213 14 15 16 17 18 The GreatWar The trench whistle also suggested the soldier was someone with some degree of rank. All the evidence pointed to one likely candidate from the 7th Battalion, but it was not until a DNA sample from the remains matched a donor sample from the United Kingdom, that the soldier’s identity was determined once and for all. The identification process took years of meticulous work but after more than a century, Sgt. Richard Musgrave, Military Medal was missing no more. Born in 1886 in the West Lothian coal mining village of Blackrigg, Scotland 1884, Musgrave worked as a teamster in Harwick before the war. A cross Atlantic delivery of two horses to Alberta left Musgrave stranded in Canada without the fare to return home. As the sole supporter of his widowed mother Rebecca back in Scotland, Musgrave worked in the Calgary area when the war began. Like so many British born men in Canada, Musgrave soon joined the CEF inApril 1915. At the time, The Canadian 1st Division had just fished its baptism by fire at Ypres where the 18000-man strong division suffered 6000 casualties in four days of fighting. Such was the need for men in the aftermath, the twenty-eight year old Scot boarded the S.S. Elele at Montreal just weeks after enlisting and sailed for Britain. Not long after arriving, Musgrave ran afoul of authorities and forfeited two days pay for being absent from his unit. One wonders if he had a long overdue reunion with his mother in Scotland. In early 1916, Musgrave was taken on strength with the 7th (1st British Columbia) Battalion and sailed for A trench whistle similar to the one found with Musgrave remains.
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