Private Frank William

Frank William Jenner was born on July 30, 1896 in Hambledon, Surrey, England to parents Frank and Elizabeth Jenner who immigrated to Paris in 1913.

Frank William Jenner was a mill hand who was drafted in January, 1918. He was sent to No. 20 Canadian Army Basic Training Centre in Brantford, often referred to as Camp Brantford. It served as a massive training depot where thousands of recruits received their initial basic military training before being dispatched to specialized corps or overseas units. He had a physical on October 10, 1917 and was put into Category A-2. On March 7, 2018 he sailed to England and arrived on March 18 was transferred to the 8th Reserve Battalion.

On February 2, 2019 he was transferred to MD#2 Wing Rhyl at Witley. Soldiers with this designation means that left their active training or convalescent base in the south of England (Witley) and were sent up to the staging camp in Wales (Rhyl). This was the final step before boarding a troopship to cross the Atlantic. As an aside, Kinmel Park Camp in Rhyl is historically infamous for the March 1919 "Rhyl Riots," where frustrated Canadian soldiers rioted due to severe delays in the shipping schedules causing them to be stuck in poor winter camp conditions for months. This was not the circumstance for Frank Jenner. He left England from Liverpool on April 2 without ever seeing action and was taken on by No. District Depot, Toronto, where he was discharged due to demobilization on April 11, 1919.

Frank’s discharge papers indicate that he would be living on Ball Street on his return. In 1920 he married Elizabeth Eleanor Law. In 1921 he was living in his mother’s house at Ball Street with his two sisters and his wife, Elizabeth and their 4 month old son. Frank was employed as a boarder in at Penmans. In 1931 he and Elizabeth were living on Main Street in their own house with their four children. He was still employed as a boarder. Private Frank Jenner died in Paris on August 4, 1974 and was buried in the Paris Cemetery with his wife.

As a sad aside, that four year- old son in 1921 was Frank Edward (Ted) Jenner. He would enlist with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry in the Second World War. He would survive the disastrous attack on Dieppe in 1942 and following D-Day in 1944, he would be killed in action as Allied troops drove German troops from France and the Netherlands. He is buried in the Beny-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery in Normandy.