Two years prior to the Great War, William Fraser and his family moved from Edinburgh, Scotland with dreams to establish a country farmstead outside Kootenay Bay, British Columbia. While he was worried about leaving his ailing father, who had recently suffered a stroke, Fraser enlisted with the 9th Field Ambulance, Canadian Medical Corp, in 1916 and departed for England.

Until the end of the war, Fraser conducted evacuations of the injured from the frontlines to first-aid stations. The duty often required him to advance ahead of the Canadian vanguard to retrieve the savable —his life was in constant danger. At Passchendaele, the realities of trench warfare and constant artillery bombardments made road infrastructure for stretcher-bearers non-existent. “We carried cases from R.A.P.’s [Regimental Aid Posts] to the A.D.S.’s [Advanced Dressing Stations] along these narrow duckboards with little hope of surviving if we slipped off into the deep mud,” he wrote in his memoirs.

Fraser participated in the Canadian assault that captured Vimy Ridge —the imagery of the national event was not lost on the twenty year old. “As we moved over the summit, shrapnel was bursting overhead,” wrote Fraser. “One piece, which I still posses, penetrated the sleeve of my tunic.” He vividly recalled in his diary looking up to the sky, while on guard duty near Vimy in Neuville Saint Vaast, to see an iconic Great War scene. “I saw the red planes of Baron Von Richtoven’s squadron dive out from a cloud, bring one of our slow planes down in flames and attack our line of observation balloons.”

On Armistice Day, Frazer was with the Canadian offensive in Mons. He continued his duties helping the injured as Allied forces rebuilt infrastructure and prepared final withdrawals in the aftermath of victory.

Returning home, Fraser was demobilized in Montreal early 1919, and made his way back to the farm in Kootenay Bay. His father passed away while his was overseas, and he took over operation of the business. He met and married a local schoolteacher, June, in 1920. Fraser participated in the dedication of the Vimy Memorial in 1936. In 1998, at his retirement home, the Mons City Council presented him with the Freedom of the City of Mons award. Fraser passed away in 1999 at the age of 101.

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