Candid WW I photographs yield 100-year-old mystery

Tucked away in a back corner of the stately, 100-year-old Black Watch regimental building in Montreal is the tiny, overflowing office where Cynthia Jones works to preserve a centurys worth of treasures.

• Check out the photos from the Black Watch archives

While the regiments most cherished treasures medals won by officers and mementos from warare on display in the regimental museum, thousands more pieces remain hidden.

Among them are hundreds of candid snapshots of the First World War. The faces peering back from the photographs are those of young men, mostly between 15 and 30 years old, who eagerly joined the war effort.

Theyre photographed in muddied trenches, marching through fields and readying for war on the journey across the Atlantic.

And, for the most part, their names have slipped into the historical abyss.

The photographs were donated to the regiments archives, some from officers and soldiers themselves, others through estates and family members. They were pasted in books, collected in boxes and now mostly live in a collection of drawers and storage, out of the public eye.

Jones is in a race against time to try toreclaim the names of the young men who left the comforts of home for a war like nothing anyone had ever seen.

It really is a giant puzzle youre forever trying to fit pieces into, she said. It helps to have anyone look at them who might know someone.

The Black Watchs archives represent the regiments tangible links to its storied past.

One hundred years ago, as war was declared in Europe, the soldiers of the Black Watch were still far from the battlefields.

Three battalions eventually joined the war effort in 1915 more than 11,000 men in all. They fought in Ypes, Vimy and Passchendaele. When the armistice was reached,Black Watch pipers led the allies into Mons.

More than 2,200 men didnt return and remain buried in fields and graveyards across Europe.

They came from across Canada, and even the U.S. They were farmers and students and businessmen.

Some, like the Molsons, Olglvies, Drummonds and Birks are still recognizable names inMontreal.

Others faded into history.

The regiments archives are packed with personal items collected from members.

There arephotos and letters, some penned by KingGeorge V.

There areuniforms and poems written in the trenches and sketches penned by homesick soldiers to document their lives with the ladies from hell, the regiments rumoured nickname among German troops.

Each one of the pieces is connected to a life once lived by a soldier who walked the halls of this building, fought and died in battle, whoreturned home to loved ones or remains buried in a field abroad.

Jones, who started her work with the Black Watch after her son started taking bagpipe lessons at the regiment, has worked to digitize most of the photographs, carefully cataloguing each snapshot with the limited information she had.

Now shes hoping to fill in some of the many blanks. It may be 100 years removed, but Jones says that doesn't mean their memory has faded from modern day.

"We do still have people who have pictures of their grandfathers, so every now and then some one will look at a picture and say, `That`s my grandfather! We have a picture of him hanging in our home,'" she said.

"That`s exciting for us because it's one more piece to the puzzle."

Take a look at the photographs. Can you put a name to any of the anonymous young faces of the Great War?

(Photos: Black Watch archives)

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