Description
Mike Foxhead was born on the Blackfoot Reserve in Gleichen, Alberta. He enlisted in the army in 1916, at the age of 18, and trained at the Canadian camp at Bramshott, Hampshire. He wrote a letter home from there in July 1917, shortly before he went to the front: “I am dropping these lines to let you know how I am getting along. Glad to say everything is going on fine and dandy. I am over here at present training to go on over to France when I am fit enough, which I know will be any time now. I enjoyed my trip very good coming through Canada and on the ocean, and here I should say this country is very nice. I like it all right”I’ll stick to it until the end to put up a name for the Reserve, so they can say they have one of their boys over here. I could have got out of it when the other boys got their discharge, only I wanted to do my bit like all other Canadians. I knew that somebody had to go and fight for the Empire, and I made up my mind that I would go because it would be my duty sooner or later.” Foxhead was killed in action at the age of 19 at Passchendaele in October 1917 and is commemorated at the Menin Gate (Ypres) Memorial in Belgium. (Joe Crowchief – listed below – remembered being only yards from him when he was killed.)
Bibliographic sources
“Pte. Mike Foxhead Writes From England,” Gleichen Call, 16 August 1917, 1 (http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/newspapers/GCC/1917/08/16/1/Ar00102.html). Image credit: Glenbow Archives.