James Robert Sager's signatureOn this day in 1915 (James) Robert Sager joined up in Ottawa. He was a box-maker, living in Midland, Ontario. He was born in Deseronto on June 1st, 1889, the son of Nicholas Sager and Annie (née Smith). Annie died in Deseronto in 1899 and by the time of the 1911 census the Sager family had moved to Simcoe County, Ontario. Robert Sager married Lena Beatrice Hoag in Midland on June 23rd, 1911.

Sager was five feet six inches tall, with a dark complexion, brown eyes and dark hair. He joined the 38th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force with the regimental number 410611. His service record shows that he arrived in England on the SS Grampian  in June 1916, where he was promoted corporal. In August he went to France. In February 1917 he received a severe gunshot wound to his left upper arm and was sent back to England to recover. By July 1917 he was back at the front, but was injured again in September, this time in the right leg and left ankle. He was transferred to the Canadian Forestry Corps as a result of the damage to his ankle.

Sager left England on the SS Cretic, arriving back in Halifax on March 22nd, 1919. He was demobilized in Toronto on March 29th and was back in Midland with Lena in the 1921 census, working as a longshoreman and with a three-year-old daughter, Dorothy. He died in Midland on February 28th, 1960 and his wife died there on March 2nd, 1962.