Harry Colebourn's cigarette case with inscription of battles, engravings ca. 1918. Colebourn Family Archive.
On November 19, 1918, a week after the armistice, Colebourn noted in his last diary: “In afternoon visit Lens Boyeffles. Drink Bottle of champagne in heart of LENS with M.O. Terrible devastation, Town blown to pieces.” The town of Lens in northern France was the site of both disaster and celebration. Its importance to Colebourn is evident in another cultural artifact found in his family archive. He left behind a silver tin cigarette case engraved with his first name on the front, and with the names of the major battles he was involved in on the back.
On the cigarette case, as in the diary, these sites of conflict situate the movement of one soldier, as well as the chronology of Canada at war: Ypres, Neuve-Chapelle, Festubert, Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Lens. While the diary is an ongoing account of the writer’s awareness of his uncertain future—the future relegated to an absent space—the writing on the cigarette case is a retrospective testimonial of survival. The cursive script exhibits the even hand of a professional commemorating the sites of all battles in one sitting, in contrast to the uneven writings made by the frontline soldier in his personal log after each combat.
In the context of Colebourn’s war journey, the cigarette case provides a sense of closure not achieved in the daily record, which simply ceases with the final pages of the 1918 diary left empty. During the war, cigarette cases made excellent gifts for soldiers as they were small and useful; they had the added benefit of helping to identify soldiers’ bodies. Colebourn’s diary and cigarette case are carriers of cultural memory and survivors of the Great War. These artifacts’ tattered and battered looks speak of both their vulnerability and endurance. Both are objects of remembrance, telling the story of Colebourn and Canada at war to generations a century later.
Dr. Irene Gammel, Co-Curator of Remembering The Real Winnie; Professor in the Department of English, Canada Research Chair and Director of the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, Ryerson University.