On 22 April 1915 Capt Francis Scrimger, Medical Officer of the 14th Bn, Royal Montreal Regt, 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade, was in charge of the Advance Dressing Station of the 3rd Canadian Field Ambulance based at Mouse Trap Farm, North of Wieltje. He had just arrived from England to replace Capt Boyd who had been wounded.
Scrimger's dressing station treated French Army victims of the first gas attack in the early evening of this day and later that night many victims from the Canadian counter-attack on Kitcheners Wood.
During the desperate fighting on the following days Scrimger and his medical team worked constantly, and with little rest, to treat the streams of wounded, usually under shell fire until a dump of SAA was hit causing many of the buildings to catch fire. In the words of the Brigade Major, Capt. Harold MacDonald, wounded earlier by shell fragments,
'The staff were forced to abandon the building and left me there as an apparently hopeless case. But Capt Scrimger carried me out and down to a moat, where we lay half in the water. He curled himself round my wounded head and shoulder to protect me from the heavy shell fire, at obvious peril of his own life. This, however, is only one of many incidents of Capt Scrimger's heroism in those awful three days.'
For the above act and his devotion to duty between 22 - 25 April 1915 Capt Scrimger was awarded the Victoria Cross.
Francis Scrimger was born in Montreal and graduated from McGill University in 1905. Later in the war he served in various Canadian hospitals in France and England rising to the rank of Lt-Col. After the war he returned to Montreal and became surgeon-in-chief at the Royal Victorian Hospital. He died in 1937.
Readers wishing to read a much fuller account of Francis Scrimger's life can consult the updated edition of VCs of the First World War : The Western Front 1915, priced £9.99 available fromthe WFA's Online Bookstore (in conjunction with Amazon) and from The History Press: www.thehistorypress.co.uk.
Article and images contributed by Peter Bachelor.
