28th Battalion Badge
Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-
Black Banks Farm, Hurworth Moor, Darlington was the childhood home of Wesleyan John Henry Belt, born on 21st February 1893, and his dairy farmer father, Robert, mother Elizabeth and his elder brothers and sisters, William, Annie, Elizabeth and James.. The whole family emigrated to Canada, travelling third class, on the SS Empress of Britain sailing from Liverpool to Montreal, arriving on 26th October 1911, and then travelling on to Saskatchewan.
Robert signed his attestation papers in October 1914, aged 21, in Prince Albert, giving his father living in Alingy as his next of kin, his occupation as farmer, and mentioned his time as a volunteer with the 52nd Regiment, Prince Albert Volunteers. Private 73427 embarked for England 7 months later with the 28th Battalion, sailing on the SS Northland in May 1915. (This ship had just been renamed, as the original name SS Zeeland was thought to be German sounding).
By the end of August of that year he was deemed to be medically unfit and was admitted to the St Martin’s Plain hospital at Shorncliffe, Kent. He was treated for syphilis and was in hospital for 23 days.
Returning to the 28th Battalion (North West) in France just before Christmas, he was treated in the hospital at Etaples for bronchitis in February, and returned to his battalion to fight in the Somme Offensive but was wounded on 29th July 1916; he was returned to England and treated at the Canadian Hospital at Bushey Park, the gunshot wound healed with no complications but John needed rehabilitation and didn’t return to France until November.
John Henry added a will to his pay book on 16th July 1917 leaving the whole of his property and effects to his mother in Prince Albert. Only 2 days later at St. Omer he was hit by a bullet between 7th/8th ribs which came out below the 12th rib only 3 inches from his spine and damaged the liver and kidneys, reports say he was “dangerously wounded”. He was sent to hospital in Boulogne for initial treatment and then on to Bagthorpe Military Hospital, Nottingham, where the wounds healed, before convalescence at Bushey Park.
Returning to his unit in June 1918, Private Belt was one of several men of the Battalion awarded the Military Medal for action in early September. He then fought in what the Battalion diary calls “the hardest fight in the history of the Battalion”, in the vicinity of Iwuy, in NW France, which held a key position in the German rearguard. The action on 11th October was “one of great severity” and John Henry Bolt was one of the 143 casualties. The casualty report reads “This soldier was first slightly wounded in the wrist by shrapnel, but carried on. Later in the day he was shot through the head by an enemy bullet and instantly killed”.
His name does not appear on any local war memorial.
In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance.
Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Belt