Stanley Kidd was born on January 23,
1890 in Warsaw, Ontario to parents
Daniel Kidd and Lucy Moore. Stanley spent
his early years in the village of Warsaw where Daniel was employed as a
blacksmith.
By 1911, Daniel had died and Stanley, along with his widowed mother and 3 siblings, moved to Lakefield (Lot 26, Concession 7 Smith Township) where the family was employed in farming.
Stanley enlisted into the 93rd Battalion C.E.F. in Peterborough on February 10th, 1916. He indicated that he had previously served two years with the militia in the 46th Durham regiment. He was 25 years and 1 month old, stood 5 foot 5 inches tall, had a dark complexion, blue eyes and black hair. He indicated that his occupation was as a farmer and his religion was Presbyterian.
Pte. Stanley Kidd appears on the nominal role of the 93rd Battalion and sailed with that battalion out of Halifax aboard the SS Empress of Britain on July 15th 1916 to England. He spent the summer training at Otterpoole Camp in England, during which time the 9rd battalion was broken up and its ranks used to reinforce other Canadian battalions already fighting at the front. Kidd was one of a large draft of fifty-sixty 93rd men sent to the 52nd “New Ontario” battalion, a unit largely comprised of men from Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario.
Pte. Kidd made his way to France on October 15th and joined the 52nd a week later in a rest camp on the Somme. The learning curve was steep for Kidd as he would enter the trenches only a week after joining his battalion.
Pte. Kidd spent the next three months in the Thelus sector in the fairly repetitive routine of a week in the front lines, a week in support and a third week in the rest camps. Though the 52nd was not involved in any major attacks during that time, they were routinely subject to losses form enemy shelling, sniping and at least one raid conducted into enemy lines by the 52nd.
Though Pte. Kidd was able to avoid enemy shells and bullets, he was not immune
to the rain and cold of the trenches and was brought down with pneumonia and trench-foot
on January 30th 1917. After a
few days at the casualty clearing station behind the line, he was evacuated to
a hospital in Etaples, before being transferred to a British hospital in Birmingham
on February 20th.
He recovered sufficiently to be posted to the Manitoba Regt. Depot on March 10th at Dibgate Camp, but later due to the persistent trench foot, was admitted to the Canadian Convalescent hospital at Epsom on June 12th. He was discharged two weeks later on June 29th.
The toll of the pneumonia and the trench foot (which was ascribed to frost bite) seems to have taken a considerable toll on Stanley’s health, as rather than being sent back to the front, he was sent to the Canadian Discharge Depot at Buxton on August 18th to await transport back to Canada.
On October 2nd 1917, Pte. Kidd sailed from Liverpool, England for Canada aboard the S.S. Scandinavian on Special authority. He made his way east to Toronto where he was admitted to a convalescent home on the 23rd. He was cleared for outpatient status nearly a month later on November 17 before being fully discharged on December 31st 1917 and rated as a class III, or needing to recover before being transferred back overseas.
Stanley returned to the family farm in Lakefield where he died of Spanish Influenza on November 17, 1918. He was 28 years, 9 months old and had fought the sickness for three months before succumbing. He was given a full military funeral which was attended by a large number of friends and neighbors, including a six Great War veterans who acted a spall bearers.
He is commemorated on the Dummer Township Cenotaph, in Warsaw, Ontario.
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