April 05, 2026
AboutAnything | Greg McComb
I mean, look at the guy. A cigarette dangling from his lip, his steel helmet tilted-fashionably right, and then there is the sleeveless-sheepskin vest, possibly donated from as far off as Australia, and shipped to the front by the Red Cross. These vests were the only thing standing between a soldier and a bad case of frostbite during months of winter-trench warfare in France.
You see, this is a photo of Hugh's unit taken around 1915 or 16 during World War I, at a camp on the frontlines in France. Possibly next to the poppy fields that bloom today
in Flanders Fields, symbols of the million or more soldiers who were wounded, missing or killed in-action during the bloody trench warfare that defined this awful war, from 1914-18. I can't know for sure but the long-poles held by two of the soldiers were medieval-style pikes used during raids of German trenches. Canadians gained a reputation as fierce raiders using make-shift weapons like these pikes along with hand-made clubs, knives and small catapults. This was no high-tech war, hand-to-hand combat was not uncommon.
Who was Hugh?
So, who was Hugh? I have little oral history of my great-uncle, so I stitched together a rough sketch of his life using ancestry research I've done for my Miller lineage.
I know Hugh was born in 1896 in Glasgow, Scotland, part of a large family that would eventually count twelve children. A typical size for the times, pre-birth control. His parents were John and Annie 'Murphy' Miller, my great-grandparents, (above, 1910, Scotland).
