Private George Lawrence Price

Private George Lawrence Price was born on December 15th 1892 in Kings County, Nova Scotia, later moved to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, enlisted in the 210th Infantry Battalion (Frontiersmen), Canadian Expeditionary Force (C.E.F.) in Moose Jaw on 15 October 1917, enrolled at the 1st Saskatchewan Depot on 4 December 1917 for basic training, and was subsequently transferred to the 15th Canadian Reserve Battalion in England on 6 February 1918 and then to the 28th Canadian Infantry Battalion from Saskatchewan on 1 May 1918. On 8th September 1918 he was gassed in the Canal-Du-Nord area and sent first to the 1st Canadian Casualty Collection Station and then to the 26th General Hospital in Etaples, France, before being discharged and returned to his unit on 26th September 1918. In the last minutes of the First World War, at 10:50, just after the 28th had reached the line of the Canal du Centre, Price of A Company was shot by a German sniper while carrying out a reconnaissance on the far side of the canal. Price, Private Art Goodmurphy, and two others from A Company had crossed into the small village of Ville-sur-Haine to search the house from which a German machine gun had been firing, found only the owner and his family after the Germans had escaped out the back, moved on to the next house, and then as Price and Goodmurphy stepped back into the street, a single shot struck Price in the chest. He was dragged back into the house and attended by the Lenoirs and a young Belgian neighbor, Alice Grotte, who had crossed the street to help, but he died at 10:58 a.m., two minutes before the cease fire, becoming the last soldier of the Commonwealth to be killed during the First World War.

Saskatchewan · Canada