A portrait of a German prisoner of war taken during the First World War. All sides sometimes shot surrendering enemy in the field. (NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND/WIKIMEDIA)

Take no prisoners: Canadians and battlefield executions

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

During the morning attack of Sept. 15, 1916, in the latter stages of the Battle of the Somme at Courcelette, several Germans approached Canadian Captain Samuel M. Loghrin of the 18th Battalion (Western Ontario), apparently in surrender. When Loghrin stepped forward to accept their capitulation, however, a German tossed a grenade and killed him instantly.

“This foul act of treachery was observed by the men of his Company, with the result that none of the occupants of the trench were allowed to escape alive,” reported Brigadier-General Robert Rennie, commander of the 4th Brigade.

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Lieutenant George Mullin in 1918.(Wikipedia)

Canada’s First American Victoria Cross

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

‘I’m fed up to the teeth,’ said Sergeant George Harry Mullin as he handed out rum rations to his Canadian comrades on Oct. 29, 1917. ‘Tomorrow morning it’s either a wooden cross or a VC for me.’

He would soon be proven right on one of those counts.

Mere hours later, amid the Battle of Passchendaele, Mullin’s “gallantry and fearlessness,” as his Victoria Cross citation reads, earned him a place among a select few awarded the British Empire’s highest military accolade.

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