A Tale of Two Soldiers — British Columbia Chronicles

Part 1

They couldn’t have been more unalike.

About the only thing they had in common was that they both served in uniform.

One was a hero, winner of the Empire’s highest medal for gallantry, the Victoria Cross, and the Military Medal.

Pte. James O’Rourke, VC, MM. —vcgca.org› profile › 571

The other died in infamy, so despised, it’s said, that he was buried face-down—the ultimate indignity for a soldier who has disgraced his comrades.

Such are the stories of these pole opposites, Today, the story of Gunner Charles Ratcliffe; next week, Private James O’Rourke, VC.

* * * * *

Three weeks ago, I told the story of Gunner Paddy Allan whose claim to shame is his murder of his commanding officer whom he shot down in cold blood on the Work Point barracks parade square. Only Allan’s plea of alcoholic dementia and a stroke of pure luck saved him from the gallows.

Today, much of the fortress that guarded the entrance to Esquimalt and Victoria from naval attack is public park. —https://travelingbc.com/macaulay-point-and-fleming-beach/

One would think that in such a small military community as was Esquimalt in 1910, Allan’s outrageous and irrational act of murder in broad daylight would have been the exception, a one-off. Incredibly, it wasn’t. Less than three months later, this time at neighbouring Fort Macaulay, history all but repeated itself, but with two deaths, that of the victim and that of the murderer.

Again, the villain in the piece was a gunner in the Royal Canadian Garrison Artillery, again the victim a senior in rank.

What we know of Gunner Ratcliffe’s motivation is more puzzling than enlightening. As was later pieced together by police, he and Corporal John Bowlan had until recently been the best of friends. But that had ended with arguments beginning with Ratcliffe’s dogs howling in the night and disturbing the corporal’s sleep.

The evening before, both men had attended a banquet given by the City of Victoria at the James Bay Drill Hall for the crew of Canada’s token navy, the cruiser HMCS Rainbow. Bowlan had spoken to Ratcliffe for becoming boisterous. Next morning, in the barrack room, there were more hard words coupled with Bowlan’s reprimanding Ratcliffe for not properly cleaning the kitchen.

(It should be noted that, at this time, only four soldiers lived on the base: Ratcliffe, Bowlan. Robinson and Dodd, Ratcliffe serving, untidily in Bowlan’s mind, as cook.)

Ratcliffe had rejoined, “Now, you’ve had your say; I’m going to do as I like.”

The continuing acrimony which had replaced their former friendship appears to have depressed Bowlan, as he sadly admitted to a bombardier. Minutes before the shooting, he said he’d had to “jump” Ratcliffe, and that he’d decided to have the gunner placed under arrest and charged with misconduct.

All that those who first arrived on the scene could see was Bowlan’s body, sprawled in a welter of blood on the barracks room doorstep. Inside, were the signs of a struggle—the plaster punctured by a rifle butt, indicating that Ratcliffe and Bowlan had fought for possession of a weapon.

“There is every indication,” reported the Colonist, “that a battle had taken place there between the gunner and the corporal who had gone out to call an escort to have the former placed under arrest.”

Bowlan had hailed Gunners Robinson and Dodd, who were cleaning the guns, to come to the barracks room. When they didn’t move fast enough, he ordered them to “double-up”. It was as they approached the barracks that they heard a shot and, on turning the corner of the building, saw Bowlan collapsed in the doorway, blood gushing from the back of his head. A bullet had entered through his left cheek bone, killing him instantly.

Gunner Smith’s role in the tragedy was momentary but little less than terrifying. Mystified upon hearing the shot while he was using an outhouse, he headed towards the barracks room, to suddenly find himself face to face with an armed Ratcliffe. Covering him with his rifle, Ratcliffe said, almost conversationally, “Come and see what I’ve done to Bowlan. I warned him before.”

Then, rifle cocked, Ratcliffe warned, “You get into the kitchen and stay there until I tell you to come out. I’m going to get the other two,” meaning Robinson and Dodd.

Smith, understandably, did as he was ordered.

But Ratcliffe was too late. The two gunners had heard the shot, seen Bowlan’s body in the doorway, and turned and ran. Dodd took cover and Robinson raised the alarm with Sergeant-Major Clements, Dodd would later report that he’d heard Corporal Bowlan say, “Put down that rifle.”

When Clements and Ratcliffe spotted each other across a fence, Ratcliffe shouted, “Now I am ready for anyone.”

By this time Lieutenants Lindsay and Cockburn had marshalled a force of up to 40 men, all armed with loaded Ross rifles. In a foretaste of overseas trench warfare just four years in the future, they split into two parties, spread out and slowly advanced across the open plain towards some hogsheads behind which Ratcliffe and one of his dogs had dug in.

The skirmish lines faltered when he opened fire and they began to dodge between what little cover was available as bullets whistled close to the heads of two sergeant-majors and a sergeant.

Ratcliffe, in turn, constantly changed position as did his faithful companion, both under the heavy return fire of the soldiers. When he saw a stretcher party trying to remove Bowlan’s body he snapped a shot at them, too. But he only had seven bullets and his last shot, which “seemed to be muffled,” was followed by a long silence.

The soldiers continued to advance cautiously but there was no more firing and, beside a fence, they found Ratcliffe’s body; he’d used his last bullet on himself. Just before taking his own life, he’d placed his small white-haired terrier in a kennel improvised from a barrel. The dog was was whining and frantically scratching to get to his master’s side.

Ratcliffe’s body, covered with a canvas, lies at feet of Victoria police officers. —*Victoria Colonist*

No one could comprehend Ratcliffe’s sudden, seemingly out of character, murderous rage. He loved animals; had three dogs, several cats and rabbits, and he gardened. Less than an hour before shooting Bowlan, he’d proudly shown his cabbage patch just outside the fort gate to Sergeant-Major Farley. When they parted, Ratcliffe returned to the barracks room to prepare lunch in what Farley judged to be good humour.

As it turned out, his garden, enclosed by a fence of driftwood he’d hauled up from the beach, was where he chose to face his former comrades and where he turned his rifle on himself. They were in the open, he was concealed, and he fired six shots. Did he shoot over their heads deliberately?

Compounding the tragedy was Corporal Bowlan’s standing as “a fine looking good soldier, a splendid shot and popular with all his fellow members of the local fortress”. Popular with all, alas, but Gunner Ratcliffe. A native of Plymouth, Eng., he’d grown up on the island of St. Helena and was formerly with the British Army before he joined the RCGA in 1907.

Ratcliffe, although still a gunner (the equivalent of a private) had served for 11 years other than a brief return to civilian street when he drove an ice wagon in Victoria. He, too, was popular among his fellow soldiers. Because he’d acted for a time as the garrison postman, and because of his performances at smoking concerts which reminded people of a popular vaudeville performer, he was fondly known as ‘Jim Post’.

All said, he was an unlikely candidate for murder and his comrades, upon hearing of Bowlan’s death at his hands were said to be thunderstruck.

The mandatory coroner’s inquests, Dr. E.C. Hart presiding, quickly followed. In the matter of the death of Corporal Bowlan, Gunner Smith, as previously reported in the Colonist, told how he’d been cleaning the six-inch gun and was in the latrine behind the barracks when he heard a shot, how Ratcliffe had made him look at the body then ordered him into the kitchen. He didn’t “see Ratcliffe again alive”.

Gunners Dodd and Robinson, who were also cleaning the gun until Corporal Bowlan called them from “the keep, the highest part of the fortress,” and ordered them to “double”. As they neared the barracks room Robinson heard Bowlan order Ratcliffe to “drop that rifle”. Then they heard a shot but went no farther, instead leaving the fort to give the alarm.

In the death of Gunner Ratcliffe all that was required was confirmation that he’d died by his own hand and the inevitable verdict of murder and suicide was duly reached, helped by the confession he’d scribbled and nailed to a gate as his comrades closed in on him: “Charles Ratcliffe did shoot and kill Corporal John Bowlan for a good reason. I’m down and out.”

The Victoria Times version varies slightly: “I. Chas. Ratcliffe, shot and killed Corpo. Bowlan for a good reason. Down and out myself.—C. Ratcliffe.”

A military board of inquiry elicited little more than confirmation that Ratcliffe had been motivated by his resentment of having been disciplined by Bowlan.

This left the matter of the burial services. For Bowlan, three days later, a funeral with full military honours and a plot in ‘God’s Acre,’ the Esquimalt Veterans Cemetery.

As his body was taken from St. Saviour’s Church, soldiers lined both sides of the street “as far as the eye can see,” wrote a granddaughter who researched his sad story.. A large white cross marks his grave just across the walkway from the chapel.

For Ratcliffe, eternity in the same burial ground but without a service. He lies in the lowest corner of the cemetery, covered by an irregular, unmarked slab of concrete. It’s said that, as a final insult to a man who’d betrayed his brothers-in-arms, he’s buried face-down.

In a lengthy editorial the Colonist mused on the lessons, if any, to be learned from two military murders and a suicide within months of each other on the Esquimalt army bases. The editor noted that Gunner Paddy Allan was then awaiting the results of an appeal to his death sentence for shooting his commanding officer, and the grass not yet green on his victim’s grave.

Perhaps the problem, thought the newspaper, was the difficulty of maintaining discipline, even for minor offences, on a base that was so under-manned that just a handful of soldiers lived together and shared the same accommodations. Personality conflicts were sure to rise with the potential for, as in both of these cases, resentment of grievances real and imagined ending in violence.

In short, the Colonist thought that the Ministry of the Militia needed to conduct an inquiry to “see if something cannot be done to prevent any further stains upon the honour of the Canadian Permanent Militia”.

Almost incredibly, a third fatal shooting occurred at Work Point Barracks, 10 years before those of Paddy Allan in August 1910 and Ratcliffe in November of the same year. This one had occurred in the Work Point Barracks canteen when Sapper R.E. Gill fatally shot Gunner G.F. Glinnock—by mistake.

He really meant to kill a third man who’d seen him take aim and ducked. Gill’s bullet found its mark in Glinnock, an innocent bystander. For what a jury interpreted as manslaughter he was sentenced to 15 years.