Interview with Mollie Lavelle

My name is Mollie Lavelle. I am the only daughter of Albert William Lancey. His number, I'm almost positive, was 9575. He was a member of the Toronto Regiment, 1st Battalion, "C" Company. He fought the whole world war battles at Ypres, Somme and Vimy. He entered as just an ordinary soldier and he became a Sergeant.

He had many, many friends who had come from England when they were quite young – seventeen years of age or so – and stayed here for a few years and joined the Canadian Army when the war was declared. None of them were badly injured. He did have a back injury, for which he received a small pension. But he lived very, very well until he was seventy-five years of age.

He was a fine, wonderful man. A good father, and I couldn't say anything about him that wasn't good. He gave us a very good education, my brother and I, who was a dam-buster in the Second World War and awarded the DFC. His name was George Lancey. He was with the dam-buster squadron.

My father told us a few tales of the war. They were all about the good friends that he had and how wonderful the people were to them. He was married in 1917 to my mother, who was English, and he had returned from France just for the wedding. He was married on June the 30th, 1917 and I have a wonderful picture of their wedding, with the Colonel giving him what looks like a present of money or something, and all the men standing around with big smiles on their faces. It's a wonderful picture. He had to back to France, and he was there when I was born on January the 24th, 1919. He came home from France when I was three weeks old. They came to Canada in September 1919 and arrived in Halifax with all the other soldiers, and were interrogated there. They then came up to Toronto, where he resided for the rest of his life.