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William
Perkins Bull. From Brock to Currie
This month marks the
100 years anniversary of the death of George Cardoza, a Jamaican who enlisted
in the Canadian Expeditionary Force shortly after emigrating to Canada. George,
who was born in Kingston 14th November 1892, the son of Uriah
Cardoza and Marie Nicholson, was among the first to enlist at Valcartier, Quebec,
on 22nd September 1914. On his attestation form he is described as
five ft. five inches in height, with dark complexion, dark eyes and black hair.
He was a Roman Catholic and a teacher by profession. He was assigned regimental
number 11216 and attached to the 4th Battalion CEF. He was sent with
the 4th Battalion for training at the Ravina Barracks in Toronto and
embarked with the battalion from Quebec on the SS Tyrolia on 17th October 1914.
George’s service file, which is available for
download on the website of Library and Archives Canada gives his date of death as falling between 22nd
and 26th April, 2015. This marks the beginning of the Second Battle
of Ypres, and the first occasion of the War in which the Germans used poison
gas. George may well have been one of many casualties whose bodies were never recovered
and whose date of death is not certain. He is commemorated on the Ypres Menin
Gate Memorial.
Commonwealth War Graces Commission
George’s service file
is not extensive. On 30th November he forfeited five days pay and
spent eight days in detention for being absent for five days. The only other
notations on his file are of his death -- killed in action with the 3rd
Echelon. Apart from his service file I found very little information about him,
but the commemorative record for him in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
did give some interesting facts, as follows:
“Son of Uriah
Cardozo [sic] and his wife, Marie Nicholson, of Aux Cayes, Haiti, West Indies.
Born at Kingston, Jamaica. Educated at the Petit Seminaire College, St. Martial, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and at St. George’s College, Kingston, Jamaica.”
It appears that
George must have spent his early days in Port-au-Prince where he went to
school.
Le
Petit Séminaire, St. Martial, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The Petit Séminaire Collège Saint-Martial was founded in 1865 as an all boy’s Catholic
school under the control of the Holy Ghost Fathers. I was particularly interested in the fact
that George also attended St. George’s College in Kingston, as that was where
my father, Michael Levy, also went to school. I’ve written previously about my father’s school
days at St. George’s. Was it possible that my Dad and George were at
school at the same time? To find out I did a search in Jamaica Gleaner online
and found them both listed in the same issue of the newspaper which described the
annual prize-giving at the school in 1905.
The
Gleaner 23 December 1905
The above is a
partial list of all the prizes that were presented at the prize-giving in
December 1905. My father, Michael, was about three years older than George, so they
may or may not have known each other.
This, then, is as
much as I was able to find out about George Cardoza, and it was purely by
chance that I discovered his existence while I was researching the stories of
Canadian soldiers from the former Toronto Township. George’s family would have
received the three medals he was entitled to: the 1914-1915 Star, the War Medal
and the Victory Medal and his mother would have received the Memorial Cross.
They would also have received a Memorial Plaque and Scroll, some small measure
of acknowledgement of the supreme sacrifice their son had made.
"They shall grow not old, as we
that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years
contemn;
At the going down of the
sun and in the morning
We shall remember them.
" – For the Fallen. Lawrence Binyon
