Thomas James Forgrave : Short Biography

Thomas James Forgrave, son of James Forgrave and Elizabeth Miller, was born Presbyterian in Ontario, Canada about 1898. His father, James Forgrave was born in Garvagh, Errigal, Ireland in 1867 and immigrated to Ontario, Canada in 1885. James is the youngest of nine children of Thomas and Margaret Forgrave of Cah, Errigal, Coleraine, Ireland. Elizabeth Miller was born in Eday, Orkney, Scotland in 1870. She is the youngest of eight children of James Miller and Jane neé Reid Miller. James Forgrave and Elizabeth Miller married in Ontario, Canada in 1897. Thomas' siblings were all born in Ontario, Canada. William John Forgrave, born about 1900, married Della May Pegg about 1945; Marion Forgrave, born about 1902, married Franklin Roy Dunham about 1950; Bessie Margaret Forgrave, born about 1904, married Alexander Ingram about 1930; Earnest Robert Forgrave, born about 1908, married Reta May Tost about 1935 Thomas was a Railway Worker at the Canadian Pacific Railway Freight Yard in Toronto. During World War I, Thomas was a SAPPER- a Combat Engineer for the Canadian Railway Troops building and maintaining light rail tracks along the Western Front. He enlisted 16 Jan 1917 in Toronto, where he worked in the Canadian Pacific Railway Freight Office in Toronto. He went overseas in April, to Belgium in June, to France in September 1917. On March 21, 1918, the Germans, realizing that US troops were starting to arrive, but not in sufficient quantity to change the balance, launched a huge offensive which broke the allied lines along the Western Front, and for a time, much of the railroad track that had been laid by the Canadian Railway Troops, passed into enemy hands. Seven of the ten battalions of CRT were withdrawn and employed on the construction of a rear defense trench system along 30 miles of the Western Front. It comprised 120 miles of trenches. As the Germans advanced on Amiens, the railway men turned into combat forces and organized 16 Lewis gun teams and held their position until the New Zealand Division arrived to reinforce them. Thomas was near Maroeuil near Mt. St. Eloi, France, at the time of his death. He was struck by a piece of shell on the 28th and died of his wounds on the 29th of March. He was 34 days shy of his 20th birthday. He is buried in Aubigny Communal Cemetery Extension in Aubigny-en-Artois, Departement du Pas-de-Calais, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France.