Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command of The Royal Canadian Legion www.ns.legion.ca 27 878408 Private Roderick Alexander MacLennan 85th Battalion (Nova Scotia Highlanders) continued ... “There's a piper on the hillside at the closing of the day You can hear his stirring music where the sunset fades away You can see him through the maples as he marches to the shore And he enters in that cabin, by the waters of Bras D'or.” -Lillian Crewe Walsh Roderick Alexander “Rod” MacLennan was born in Dalem Lake, Cape Breton, on 12 April, 1892, to Roderick and Rachel (McLeod) MacLennan. Dalem Lake is located on Boulardrie Island, Bras d'Or Lake, between Big Bras D’or and Hillside Boulardrie. Rod left his work on the family farm to enlist in the 73rd Battalion (Royal Highlanders of Canada) on 24 June, 1916, in Aldershot, NS. His initial medical assessment, upon enlisting, noted he had a ruddy complexion, blue eyes, brown hair, weighed 145 pounds and stood 5’-7 ½” tall. A month later he was posted to the 185th Battalion (Cape Breton Highlanders). After basic and initial infantry training, he left Halifax on SS Olympic on 12 October, arriving in England six days later. Rod arrived in France in early December and spent all of January 1917 in hospital with the mumps. Private MacLennan was posted to the 85th Battalion on 19 April, 1917, ten days after the initial attack on Vimy Ridge. The Canadian tactical victory at Vimy Ridge was part of the much larger Battle of Arras that raged on until mid-May. In 39 days of fighting, some 300,000 men on both sides were wounded, missing or dead. The British/Canadian forces suffered an average of 4,000 casualties every day, the highest average daily casualty rate, at that time, of any of their First World War assaults. On 20 May the 85th went into the line in front of Angres, near Fosse 6, in relief of the 72nd Battalion (Seaforth Highlanders of Canada). This was all new territory for the NS Highlanders. It was a very hard front as the Germans held commanding positions looking into the trenches of the 85th and could bring down enfilade fire on them at will. It meant constant vigilance night and day. On 23 May the 85th were getting ready to rotate out of the line the next day and turn it over to the 78th Battalion (Winnipeg Grenadiers). It was a warm rainy day, and as the unit war diary notes, that evening the Germans shelled the position with minenwerfers (short range mortars) on the left, killing 4 members of D Company, and with High Explosive shells on the right killing 5 members of A Company. Rod was killed in that action. He had been in the unit for only 5 weeks. Private Roderick Alexander MacLennan is buried in grave 29A19 of the Cabaret-Rouge British Cemetery south of the town of Souchez in France along with 324 other Canadians. That cemetery holds the graves of 3195 soldiers of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and Germany. We will remember them.
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