The Letters of Mayo Lind: Newfoundland's Unofficial War Correspondent, 1914-1916

Sidney Allinson is Canadian news correspondent for Britain’s The Army
Quarterly and Defence. He is the author of The Bantams: The Untold Story
of World War I, Jeremy Kane, and Kruger’s Gold: A Novel of the
Anglo-Boer War.

On July 1st, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 260
soldiers of the Newfoundland Regiment were killed. One of the men who
fell that day was Francis “Mayo” Lind, who because of his letters
being published in the St. John’s Daily News became known as
“Newfoundland’s unofficial war correspondent.” His nickname came
about after one of his letters mentioned that popular Mayo brand tobacco
was unavailable to the troops. A supply of baccy was promptly sent to
the regiment, and grateful comrades dubbed Lind “Mayo.”

Originally published in 1919, this collection of Lind’s letters has
been reissued to coincide with the 85th anniversary of the battle. The
book is organized in 32 chapters, each composed of one of his letters.
In a time before modern communication, when news from the front was slow
and often censored by officialdom, Lind’s epistles must have been
prized by the folks at home. He wrote with unaffected simplicity,
telling anecdotes of daily life of soldiers serving King and Empire in
foreign countries far away.

Three of Lind’s letters headed “Somewhere in the Dardanelles”
describe the hideous conditions of that disastrous military operation
with a cheerful matter-of-factness. After describing the death of some
of his friends, he added: “I could tell of scores of narrow escapes,
yet in spite of it, everybody is as happy as can be. You cannot make the
Newfoundlanders down-hearted—NO!” A few months later, they were
mired in the frontline trenches of the Western Front. Lind’s last
letter, penned shortly before he and a third of the regiment were
slaughtered, closed with the statement, “Tell everybody they may feel
proud of the Newfoundland Regiment, for we get nothing but praise from
the Divisional General down.” A few months later, King George V
bestowed the survivors with a new title, Royal Newfoundland Regiment,
the only unit to be so honored during the First World War. “Mayo”
Lind shows us how much they deserved it.