{"id":12509,"date":"2017-08-30T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T16:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=12509"},"modified":"2022-07-12T10:34:43","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T14:34:43","slug":"our-dear-laddie-has-been-taken-edward-revere-osler-killed-in-flanders-30-august-1917","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2017\/08\/30\/our-dear-laddie-has-been-taken-edward-revere-osler-killed-in-flanders-30-august-1917\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cOur dear Laddie has been taken\u201d: Edward Revere Osler killed in Flanders, August 1917"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0By Susan Speaker ~ <\/em><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
William Osler and his son Revere, in uniform, 1916. This photo was taken during World War I the year that Revere, age 20, joined the field artillery of the British Army.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In an earlier post, I highlighted the wartime experiences of Sir William Osler<\/a>, who is often called \u201cthe father of American medicine. Dr. Osler was enjoying a very active retirement in Oxford, England when the first world war began in August 1914. He and Lady Osler pitched in with the war effort, organizing military hospitals, tending the wounded, working with the Red Cross, and taking in Belgian refugees. Their only child, Edward Revere (b. 1895), had started college at Oxford that fall, but left after one term to join a McGill University hospital unit. Revere wasn\u2019t especially eager for battlefield experience, but, like almost everyone, wanted to \u201cdo his bit.\u201d He spent the summer and fall of 1915 in France with the hospital unit; when it was disbanded at the end of the year (after seeing very little action), he enlisted in the British army. By October of 1916, he was back in France with the Royal Field Artillery\u2019s 59th Brigade. His descriptions of the battery\u2019s location in a November 14th letter<\/a> were of little comfort to his anxious parents.<\/p>\n

The letters of Sir William and Lady Osler during the war years reflect, among other things, the relentless stream of tragic news from the front. No family was spared the loss of loved ones, it seemed; the sons, nephews, brothers, cousins, friends, and colleagues of the Oslers\u2019 neighbors and extended family appeared on the casualty lists with alarming frequency. Like many, they tried to keep their spirits up and carry on, but they worried constantly about their son, and often feared the arrival of each day\u2019s telegrams and mail. Remarkably, for many months, Revere was not injured at all, except for minor exposure to poison gas.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/a>
William Osler to Henry Barton Jacobs, August 31, 1917 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
William Osler to Henry Barton Jacobs, August 31, 1917 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
William Osler to Henry Barton Jacobs, August 31, 1917 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
William Osler to Henry Barton Jacobs, August 31, 1917 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

However, at the end of August 1917, the RFA 59th brigade was part of the summer offensive into Belgium known as the Battle of Passchendaele (or the Third Battle of Ypres). As Revere\u2019s unit was moving their guns forward on August 29th, a large German shell hit close by, wounding or killing nine men. Revere, with severe shrapnel wounds to his abdomen, chest, and thigh, was carried by stretcher, rail, and field ambulance to the nearest casualty clearing station (CCS #47). The American staff there summoned Harvey Cushing (an Osler family friend) and George Crile from their respective base hospitals<\/a>, and they assisted the CCS surgeons who tried to repair the damage. With surgery and several blood transfusions, their patient seemed to stabilize and even regained consciousness briefly. Despite the best available care, Lieutenant Osler died early on the morning of August 30th, one hundred years ago today.<\/p>\n

In their letters just after Revere\u2019s death, his grieving parents revealed not just their anguish at losing their cherished only child, but the terrible\u2014and no doubt common\u2014feeling of resignation that no family touched by the Great War would escape loss.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/a>
William Osler to H. S. Birkett September 1, 1917 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
William Osler to H. S. Birkett September 1, 1917 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"An <\/a>
William Osler and his son, Revere, in Llanddulas, Wales, 1911 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
Grace Osler to Harvey Cushing, August 31, 1917 (transcript) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Through 2018, <\/em>Circulating Now will periodically publish posts featuring NLM collections that illuminate the medical history of The Great War<\/a>, which lasted from August 1914 to November 1918. These Osler family letters are in the collections of the Osler Library at McGill University<\/a> and the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions<\/a>, and are available on NLM\u2019s Profiles in Science<\/a> site.<\/em><\/p>\n

Susan Speaker, PhD, is Historian for the Digital Manuscripts Program of the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0By Susan Speaker ~ In an earlier post, I highlighted the wartime experiences of Sir William Osler, who is often<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19605840,"featured_media":12525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"\u201cOur dear Laddie has been taken\u201d: Edward Revere Osler killed in Flanders, 30 August 1917 - #WW1","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42333869,12763,1269102],"tags":[8437,4704,50991,488,3948355,110820],"class_list":["post-12509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives-manuscripts","category-collections","category-the-great-war","tag-death","tag-france","tag-letter","tag-military","tag-william-osler","tag-world-war-i"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/gfbbfn_feature.jpg?fit=900%2C401&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3xcDk-3fL","jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19605840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12509"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24461,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12509\/revisions\/24461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}