Earl Grant Berry's signatureOn this day in 1915 a fourth-year medical student named Earl Grant Berry enlisted in Toronto. Berry had been born in Deseronto on December 4th, 1887, the son of Robert James Berry and Ida Jean Grant.

On enlisting, Berry was described as five feet nine and a half inches tall, with a fair complexion, blue eyes and brown hair. He had a tattoo on the front of his right forearm which read ‘E.E.G.B.”. Berry joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps with the regimental number 910. He gave his mother as his next of kin: her address was 44 Kippendavie Avenue, Toronto.

His service record shows that Berry arrived in England on the SS Corinithian on May 27th, 1915. His first posting was to Moore Barracks in Shorncliffe, Kent, where he was appointed to the rank of sergeant on July 1st, 1915. In October he was transferred to the Mediterranean, leaving Devonport for Salonika in Greece, where he arrived on November 21st. He remained in Greece until April 14th, 1916, when he went back to England. He returned to Canada to complete his medical training in June 1916, travelling on the SS Sicilian.

Berry was discharged from the army in Quebec on June 8th, 1916. He married Agnes Ellen Sheather, a nurse, on September 1, 1922 in Toronto. They lived in Oshawa for a while and moved to Merlin, Ontario in 1938 where Berry worked as a physician and Medical Health Officer for the county of Kent. He died in a car accident on October 14th, 1961.