Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-
Born in South Shields on 5th February 1896 his father died whilst he was still young and his mother remarried, becoming Elizabeth Barron. It is possible that Frederick travelled to Canada as part of the Home Children scheme with Dr. Barnardo’s.
By May 1915, when he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Barriefield Camp in Ontario, he was unmarried and had been working as a farmer. He became Private 410407 with the 59th Battalion, before transferring to the 38th Battalion a month later, when he was assigned to “B” Company. His first posting was to Bermuda in August 1915 when the 38th replaced the Royal Canadian Regiment and they remained there until the end of May 1916 when they sailed from Bermuda to Plymouth and a posting to Bramshott Camp, Hampshire.
In mid August 1916 the 38th proceeded to France as part of the 12th infantry Brigade, 4th Canadian Division, sailing from Southampton to Le Havre on board the SS Archangel. On 18th November Private Stephenson was wounded in the face and both legs at Desire Trench, Miraumont on the Somme and was invalided to England within two days and admitted to 1st Western General Hospital in Liverpool, and he didn’t return to France for eighteen months.
In December he was informed that he was to be awarded the Military Medal for his actions at Desire Trench, and the formal announcement appeared in the London Gazette in March 1917. Discharged to duty as Category D he was posted to the Eastern Ontario Regimental Depot and attached to the Canadian Engineers Training Depot where he took a course in signalling.
June 1918 saw him return to the 38th Battalion rejoining them at Tilloy during the Last One Hundred Days campaign, serving out the rest of the war as a signaller. After being AWOL in Brussels in January 1919, Private Stephenson returned to England with the 38th in May, and then on to Canada the following month. Demobilised in Ottawa, according to his discharge papers he returned to live in Westport, Ontario, and he is thought to have returned to England in the early 1920s.
Frederick Stephenson is remembered in South Shields on S86.129
