George McLean – War Hero In the Trenches Of WWI
In a damp, dark trench crawling with rats, George McLean sat silently alongside his fellow members of the Fifty-Fourth (Kootenay) Battalion.
The year was 1917, and in a few hours the silence that had descended over no-man’s land would be broken by the sounds of screams, explosions, and machine gun fire. It was the first morning of the Battle for Vimy Ridge, which many historians consider a defining moment, and one of the greatest victories, for the Canadian Army.
George McLean, from the Nk’maplqs (Head of the Lake) Band, was not new to the world of soldiering by then. During the Boer War, when he was 25 years old, McLean had served with the Canadian Mounted Rifles. When the First World War broke out, McLean, alongside every other male member of the Head of the Lake Band between the ages of 20 and 35, enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
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