In 1911, Harry married Janet Mary Ellen Anderson.
During the First World War, Harry served with the 73rd Battery of the Canadian Field Artillery and his brother, Francis Xavier Amoss, who was awarded the Military Cross, also served with the Canadian forces in France during WW1.
After the war, Harry returned to Canada and resumed teaching. He died in February 1965.
Here is a passage from Harry’s retrospective poem "Passchendaele 1917", published in 1933:
… war has stripped illusions Buddha-wise
Has tossed the tinsel on the winds astrew,
And with gaunt fingers rent the robes of pride
Till life in naked worth confronts the eyes
Amoss, Harry. “Prayer of the Good Trouper and Other Poems” (Ryerson, Toronto, 1933)
From http://www.flanderstoday.eu/living/canada-flanders-offers-solemn-tribute-countrys-role-first-world-war
“By the end of the war, some 619,000 Canadians had enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force for service overseas. This was an enormous contribution from a country with a population of just under 8 million in 1914. Approximately 7% of the total population of Canada was in uniform at some point during the conflict, and hundreds of thousands of additional Canadians worked on the home front in support of the war effort.
While initially consisting mostly of white British-born Canadians, the Canadian Expeditionary Force also included other cultural groups: aboriginals of the First Nations, black Canadians and Americans, and even West Indians from the island of Bermuda.”
