WW1 Military Medal to 47th Battalion (British Columbia) CEF
Military Medal, G.V.R. (219232 Pte. L. Aps. 47/W. Ont: R.)
Very fine
Leopold Aps was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada, in May 1876. He attested for the Canadian Expeditionary Force in September 1915, and served with the 47th (British Columbia) Battalion, Canadian Infantry on the Western Front. Aps was hospitalised as a result of contracting trench fever whilst serving in Regina Trench in November 1915. He was wounded in action receiving a gun shot wound to the left shoulder and back during the Second Battle of Arras on 3 September 1918.
The 47th Battalion was authorized on 7 November 1914 and embarked for Britain on 13 November 1915. It disembarked in France on 11 August 1916, where it fought as part of the 10th Infantry Brigade, 4th Canadian Division in France and Flanders until the end of the war. By war's end the 47th had lost 899 men. One third of the fatalities, 271 men, were killed in the last 100 days of the war. The battalion was disbanded on 30 August 1920.
The 47th Battalion recruited in New Westminster, Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia and was mobilized at New Westminster. Later in the war the 47th was designated the 47th Western Ontario Battalion because there were more men from that area in the unit than any other part of the country.
