Louis Lipsett

Lt. Col. W.A. Munro

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Lieutenant Colonel W.A. Munro
90th (Little Black Devils) Battalion
Munro

Heart disease, which originated in the first gas attack at Ypres in 1915, resulted in the death last night of Lieut.-Col. W.A. Munro, D.S.O., a prominent figure in the active militia in Western Canada.

 (Winnipeg Tribune, 2 Feb 1927, 2)

A native of Toronto, William Aird Munro was born on 12 June 1872. He joined the newly formed 48th Highlanders in 1891 before moving to Winnipeg three years later. At the outbreak of the Great War, he had twenty-years’ service with the 90th Winnipeg Rifles (The Little Black Devils). The regiment’s nickname dated back to the Métis resistance of 1885. A captured rebel remarked, “The red coats we know, but who are those little black devils?” referring to the 90th soldiers’ rifle green uniforms.

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Maj. Gen. Loomis

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Major General F.O.W. Loomis
13th (Royal Highlanders of Canada) Battalion
Loomis

We have laid the bodies of many of our best under rows of little wooden crosses. We love those comrades who have fallen; we remember their deeds, and recall their deaths with pride and joy, and we know that their souls go marching with us. We know that the spirit of devotion that animated them remains with us, and we feel that the enemy has no battalions, no gas, guns, shells, nor bombs which will dampen or deter this spirit of determination — the Canadian Spirit.

 (Loomis to W. F. Gibson, The Listening Post, 1 Dec 1917, 3)

Frederick Oscar Warren Loomis was a Montreal manufacturer and member of the militia since 1886. He was born in Sherbrook, Quebec on 1 February 1870. As commander of the Royal Highlanders, Loomis led the 13th Battalion to France in February 1915. He guided the Highlanders through the first major action at Second Ypres and was promoted to command the 2nd Brigade in January 1916.

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The Irishman

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Major General Louis Lipsett †
8th (90th Winnipeg Rifles) BattalionLipsett

General Lipsett is not only a fine soldier but a sympathetic Irishman, with the power of inspiring personal affection and devotion among those under him to a very unusual degree.

He inspires such confidence that I cannot imagine any man showing fear in his presence. To have Lipsett by your side would be enough to give a coward courage. “He never asks anyone to do a thing that he is not ready to do himself,” his men say. “He never forgets a man. He knows everybody’s name and all about us.”

(F. A. McKenzie, Through the Hindenburg Line, 1918, 9)

Born on 14 June 1874 in Ballyshannon, Ireland, Louis James Lipsett was a professional soldier with the Royal Irish Regiment. He served for five years in India on the Northwest Frontier. A veteran of the Tirah Campaign and the Boer War, he participated in an officer exchange program with the Canadian militia in 1911 and relocated to western Canada. After the outbreak of the Great War, he secured British Columbia coastal defences and assumed command of the 8th (Little Black Devils) Battalion, based in Winnipeg.

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