The Seniority List

This is a printed seniority list of the officers of the Canadian Engineers: the staff of each division’s Commander Royal Engineers (C.R.E.), the field companies, and the army troops companies, ranked, within each rank, by the date their commission took effect. Promotion went by this order: when a captaincy fell vacant in a company, the senior lieutenant on the list was the man in line for it. Robertson, who had come up from the ranks, watched its arithmetic closely.

His own line is near the middle of the second page: “Robertson, A.M., M.C.,” seniority 3 January 1916 (the day he had landed in France) pencilled “P.B. Coy. C.E.” He is one of six officers sharing that date: Fetherstonhaugh, Stock, Robertson, Pope, Cassells and Page, the same names he counts off in the diary six weeks later (see “Down to Five”), the traceable remnant of a draft of twelve that had crossed together that morning. Unlike some twenty other names on the sheet, his carries no pencilled “Capt.”: in May 1917 he was still a lieutenant, and would be for another year.

The pencil is Robertson’s, kept current as men moved: a posting beside almost every name (“Corps,” “England,” “3rd F.C.,” “Canada Oct ’17”), “wounded,” “killed” and “drowned” against others, a rank word where a man had been promoted past the printed one. It is headed “Corrected May 8th.” Nine days after that date the diary works straight down this list: “McCuaig is running the 3rd A.T. Co’y & as he is next on the list will probably get his step… That leaves Fether top man… I should get a star the next time there is a vacancy in a company.” Ten days after that, on 28 May, he records that the whole basis was about to change: the list “is to be replaced by one in which date of sailing from Can. will be the datum line.” This sheet is the version that was about to be superseded.

Abbreviations in the annotations: F.C. = Field Company; A.T. Coy. = Army Troops Company; C.R.E. = Commander Royal Engineers (a division’s chief engineer); C.E.T.D. = the Canadian Engineers Training Depot at Shorncliffe; Corps = a staff or park appointment at Canadian Corps headquarters.