(1892-18 Sept. 1918), winner of Victoria Cross. (Red Nunney) In printed sources his place of birth has been variously given as London (Eng.), Dublin (Ireland), and Hastings (Eng.), and the date has been variously given as 24 Dec. 1891 and 24 Dec. 1892. In his military file, for which he must himself have supplied the information, he is described as having been born in Dublin, Ireland, on 24 Dec. 1892. In the same file his name is given as Claude Joseph Patrick Nunney. It is likely, though not certain, that he was the Stephen Sargent Claude Nunney, who was born on 19 July 1892, at 42 Bexhill Road, St. Leonards on Sea, on the south coast of England, just to the west of Hastings. In the registration of his birth, the parents of the Nunney born at St. Leonards on Sea were William Percy Nunney Nunney (name repeated thus, apparently, in records), a grocer’s assistant, and his wife Mary Nunney formerly Sargent. According to tradition, the parents were Irish Catholics.

     Claude Nunney, the future Victoria Cross winner, is said to have come to Canada in the autumn of 1905. He is reported to have been sent there by the Harron Road School, operated by the Crusade of Rescue, of London, England. If he was the Nunney born at St. Leonards on Sea, he was at the time of his arrival in Canada 13 years old–barely more than a child, but by the standards many a Glengarry farmer of the time imposed on his own sons, virtually ready to do a man’s work on the farm and in the bush. In Canada, he was placed in St. George’s Home in Ottawa. Soon after he was placed with Mrs Donald Roy McDonald, of North Lancaster, GC (more specifically, the location was in the 5th Concession of Lancaster Township, at Pine Hill, half-way between North Lancaster and the Brown House). Mrs McDonald was a sister of Dr D.D. Macdonald. Ewan Ross states that “Nunney lived with Mrs. McDonald until her death in 1912; then spent the greater part of his time with D.H. McGillis, North Lancaster, and Mrs. Peter McLaren.” He also lived with a Calder family at MacGillivrays Bridge. He had, presumably, his first experience of soldiering in the local militia, the 59th Stormont and Glengarry Regiment, which he joined on 16 June 1913. “While at camp he was well liked, although very temperamental at times.” (Boss) It is not clear whether this recollection refers to his pre-war or his wartime military training. In any case, Marion MacMaster has probably correctly interpreted it as a coded reference to his possession of a quick temper.

     In the years just before the war, he worked in various places in Ontario and in the Canadian West. Both in his militia experience and in his rather footloose employment history of these years, he falls well within the usual model for young Glengarry males of the time. We may guess that essentially in his later years in Glengarry he had been a hired man working on farms. Young men from Britain working as hired men on the farms were a familiar part of the Glengarry scene of this time. The term “home boys,” remembered still by older Glengarrians, seems to have been used in Glengarry more to refer to the hired men from Britain than to children sent from Britain. On enlistment, he recorded himself as being by trade a “Painter.”

     On 8 March 1915, several weeks after he enlisted and began training in Alexandria, Claude Nunney was enrolled in the 59th Regiment for overseas service. He is remembered at the time of his enlistment to have said to Captain John A. Gillies that “I could have enlisted out West, but I wanted to go with the old 59th Glengarry regiment and with the fellows I know.” (Boss) He was transferred to the 38th Canadian Battalion, CEF, not long after (taken on strength, 1 May 1915). He was sent with the 38th in August 1915 to serve in Bermuda, and in June 1916 he went with the 38th to England. In August 1916 he embarked for France. In 1917, he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the Military Medal for exceptional bravery and resourcefulness in the hard fighting on the Western Front. By this time he had advanced to the rank of sergeant. But on 25 April 1918 he was convicted in a court martial of the offence of striking a superior officer, and was reduced to the rank of private and was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment at hard labour. For the time being the sentence of imprisonment at hard labour was suspended but not remitted. He was awarded the Victoria Cross “For most conspicuous bravery during the operations against the Drocourt-Quéant Line on the 1st and 2nd September, 1918.” He was gravely wounded in the fighting and died on 18 Sept. at No. 42 Field Ambulance.

     At the time of his death, his unit was still the 38th Battalion. He is buried in Plot 4, Row B, Grave 39, Aubigny Communal Cemetery Extension, Aubigny-en-Artois, France. The sentence of hard labour and imprisonment was cancelled out just before he died (unless the military authorities slightly backdated a decision which could have been made just after his death). He had been wounded and gassed in 1917, and wounded again (probably from gas burns) in the spring of 1918, shortly after his court martial conviction. At the time of enlistment, he was recorded as being 5 feet 5 inches in height, and to have had a fair complexion, blue eyes and red hair. His religion was recorded as Roman Catholic. He had a brother called Alfred Nunney who was killed in action in the war on 10 Aug. 1918, the month before Claude’s death. When Claude and Alfred met “in the Field” in 1918, it was their first meeting in 12 years. Alfred’s military file records his date and place of birth as the County of Sussex, England, 7 Jan. 1894. He belonged to the 80th Battalion, CEF, of Belleville, Ont. In his military file, Claude first listed the name of his “next-of-kin,” as Mrs D.J. McDonald, of North Lancaster, Ont. Later, her name was crossed out and she was replaced with “Gordon Calder (friend), R.R. #2, Green Valley, Ont.” Gordon Calder was also the beneficiary of his will and by one account his medals were sent to the Calder family. The medals are now in the possession of the SDG Highlanders Regiment, in Cornwall. Nunney is mentioned several times in one of the well known early histories of the war, The Times History of the War, published by the London Times; Nunney is in Vol. XIX, issued 1919, pp. 345, 347, 348, 355, with portrait.

     In 1919, a sanctuary lamp was placed in his memory in the Bishop Macdonell Memorial Chapel in the great stone church at St. Raphael’s, which was the church destroyed by fire in 1970. (Glengarry News 21 Nov. 1919) In 1953 the legion branch at Lancaster received its charter as the Claude Nunney, VC, Memorial Branch. (GN 20 March 1953) In Aug. 1962 an Ontario government plaque in his memory was unveiled at North Lancaster. (GN 30 Aug. 1962) The uncertainly about Claude Nunney’s place and date of birth and his exact name is remarkable, but he himself perhaps did not know the facts. A great deal has been written on Nunney, but most of it is poorly researched and repetitious, and full of contradictions and errors, and there has been much careless and uncritical copying of material from one source to another. Probably no other distinguished Glengarrian presents so many problems to the biographer. The work of putting the life of this most remarkable man on a solid historical footing was begun in a most discerning and distinguished article published in Glengarry Life in 1990 by the late Marion MacMaster.

Glengarry News 25 Oct. 1918 (part from Ottawa Journal) * Marion MacMaster, “Glengarry’s Victoria Cross Recipient: Private Claude Joseph Patrick (Red) Nunney, V.C., D.C.M., M.M.,” Glengarry Life (1990), with portrait * Boss 62-63, with portrait, lllust. of medals; includes text of citations from London Gazette 16 Aug. 1917, 17 Sept. 1917, 14 Dec. 1918, describing the actions for which he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the Military Medal, and the Victoria Cross * brief biog. notices of Nunney, all or most with portraits, in G.C. Machum, Canada’s V.C.’s (1956), J. Swettenham, Valiant Men: Canada’s Victoria Cross and George Cross Winners (1973), A. Bishop, Our Bravest and Our Best: the Stories of Canada’s Victoria Cross Winners (1995), Richard Doherty & David Truesdale, Irish Winners of the Victoria Cross (Dublin, 2000) * Casualties of the 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 World Wars: Recipients of the Victoria Cross in the Care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (1997) 17 * Ross, Lancaster, 290, 354 * Harkness 534 (portrait), 539 * MacGillivray & Ross 500-501 (portrait) * certified copy, record of birth, Registration District Hastings, The Register Office, Hastings, England * military file of Claude Nunney (Service Rank or Number 410935), NAC * military file of Alfred Nunney (Service Number 219320), NAC * on life of Nunney, GN 19 Aug. & 5 Aug. 1938 * article on Nunney in Glengarry News 60th anniversary supplement 8 Feb. 1952 p. 11, with corrections GN 29 Feb. 1952 * “Lest We Forget,” GN 8 Nov. 1978 (portrait) * Claude Nunney, shown in group portrait of soldiers at Armouries, Alexandria, Jan. 1915, GN 5 Dec. 1984 * memory honoured, GN 20 Aug. 2003, Vankleek Hill Review 1 Oct. 2003 * Gordon Calder (1893-1952): Fraser, Gravestones, I, 154 * Nunney’s connection with the Calder family, Standard Freeholder 5 & 17 Aug. 1938 * Mary Ellen Perkins, Discover Your Heritage: a Guide to Provincial Plaques in Ontario (1989) 253 * Claude Nunney, North Lancaster, leaves for St. Catharines, GN 24 April 1914 * has enlisted, and is in training at Alexandria, GN 19 Feb. 1915 * leaves for Ottawa to qualify as NCO, GN 19 March 1915 * suffering from gas poisoning, GN 17 Aug. 1917 * visit to GC of Nunney relatives (twins Claude and Claudia Nunney) of South African connection, GN 21 Nov. 1957 * wooden box that once belonged to Nunney, GN 31 Aug. 2005