Random Islanders on Guard

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

This is the third work by sociologist Wilfred Martin documenting the
social history of Random Island in general, and Hickman’s Harbour (his
hometown) in particular. The two earlier books concerned the
19th-century settlement and the religious and educational history of the
11 communities of Random Island, which is located off Newfoundland’s
northeast coast. This one provides information on all known Random
Islanders who served in the Allied armed forces in both world wars, and
those who served in the Canadian armed forces between 1949 and 1991.

Random Island, in 1914, had approximately 1200 people dependent on the
local cod fishery. Eighty-eight residents served in WW I; all were males
except for Martha Loder, who spent four years as a nurse in France.
During WW II, a total of 147 men and women served in all branches of the
armed and civilian forces. The latter number includes the Overseas
Forestry Unit and the Merchant Navy; data for the last, Martin notes,
are incomplete to date. While 14 Islanders gave their lives in WW I,
only three died in WW II—one in the Newfoundland Royal Artillery, one
in the Canadian Army, and one in the Merchant Navy. What is of
particular note in On Guard is the generational tradition of military
service that has developed among certain Random Island families, as is
evident in the account of military service since 1949.

Besides the obvious interest to Random Islanders and former residents
of the island, this book (used with Martin’s other two studies) is an
invaluable source of information for students interested in putting
faces, names, and family histories to what are otherwise anonymous
statistics on the men and women who have heeded the call to duty and
sometimes paid the ultimate sacrifice.