Melville

A Canadian Engineer officer and a lasting friend of Robertson's. He first appears in 1916: a wedding invitation reaches Robertson on the march on August 30, and that September, in the Somme sector, Melville is the star athlete for a rival field company at the divisional sports. By December 1917 he is on the staff at Canadian Corps headquarters: Robertson goes "up to Corps" to see him and "got leave cheques," and Melville dines at Robertson's mess that same month. Through 1918 he is a regular of the Corps Engineers' mess and Robertson's social circle, alongside Simmy and McCuaig; on Dominion Day, July 1, he, Robertson and John Black turn to in the luncheon tent as waiters when the catering fails. He recurs to the very end of the diary: on November 17, 1918, six days after the Armistice, he takes Robertson out to see friends around Mons, and on the 21st visits him in No. 1 Casualty Clearing Station there.

The surname is confirmed by a letter he wrote Robertson from Ottawa on January 15, 1923, signed "Mel" and sending regards "from Mrs. Melville, the young sapper, and myself." This record matches Brigadier J.L. Melville, C.E. (1888–1980): adjutant to the C.R.E. Canadian Corps Troops and then the Corps' officer in charge of bridge construction, awarded the Military Cross and a Bar (the Bar for the bridging of the Canal du Nord), and, after the war, resident in Ottawa and selected to write the Canadian Engineers' chapter of the official Canadian war history. The 1923 letter, in which he returns Robertson's McGill paper with corrections, is presented in the Writings section. No other Melville appears anywhere in the diary or letters; the identification rests on converging detail (same corps, same headquarters role, an unbroken friendship into the 1920s, a matching line of expertise) rather than a document naming him, and is treated here as confirmed on that basis.