War Museum completes its collection of Victoria Crosses from Winnipeg’s Valour Road

OTTAWA – When Acting Cpl. Lionel B. (“Leo”) Clarke was faced with the choice to surrender to the enemy, or to fight his way out of the trenches against all odds, he chose the latter. And, for that act of valour on Sept. 9, 1916, in which he killed or captured 18 German soldiers and two officers, Clarke – then 24 years old – received the highest honour awarded to Canadian soldiers: The Victoria Cross.

Less than two months later he was dead, dying in the arms of his brother Charles at the Battle of the Somme.

On Monday, Clarke – who was born in Waterdown, Ont., near Hamilton in 1892 and moved to Winnipeg with his parents 11 years later and volunteered to go to war in 1915 as a bomber – was again honoured in a ceremony at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

It marks an extraordinary occurrence in Canadian military history: in different years and different battles during the First World War, three men from the same block of Winnipeg’s west-end Pine Street earned the Commonwealth’s highest military honour. And with the acquisition of Clarke’s medal, the War Museum now owns all three Victoria Crosses awarded to the men of Pine Street, which in 1925 was renamed Valour Road.

Each of the three men – and the 96 other Canadians who bear the honour – won it for “the most conspicuous bravery, a daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty, in the presence of the enemy.”

Eric Clarke, Leo’s great nephew, moved to Ottawa from Edmonton three years ago. As a child growing up in Winnipeg, he says his great uncle’s feat of bravery was “a big part of the family history … now it’s part of Canadiana, as it should be.”

Clarke’s Victoria Cross, which will sit with those of his neighbours on permanent display in the Royal Canadian Legion Hall of Honour, was displayed for years in a large frame in his brother Charles’ son’s dining room – along with three other medals he received and a photograph of the hero.

Charles named his first-born son after the brother he lost in battle and the younger Leo – Eric’s father, who is now 84 – has made it a mission to gather together letters, photographs and snippets of memorabilia about the uncle he never knew.

In a 1916 letter to his own uncle Arthur in England, Leo retold the event for which he was posthumously honoured: “You’ll be glad to hear that Charlie and I were both recommended – Charlie for the (Distinguished Conduct Medal) again, and I for the (Victoria Cross). I don’t know whether I can tell you all about it or not, but I killed 18 Germans, including two officers with my revolver alone. And, inflicted many casualties on the enemy with bombs. Also, put one machine gun out of action and all I got was a slight bayonette wound in my leg caused by one of the officers who I killed before he got me. I also got a sore back caused by the explosion of a German bomb – main thing is, I’m still here and very much alive.”

“That’s so laissez-faire,” said his great nephew, who mused on what Leo must have been thinking as he turned his revolver on the approaching Germans.

“If he was alone, that means his comrades in arms were dead so, how much of it was foolhardy, and how much was righteous indignation, and how much was duty? Who knows?”

“But, I would have liked to have met the man, I tell ya.”

The other men honoured on Monday had moved to Canada from Ireland and Scotland and, like many of their countrymen, returned to fight on the side of the Allies.

At the battle of Ypres on April 22, 1915, Sgt. Major Frederick William Hall – a native of Kilkenny, Ireland – refused to leave three of his wounded men to die on the battlefield. After successfully bringing two to safety, he was killed by enemy fire as he attempted to drag the third into the safety of the trench. His mother, Mary Ann Hall, was presented with his Victoria Cross.

Two and a half years later, on Oct. 26, 1917, the opening day of the battle of Passchendaele, Lt. Robert Shankland led his men – alongside two other companies – forward to capture a German trench. Under heavy enemy fire, the other platoons retreated while Shankland’s remained, enduring a four-hour attack, and suffering heavy casualties. Shankland realized he and his men needed help so, under continuing fire, he journeyed back to Battalion headquarters where he provided a detailed report of the situation and a plan to counter attack. He then returned to his men – with reinforcements. The counter attack was successful and Shankland – the only one of the three men to survive the war – accepted the Victoria Cross for his leadership and courage.

For Clarke, the courage of these three men who happened to share a postal code is testament to the bravery of all who fight for Canada abroad.

“Rather than it just being those three guys – and the coincidence of the geography that they all lived on the same street – I’d like to take a step back and appreciate the magnitude of what these people did – and all the others who didn’t get the flashlight shined on their record.”