Cpl. Herman Rusaw 636600 4th CMR

 

Lance Corporal Herman Rusaw

155^th Battalion/ 4^th Canadian Mounted Rifles

Regimental Number 636600

Herman Francis Rusaw was born on February 15^th, 1897 in Dummer Township, Ontario. He was the son of Isaac and Charlotte Rusaw.   

Herman was nearly 18 years old, living in Coe Hill, Ontario and working as a labourer when he enlisted with the 155^th Overseas Battalion on February 10^th 1916.  He stood 5 feet tall, weighed 130 pounds and had a ruddy complexion, brown hair and brown eyes.  He was a member of the Church of England and had no previous military experience. 

Pte. Rusaw made his way east with the 155^th to the port of Halifax, where they boarded the S.S. Northland on October 17, 1916.  After 11 days on the Atlantic, they arrived safely in England and we then entrained for Bramshott.  The 155^th was broken up and used to reinforce Canadian battalions already at the front.  Rusaw was part of a draft sent to reinforce the 4^th Canadian Mounted Rifles in France on November 11^th 1916.  The 4th CMR (unlike its name infers) was an infantry unit that had arrived in France close to a year prior and had since that time seen terrible fighting at Mount Sorrel and the Somme, on weeks earlier.

Rusaw arrived a relatively quiet time as the battalion was preparing to move to the Vimy sector to train and prepare for the upcoming assault.  These few months preceding the attack on Vimy were not without casualties, as the 4^th CMR would take on a steady trickle of killed and wounded men, referred to as trench wastage, merely holding the line, as well as from the various raids into enemy trenches .

The “Big Show” of the Vimy attack came in the early hours of Easter morning on April 9^th 1917.  The 4^th CMR, as part of the initial assault, advanced behind a heavy scree of artillery, and were able to push over a kilometre into the German lines in a couple of hours. The rest of the day was spent fending off counterattacks and avoiding enemy artillery that pounded the newly won trenches.

The 4th Mounted Rifles listed 44 men killed and 131 wounded during that day, among them Pte. Rusaw, who was wounded by shrapnel in the right leg.  He would have been stretchered off the battlefield, or possibly walked out with the aid of a comrade to a first aid post as his wound was recorded as “slight”. There, his wound would have been dressed before he was sent back the line to a casualty clearing station and then on to the No.3 Canadian General

Hospital at Boulogne on April 11^th.  At the hospital he was listed as receiving treatment for a superficial shrapnel wound on the inside of his left thigh, before being sent across the Channel at the Horton Convalescent Hospital in Epsom, England on April 13^th.  After nearly a month, he was transferred to nearby Woodcote Park to further convalesce, before being discharged on May 24^th.

Pte. Rusaw would spend another 6 months in England with the 8^th Reserve Battalion at Shorncliffe, before rejoining the 4^th Canadian Mounted Rifles at the front on November 29^th 1917.  He continued his service at the front and was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal on July 25^th.

Rusaw would receive his second wound on August 29^th 1918 during the 3 day battle of Arras in the form of a shrapnel wound to his right arm.  He was evacuated to No.7 Canadian General Hospital Etaples, and then sent back to England on September 1^st to a hospital in Manchester.   After two weeks in hospital he was transferred to the convalescent depot at Woodcote Park, Epsom, where he was found as unfit for further military service. 

Rusaw remained in the Canadian military camps in England until the wars end, sailing home aboard the SS Metagama on January 15^th, 1919.  He was discharged on February 5^th.

 

Sources

Canada. "Military Service File of Herman Francis Rusaw." Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa: Record Group 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 8546 - 13. Item Number 617501.