Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command of The Royal Canadian Legion www.ns.legion.ca 95 The last Canadian soldier to die in action in the First World War was a 26-year-old private from Nova Scotia. His name was George Lawrence Price. Price was born in Falmouth, Nova Scotia, on 15 December 1892, and raised in what is now Port Williams, Nova Scotia. He moved to Moose Jaw Saskatchewan as a young man, where he was conscripted on 15 October 1917. Price was serving with the 28th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and was shot dead at 10:58 am on 11 November 1918, just 2 minutes before the Armistice was due to go into effect. Not only was he the last Canadian to die, he also had the tragic distinction of being the last fatality of the British Empire during that terrible conflict which claimed almost 10 million lives, including 67,000 Canadians. According to records, the 28th Battalion had orders for 11 November to advance from Frameries (south of Mons) and continue to the village of Havre, securing all the bridges on the Canal du Centre. The Battalion advanced rapidly starting at 4 am, pushing back light German resistance and they reached their position along the Ville-sur-Haine by 9 am where the Battalion received a message that all hostilities would cease at 11 am. Price and fellow soldier Art Goodworthy were worried that the Battalion’s position on the open canal bank was exposed to German positions on the opposite side of the canal where they could see bricks had been knocked out from house dormers to create firing positions. According to Goodworthy, they decided on their own initiative to take a patrol of five men across the bridge to search the houses. Reaching the houses and checking them one by one, they discovered German soldiers mounting machine-guns along a brick wall overlooking the canal. The Germans opened fire on the patrol with heavy fire but the Canadians were protected by the brick walls of one of the houses. Aware that they had been discovered and outflanked, the Germans began to retreat. A Belgian family in one of the houses warned the Canadians to be careful as they followed the retreating Germans. George Price was fatally shot in the chest by a German sniper as he stepped out of the house into the street. He was pulled back into one of the houses and treated by a young Belgian nurse who had ran across the street to help, but he died a minute later at 10:58 am, 11 November 1918. Incredibly, even that close to the end of hostilities, Price was not the last Allied soldier to die in the First World War. That unfortunate historical footnote belongs to Henry Gunther, a U.S. soldier who was shot and killed in the Argonne region of France at 10:59 am. Ironically, the actual Armistice which ended the war was signed at five o’clock that morning by British, French and German officials meeting in Paris. They decided not to make it effective until 11 am, a delay of six hours, to make sure front-line combatants on both sides had received the news. It was a costly delay in terms of human lives. By one estimate, that final six hours of fighting resulted in almost 11,000 casualties, more than those suffered by the Allies during the first day of the Europe (D-Day) invasion during the Second World War. George Lawrence Price
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