Francis Scrimger, V.C.

Francis Alexander Carron Scrimger, VC, BA, MD, CM, FRCS(C), FACS, was born in Montreal on February 7, 1880, and attended McGill University. He graduated in Medicine in 1905 and won an appointment to Montreal's prestigious Royal Victoria Hospital. In 1912, he joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps. Two years later he became the medical officer for the Montreal Heavy Brigade of the Canadian Garrison Artillery.

In August 1914, Captain Scrimger enlisted in the First Contingent as medical officer for the 14th Battalion. In February 1915, he accompanied the Canadian Division to France and served with the 14th Battalion during the Battle of Second Ypres. The battle, which started on April 22, 1915, marked the first use of lethal chlorine gas as a weapon in the history of warfare. But it was the overwhelming German artillery and ground forces that drove through the allied lines. The Canadian stand cost 6,000 casualties, a full one-third of the division.

On April 25th, Scrimger set up his Advanced Dressing Station in Shelltrap Farm, an old structure near the front, which was surrounded by a small moat. He had some 30 to 40 patients under his care. The situation grew steadily worse as a heavy German artillery bombardment began to fall near the farm. While suturing and binding wounds, Scrimger warily eyed crates containing 350,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition that were staked next to his patients.

Realizing the dangerous situation, Scrimger organized the evacuation of the wounded to the rear, but one of his patients, Captain H. F. McDonald, had a serious head wound. Any movement before he was stabilized would likely kill him. Scrimger chose to stay behind. The shells fell around them and then began to land on the farm. The slight, 5-foot-7-inch doctor, who weighed only 148 pounds, shielded McDonald's prone body while he worked over him. During the bombardment, the building was demolished and set on fire, but both Scrimger and McDonald survived the whirling shrapnel and exploding ammunition. Blinded by the smoke and heat of the fire, Scrimger pulled the larger, unconscious infantry officer onto his back and staggered out of the building. German infantry were advancing on the farm and the only escape was to cross the moat to the rear. Lurching to safety with McDonald on his back, Scrimger passed through the barrage, moving from shell hole to shell hole for cover. Hiding in a nearby ditch throughout the rest of the day, they avoided the enemy infantry. Captain McDonald later testified that each time the shells exploded around them, "Captain Scrimger curled himself round my wounded head and shoulder to protect me from the heavy shell fire, at obvious peril to his life. He stayed with me all that time and by good luck was not hit." Scrimger was later able to direct the evacuation of McDonald and several additional wounded soldiers.

The 34-year-old Scrimger became one of four Canadians to receive the Victoria Cross, the Empire's highest award for bravery, during the Battle of Second Ypres. His citation, published on June 22, 1915 in The London Gazette, reads:

On the afternoon of 25th April, 1915 in the neighbourhood of Ypres, when in charge of an advanced dressing station in farm buildings which were being heavily shelled by the enemy, he directed under heavy fire the removal of wounded, and he himself carried a severely wounded Officer out of a stable in search of a place of greater safety. When he was unable alone to carry this Officer further, he remained with him under fire until help could be obtained. During the very heavy fighting between 22nd and 25th April, Captain Scrimger displayed continuously day and night the greatest devotion to duty among the wounded at the front.

To have served from start to finish throughout the war is fairly unique in itself, but Scrimger has a curious connection to one of the most famous poems in Canadian history. From his school days at McGill, he had known John McCrae, who wrote "In Flanders Fields" during the Second Battle of Ypres. It is said that McCrae, upon scribbling the famous poem in a few minutes, read it over, crumpled it up, and threw it away. Scrimger picked it up and convinced McCrae to send it to Punch magazine, where it was eventually published. However, the retrieval of the poem has also been attributed to another friend of McCrae's, E. W. B. Morrison; but, as Scrimger's biographer notes, Scrimger lived by a very strict code of morals and ethics, and he would never have allowed the oft-repeated story to stand should it have been untrue.

Scrimger returned to Montreal after the war with his battlefield surgical experience. In 1921, he joined McGill University as a lecturer in clinical surgery. He continued to practice and teach medicine for another two decades, eventually acquiring a reputation as one of Canada's finest surgeons.

Scrimger died in 1937 and is buried in Mount Royal Cemetery. In 1986, a plaque bearing his Victoria Cross citation was unveiled at the National Defence Medical Centre in Ottawa.

The Victoria Cross and Captain Francis Scrimger, V.C.

The Victoria Cross was instituted on February 5, 1856, with the first awards given to heroes of the Crimean War (1854-1856). One of the earliest recipients was Canadian-born Lieutenant Alexander Dunn, V.C., of the famed Charge of the Light Brigade.

Since its inception, the Victoria Cross has been awarded to 94 Canadians. Eight of these awards were for actions during the late nineteenth century and the South African War (1899-1902). The vast majority – 70 Victoria Crosses – were awarded for actions during the First World War (1914-1918) and sixteen were awarded for the Second World War (1939-1945). No Victoria Crosses have been awarded to Canadians since, and its issue was discontinued when Canada instituted its own awards for bravery and gallantry during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Victoria Cross was re-instituted in 1993 as Canada's highest award for bravery in the face of the enemy, and it is distinguished from the earlier British issue by the Latin words Pro Valore.

To date, none of the new Canadian Victoria Crosses have been awarded, and all of the 94 awards to Canadian recipients have been under the former British awards system. The Canadian War Museum has 28 Victoria Crosses in its collection, including one from the nineteenth century, 24 from the First World War and three from the Second World War.

One of the most recent donations to the Museum is a medal set awarded to Lieutenant Colonel Francis Scrimger, V.C. The LCol Scrimger V.C. medal set consists of the Victoria Cross, the British War Medal 1914-1920 and the Victory Medal 1914-1919.