Profile image
Military service
Service number:
142615
Age:
17
Rank:
Private
Force:
Army
Unit/Regiment:
Canadian Infantry (Eastern Ontario Regiment)
Division:
2nd Bn.
Birth:
September 16, 1899
Death:
May 4, 1917
Burial/memorial information
Additional information
Son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Gittins.
Digital gallery of Private Joseph Norman Gittins
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Memorial
Inscription - Vimy Memorial … photo courtesy of Marg Liessens -
Inscription
His name as it is inscribed on the Vimy Memorial. Over 11,000 fallen Canadians having no known place of burial in France, are honoured on this Memorial. May they never be forgotten. (J. Stephens) -
Vimy Memorial
Canada's Vimy Memorial, located approximately 8 kilometres to the north-east of Arras, France. May the sacrifice of so many never be forgotten. (J. Stephens) -
This plaque, which memorializes Private Joseph N. Gittins, 2nd Canadian Battalion (Eastern Ontario Regiment), Canadian Expeditionary Force, is located in the Guthrie Cemetery, Highway 11, Guthrie, Ontario (northeast of Barrie). It shows a surname of "Gittins Wearing"; Wearing was the surname of an uncle and aunt with whom Gittins and a sister lived after the death of their parents. There is some confusion about Gittins's age. His CEF Attestation Paper shows his date of birth as being Sept. 16, 1899; but the same document shows his apparent age at the time, in January 1916, as being 17 years and four months. Further, the 1911 Census of Canada shows that he was born in Sept. of 1898; and this plaque too shows his age to have been 19 years when he died in May 1917 (which may well have been his age rounded ahead to his nearest birthday). He was, in any event, a young man when he went missing in action on May 3-4, 1917. (Image taken by Gregory J. Barker of Barrie, Ontario, in 2015.)
Digital gallery of
Private Joseph Norman Gittins
Digital gallery of
Private Joseph Norman Gittins
Digital gallery of
Private Joseph Norman Gittins
In the Books of Remembrance
Commemorated on:
Page 244 of the First World War Book of Remembrance.
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