A Great War ‘Battle of the Scarpe’ M.M. group of three awarded to Corporal S. C. Wright, 85th Battalion (Nova Scotia Highlanders), Canadian Expeditionary Force, who survived the action of 2 September 1918 when his Battalion suffered over a third of its fighting strength in casualties

Military Medal, G.V.R. (488831 Cpl. C. Wright. 85/N.Scotia R.); British War and Victory Medals (488831 Cpl. S. C. Wright. 85-Can. Inf.) traces of adhesive to reverses, good very fine and better (3) £400-£500

M.M. London Gazette 3 July 1919.

The original recommendation states: ‘For conspicuous gallantry during the Scarpe Operations, while acting as company runner. Although wounded at the jump off, he carried on carrying messages across the area swept by machine gun fire and never once failed to report to his Company Commander all through the advance. On one occasion he cleared a dugout of 30 Huns and sent them back practically single handed. Later, he was again wounded but still refused to be evacuated and remained on duty during the whole operation.’

Stanley Carl Wright was born in Truro, Nova Scotia, on 25 July 1899, and attested for the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Halifax on 14 December 1915. Taken on strength in England 15 March 1916, he trained at East Sandling with the 17th Reserve Battalion, C.E.F., but was soon sent to No. 4 General Hospital in London suffering from appendicitis. This set him back for many months, and it was not until July 1917 that he proceeded from Bramshott to the Western Front with the 85th Battalion.

Operations on the Scarpe in the early autumn of 1918 are carefully detailed in Chapter XIII of The Eighty-Fifth Canadian Infantry Battalion, Nova Scotia Highlanders in France and Flanders by Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Hayes, D.S.O., Canadian Army Medical Corps. Designed to build upon previous Canadian success at Vimy and Amiens, the Battalion rose from the trenches at 04.20am on 2 September 1918 and attempted to take the first 3 trenches of the Drocourt-Queant system, before ‘leap frogging’ further enemy resistance and making good the sunken road leading towards the windmill at Mt. Dury:

‘The Battalion jumped off and met, as had been expected, with very serious resistance from the enemy line of machine gun emplacements immediately in front of “C” Company’s advance posts. Very severe hand-to-hand fighting was encountered and some 30 heavy M.G.’s captured before the line laid down for the original jump off was reached. The Hun machine-gunners were all picked men and exhibited courage of the highest order. They persisted in working their guns to the end, and could only be silenced by a bullet or bayonet. Almost every captured M.G. had a dead Heinie hanging on to the trigger.’

In the face of withering machine-gun and artillery fire, the final wave of the 85th succeeded in crossing the summit of Mt. Dury, but further progress proved fruitless amidst a ‘rain of bullets’. The attack proved to be the breaking of the much-vaulted and formerly (viewed as) ‘impregnable’ Hindenburg Line, the final organised barrier of German defences; but the decimation of the attacking waves of the 85th proved that the German Army was a long way from beaten.

Wright’s name and the above citation is carefully detailed by Lieutenant-Colonel Hayes alongside a host of brave deeds carried out by the 85th in September 1918. Recorded as wounded in action in his Canadian Army Service Record on 4 September 1918, Wright nevertheless remained on duty and continued the vital work of maintaining communications; his gallantry was later recognised with the award of the Military Medal and promotion to Corporal on 27 September 1918. Evacuated home per S.S. Adriatic 8 June 1919, Wright was discharged on 15 June 1919.