrington received an honourable discharge from the 23rd Battalion in March, 1917. He then performed garrison duty in Montreal as a sergeant with the No. 4 Detachment of the Canadian Military Police Corps from March 1918 to April 1919.
He kept a victory garden in Verdun, Montreal, during the Great Depression and he lined the inside walls of his shed with images of the war clipped from newspapers and magazines.
“I guess he papered the walls of the shed because he thought it was a good way to be surrounded by history while he was relaxing in the shed,” said grandson Philip Authier.
He also posted pictures of the Royal family — a reminder of his homeland. “He was loyal to England all his life and, although a long time resident of Canada, never took out citizenship here,” said Authier, adding that he never took out a bank account either.
Harrington worked as a waiter for the Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway to provide for his wife Dorothy (Dora) Beattie, their five daughters, and their one son. In 1939, he was honoured to be selected to serve King George V and Queen Elizabeth I in their dining car across the country.
He died of a heart attack August 26, 1947, just before his sixty-sixth birthday. He’s buried in the Field of Honour in Pointe-Claire, Quebec.
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.