Sid Fellowes

Major Sydney Hamilton Fellowes, M.C.: "Sid" to Robertson. Born 15 August 1882, he was commissioned into the 2nd Field Company, Canadian Engineers, on 8 February 1915, and served across a string of engineer units: the 2nd and 8th Field Companies, the C.E. Training Depot, the Canadian Engineers staff at Headquarters, a Canadian Pioneer Battalion, the 4th Army Troops Company, and the 3rd Battalion, C.E. He was wounded on 11 October 1916 and awarded the Military Cross, gazetted 8 March 1919.

He appears by name just once in the diary (over for dinner in January 1916, days after Robertson reached France) and once in the Corps seniority list Robertson kept, corrected May 1917: "Fellowes, S.H.," a captain, pencilled "P.B. Coy," seniority 15 September 1915. A bare "Fellowes" recurs eight times between May and August 1917: Robertson looks for him at Gouy and moves over to the Gouy park on May 8, the day the seniority list was corrected; on May 22 "C.E. has asked Fellowes" whether Robertson is fit to go back to Field Company work; they play tennis together on June 3; on July 5 he is talking of leave, which would leave Robertson "work on my hands"; and on August 6 "Fellowes + half the Coy moved to Mt St. Eloi, leaving me in command here." That is the officer commanding the company Robertson was attached to. The Permanent Base Company's own war diary for September 1917 is signed "S.H. Fellowes, Capt. C.E.", the same initials and rank as the seniority list's Captain S.H. Fellowes of the P.B. Coy, and not the signals lieutenant Charles Ottly Fellowes (see Charley Fellowes). That diary shows a company of two officers and 113 other ranks running a sawmill, carpenters' and painters' shops and an R.E. Park, and on September 16 and 27 it records "Lieut Robertson attached to Chief Engineer for temporary duty" and rejoining. Only the initials are on the page, so the first name Sydney rests on the record of Sydney Hamilton Fellowes. The bare "Fellowes" of October 1915 ("Fellowes took Sgt. McNaughton round and 19 men to France") is left unlinked.