Pte 32263 Valmore Dufresne

• Age: 33
• From: Ottawa, Canada
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Arras Memorial
  Panel Ref: Bay 3

Valmore Dufresne was born on 14^th October 1884 in Ottawa, Canada  and was the son of Thomas Dufresne and his wife Alphonsine Archambault, of 66 Baird St, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He was the eldest child; it is difficult to know exactly how many siblings he had as they had multiple first names, but there were at least five other children:  Marie Agnes V., Thomas Joseph, Corrine, Edgar, and Maria.  His parents had married on 7^th January 1884 at Basilique Notre Dame, Ottawa.

In 1891 his parents and their children are living with Alphonsine’s parents in the City of Ottawa.  His father is a typesetter. Valmore is  7, siblings Agnes and Joseph are in the household.

In 1901 the family is living at 320 (illegible), Ottawa City.  His father Thomas is a typographer. Valmore, 16, is the eldest child in the household; the youngest is 1.  There is also a lodger, Marie Gramat, 20. 

His mother died in 1902, living at 122 Dalhousie, Ottawa.

Valmore lived in Detroit from 18/11/08 to 14/6/1912, but he cannot be found on the 1910 US census. He crossed the border again into the USA at Detroit on 16^th June 1912, age 26, giving his occupation as labourer. He is 5’2” tall, with a ruddy complexion, dark brown hair and blue eyes.  His destination is a boarding house at 78 Larned Street E., Detroit.  He appears to have made multiple crossings between Canada and the US as he arrived in Detroit again on 24/6/1912.

Valmore is not found on any passenger list, so it is not known when he arrived in England, but he enlisted in Liverpool in the 19^th Battalion of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private 32263 and by April 1917 was in France with his battalion in preparation for the opening phase of the Battle of Arras. 9^th April 1917 aged 33.

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09^th April 1917

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day  in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89^th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19^th King's on the right and the 20^th King’s on the left. The 17^th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and he 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they  were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen  - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19^th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20^th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21^st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21^st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20^th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89^th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19^th and 20^th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10^th April.

Of the 17^th King’s  - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when  after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded.

Valmore Dufresne was one of those killed. He was 33.

His body was not recovered from the battlefiled or was subsequently lost as he has no known grave and is commemorated on the Arras Memorial, France.

The ARRAS MEMORIAL commemorates almost 35,000 servicemen from the United Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand who died in the Arras sector between the spring of 1916 and 7 August 1918, the eve of the Advance to Victory, and have no known grave. The most conspicuous events of this period were the Arras offensive of April-May 1917, and the German attack in the spring of 1918. Canadian and Australian servicemen killed in these operations are commemorated by memorials at Vimy and Villers-Bretonneux. A separate memorial remembers those killed in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. Both cemetery and memorial were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with sculpture by Sir William Reid Dick. The memorial was unveiled by Lord Trenchard, Marshal of the Royal Air Force on the 31 July 1932 (originally it had been scheduled for 15 May, but due to the sudden death of French President Doumer, as a mark of respect, the ceremony was postponed until July).

His effects went to his aunt Josephine Loyer (possibly his mother’s sister). The pension card shows a dependent, Thomas Dufresne, of 189 Water Street, Ottawa, Ont. Canada.

We currently have no further information on Valmore Dufresne. If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.