The best birthday present a man could ask for
The Pilot, November 9, 1977

Roland Hart, when people remark on the fact that his birthday is on Armistice Day, always sets the facts straight. “You’re wrong,” he tells them. “Armistice day is on my birthday,”

Mr. Hart served his King and country in two world Wars, on the battlefields during the First World War, and in the Newfoundland Forestry Unit in England during the Second World War.

This Friday, November 11th, Armistice Day, will be Mr. Hart’s 81st birthday. A native of Fogo, Mr. Hart lives today with Leah, his wife of almost 51 years, at home in Payne’s Harbour, Fogo Island.

“I joined the army in the spring of 1916,” he recalls, “and was posted to D Company of the Newfoundland regiment. My regimental number was 4176.

“We did some training in St. John’s, then they sent us across to England, and we finished our training in Winchester; then we were sent to France.”

“I went up to the front for the first time on July 12, 1916, less than two weeks after the battle of Beaumont Hamel, when the regiment was shot up so bad.

“They used to call the Newfoundlanders the Bulldogs, and it wasn’t for nothing that they did so. We didn’t have any training worth speaking of; we didn’t know what war was like. We just went out there and acted like crazy people.

“You have to be drunk to tell the whole truth about it, even now. And even if a man were to tell it truthfully, exactly what it was like, over there, and everything that happened, nobody would believe him.

“When I got up to the regiment, the captain asked me if I was kin to Jack Hart, and I told him, “Well, maybe, just buttonhole kin.” He told me if I was half as good as Jack Hart, that I have no need to be ashamed of myself. I told him that even if I weren’t half so good, I still had no need to be ashamed of myself, because he only stopped a bullet, and that’s all I should do in the end. The captain allowed I was a good man after that.

“It was bad out there. The Somme. Passchendaele; that was a hard place, too, really bad.

“There were times that it was quiet, and then all hell would break loose. I remember one night, I was on guard duty, and I saw these two Germans sort of sneaking around, so I put one up the spout of my rifle and sung out at them. They put their hands up, and I took them back to company headquarters, and left them with the captain. I guess the rest of the Germans missed their buddies, because they opened up on us the next night, and we really caught it.

“I went up the line one time, with a cousin of mine. He left me to go a little farther up the trench, and he was back in 10 minutes, with a bullet clean through his arm.

“Ten minutes he was in the Line, and out wounded. I went through two years, without a scratch.”

I had to go into the hospital in November, 1918, because my legs had got bad from the wet, and from the trench lice. You couldn’t keep your feet dry because of the mud, and if you couldn’t keep them dry, you got trench-foot.”

“So I went to the hospital, and the doctor there washed my sores, and picked off the scabs, and cleaned things up. When I was ready to go, he gave me an order that I couldn’t wear puttees anymore, and that was all right, too.”

“I was on my way up into the Line, when I was stopped by some Canadian sergeant.

“The Germans were retreating at the time, but they fought hard, right to the finish. Good fighters they were, and tough.

This Canadian sergeant, he wanted me to carry some rations up to his men in the front line. Now, he had no right to order me, because he was a Canadian, and I was a Newfoundlander, but I had been in the trenches, at times three days without anything to eat or drink, and I didn’t want anybody else to have to go through that, so I said I would go.

“He gave me one pack, and another to this other fellow, and we set out, going up to the front Line. It was wet, fog, misty rain, and it was hard going, but we made it alright.

“Once we were in the front trench, the Canadian captain there didn’t want us to go back. “The weather,” he said, is just too bad for anybody to be out in.” So I told him that if we didn’t go back, why that sergeant would be looking for us, and we had to go back.”

“So, we set out for the rear again, and the Germans started shelling us. Their shells were landing all around, and finally, one hit really close. I was knocked out, and blown off the road and lost my cap.

“I got up, and felt no pain, but I was falling over every time I tried to move, but I made it back up to the road, anyway. Then I looked for my cap, and found it, and tried to find my way back to the rear.”

“I tripped over a mule, so I knew where I was, and kept on going until I met two Canadian officers, coming up. They asked me how it was at the Front, and I told them it was bad, that the Germans were starting to shell. They told me that they know, that they had just talked to another ration carrier whose buddy had been blown up. I asked them what he looked like, and they told me, and it was the man I was sent with, so I told them, “That’s my buddy, but I’m not killed yet.”

“Later, I got back to the Canadian sergeant, and he told me that I was killed too. I told him that I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to be sent back up again with something like that that I had been with earlier.

“I stayed with the Canadians another couple of days after that, but that sergeant didn’t send me back up as a ration carrier again, even though I had said that I would go.

“I got back to my Company at about 11:00 o’clock at night, on the 11th of November, and they told me that the war was over, and that we had to form up the next morning to go to Germany.

“One time my mother sent me a birthday cake. I can’t remember when, but probably for my 21st birthday. They brought it right up to the Front Line, that cake. We didn’t get mail, up there, and a lot of time we didn’t even get our rations, but somebody sent that cake up, all the way, to the front trench, and got it to me.

“I cut the cake up in small bits, like bits of cheese, and shared it around among all the men in the Company, as far as it would go, and everybody there had a little bite. I only had a small bit myself, but it was just as good as if I had eaten the whole cake myself.

“That was a really good birthday present, that cake.

“But the war ending on my 22nd birthday, now you can call that the best birthday present a man ever had.