CAPT. T. M. M‘LEAN.
LIEUT. F. C. MANNING.
CAPT. M. W. M‘KINNON.
LIEUT. J. O. M‘LEOD.
85th BATTALION BRASS AND REED BAND.
The literary and the musical professions were well represented in the personnel of the 85th Battalion—by one historian, two poets, and a brass and wood-wind band, an organization of instrumentalists that gave the Battalion additional and peculiar distinction and glory. Lieut.-Colonel Hayes in England and France acted as a free-lance war correspondent and, on arrival home, set to work to prepare the History of the 85th Battalion. He produced an illustrated work of nearly 400 pages—a most readable volume, the first history of any Nova Scotia fighting Unit that had taken part in the late War. It was hurriedly prepared, under very difficult conditions, but despite a minimum of slight and inevitable discrepancies or omissions—every history from Thucydides to John Richard Green has these—it is a well-written and accurate work, a genuine monument to the literary acumen and devotion of that versatile and gallant officer, Lieut.-Col. Joseph Hayes. The two poets were the late Lieut. Frederick C. Manning, a brilliant alumnus of Acadia University, whose “Poems” were posthumously published. They are excellent poems, both in conception and in craftsmanship, and go to prove how great a wastage of brain power and rare spirit was caused by the late War. The other poet was Sergt. J. D. Logan, an alumnus of Harvard University. He was a free-lance war correspondent at the Front. He published two volumes of war poems—“Insulters of Death and Other Poems of the Great Departure” (1916), and “The New Apocalypse and Other Poems of Days and Deeds in France” (1919), besides a series of magazine articles on special phases of the War, a series entitled “From Vimy to Passchendaele” (1918), and before sailing for Overseas a pamphlet on the 85th Band (“Canada’s Champion Regimental Band”). All this is mentioned to show that military training for active warfare and actual warfare do not necessarily kill the finer spirit of men or turn soldiers from human beings into brutes. But the chief aesthetic glory of the 85th Battalion was its extraordinary fine marching and symphonic band. Following are the salient facts in its history.