Private Burney Louis McMurtry was born on March 13th, 1898, according to his birth records, census documents, and school records at Upper Canada College, making his age upon enlistment in August 1915 only 17. On his military service files however, Burney reported that he was born in March of 1896 and was 19 years old. This makes Burney one of the estimated 20 000 underage soldiers enlisted in the Canadian Military in WW1, about 2000 of whom were killed overseas (source: TheCanadianEncyclopedia.ca). Previous to enlisting, Burney seems to have had a fairly well-to-do childhood. He was born in Toronto, but started high school in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In September 1913, aged 15, he started at Upper Canada College; continuing there until December 1914, aged 16 (source: Upper Canada College). Five months after leaving Upper Canada College, Burney’s father died in the sinking of the Lusitania, and his reasoning for enlisting despite being underage was likely a direct response to this. Burney’s father, Frederick, was a successful salesman and buyer when the Lusitania was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland in May of 1915, leaving Burney, his sister Vedda, and mother Gertrude on their own.
When he enlisted, Burney was assigned to the 3rd Division Cyclists (later the Canadian Cyclists Battalion), and was stationed in France (source: Library & Archives Canada). Shortly into WW1 Canada saw the potential in creating a bicycle mounted army battalion. Bicycles could cover the same ground as a horse, but were quieter, stealthier, and required far less care and attention. At the time cyclists were thought to be of higher than average intelligence, and many were teetotallers, so it was thought they would make particularly good soldiers. As a cyclist, Burney would have received training in musketry, bombing, the bayonet, and the Lewis machine gun, and his bicycle would have been outfitted much like a cavalry horse. Cyclists carried out traffic control, and acted as trench guides, ambulance carriers and gravediggers. They were expected to be able to transport men and heavy equipment up to 60 km through rough terrain and deep mud in a single day. There were over 1200 cyclists in the Canadian army in WW1, and casualty rates were so high amongst them that they were commonly called the “Suicide Squad” (source: Canadian Cycling Magazine).
After dealing with some recurring health issues, Burney was transferred to the Canadian Corps of Military Police briefly in the summer of 1917, then promoted to Acting Corporal at the end of that summer (source: Library and Archives Canada). According to his write up on the Upper Canada College memorials, on November 21st, 1917, Burney was injured after being buried alive, but there is no mention of this anywhere in his official military files; in fact, three days after that date he is reported as being in the process of transferring to the Royal Flying Corps as a Flight Cadet. Unfortunately, the RAF has not digitized their WW1 files, and so information on Burney’s last few months is very sparse, but it appears he was made Lieutenant with the R.A.F, and then on October 14th, 1918, while fighting "17 enemy machines", his plane was shot down and he was killed in action.
Lieutenant McMurtry was originally buried at Oostroosebeke Communal Cemetery in Belgium as an Unknown Soldier; this is not a military cemetery and actually only contains the graves of two soldiers: McMurtry and another pilot who was KIA the year before. In November 1920 his grave was exhumed for identification purposes, and in the report it is written that locals had put a cross on his grave saying (in French), “English Pilot, died for our country”, with a date and plane ID number. At the bottom of the report someone has written, “Dame Adelaide Livingstone informed”. Dame Livingstone was a celebrated peace acitivist in England during war times, but it is a mystery why they would need to inform her of these findings. Eventually the investigation resulted in McMurtry getting a proper Canadian Military gravestone with his name on it.
