Alan J. Hanchard was working a bank messenger when he enlisted in December 1914. Like many people, he thought the war would be over in a few months and he saw it as a good opportunity to make money fast to support his sister and widowed mother.

When he joined the 53rd Battalion at age seventeen, he had no idea the war would last for four years and be such a deadly conflict. He was transferred to the 54th Battalion Lewis Gun Section, where he became a sergeant. Even so, he always felt apart of the 53rd Battalion and he wrote a history of that battalion, which was on file at the University of Saskatchewan.

In October 1916, he was hit in the arm and back with shrapnel at the Battle of the Somme at the Regina Trench and shrapnel remained lodged in his back for the rest of his life. He spent the rest of the war rehabilitating and training other troops.

He returned to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1919 and worked for Canada Permanent Trust. He later settled in Toronto and spent the remainder of his working life with the provincial government.

He and his wife, Ethel (née Gardner), had their daughter Josephine then Ethel died before the Second World War. Hanchard later married Agnes (Pat) (née Sowden).

Hanchard’s granddaughter, Sandra Walton, remembers working on an essay in Grade 12 about the war and he said she could go to his house at lunch hour to discuss the war. Once she got there, he couldn’t talk about it. “That was the closest he ever got to talking,” said Walton. It was only after Hanchard died that Pat found notes he had typed up outlining his military career.

He died in July 1968 and Pat died in 1980.

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