Private Richard William Mercer (911016), following his de-enlistment in Winnipeg, Manitoba returned to his hometown of Theodore, Saskatchewan, Canada in the early summer of 1919.

In September 1919, the twice-wounded Great War veteran was appointed the Postmaster of Theodore and served in this position for forty-six years until his retirement in 1965 at the age of sixty-eight.  In October 1920 he married Salbjörd Solvason, the then new Icelandic-born schoolteacher from Wynyard, Saskatchewan; just up the line on the Canadian Pacific Railway.  During their long marriage they raised four children and twelve grandchildren.  Both sons volunteered and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War; the eldest a radio operator and the younger a heavy bomber pilot.

Richard Mercer taught Sunday school for forty-two years, helped establish the district Union Hospital and the Theodore and District Credit Union.  He also served as Secretary-Treasurer of the local Aurora Lodge for over forty years and was a fifty-year member of the Theodore Royal Canadian Legion.

He was a quiet, very modest, family man who lived peacefully in the Village of Theodore after the Great War.  Over the years he talked very little about his military experiences.  Few people, especially his immediate family, knew of his experiences in the “Borden Battery” (C) of the élite 1st Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade.  One mystery of his military life will likely remain unsolved.  Among his personal effects is a military decoration bar and a strip of ribbon from the Military Medal (MM).  Private Mercer was never awarded this medal.  However, someone would have given it to him and in his modesty he still saw fit to wear it during Remembrance Day services throughout the years.

In early 1983 he died at Royal University Hospital at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, where the 196th Western Universities Battalion, "B" Company was first formed in April 1916.  Richard Mercer, now a grandfather and great-grandfather, was buried in the Mercer family plot in the Theodore Cemetery at Theodore, Saskatchewan, Canada.  His surviving letters now speak for him and of the experiences of a lost generation of young men from western Canada.


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