135170 Pte Harry Reginald Jackson, 52nd Battalion CEF.
Born in Sunderland, England on 31 May 1877, Harry's home address was in Leeds, Yorkshire. He was, however, working as a rubber worker at the Toronto branch of Dunlops at the time of the outbreak of war (he had been renting a residence along with his wife and son for nearly four years ). Harry enlisted at Toronto on 28 July 1915, and he arrived on the Western Front in the early summer of 1916. After only a few weeks in the trenches, he was slightly wounded by a rifle bullet to the head and spent a week in hospital recovering, before returning to the front line near Hill 60. On 17 August 1916, Harry was hit in the left hand side of his chest with the bullet passing through his spine paralysing him from the chest down. Evacuated back to the UK, Harry had to spend weeks lying with a rubber ring under his back in an effort to relieve the pressure on his wound. He eventually died of his wounds in the Ontario Military Hospital at Orpington on 14 December 1916 and he is now buried in Lawns Wood Cemetery, Leeds, Yorkshire.
14 December 1916
Research by David O'Mara, Croonaert Research Services.
