Saturday, February 20, 2010

"End of an Era"

John "Jack" Babcock was a 15 1/2 -year-old Canadian farm boy when he joined the 146th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916 during World War I.

"They were hard up for men then," he recalled in 2003 in the Ottawa Citizen. "They didn't have the draft yet" and relied on enlistees.

Babcock, Canada's last known World War I veteran, died Thursday at 109 at his home in Spokane, Wash.

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