Ralph Webb

The Public Defender

/ Matthew K Barrett / Leave a comment

Lieutenant Colonel W. H. Hastings
250th (Polish) BattalionHastings

Col. Hastings, in an address to the recruits promised to help out any of them to the best of his ability it ever they got in trouble.

(Winnipeg Tribune, 24 Mar 1920, 1)

William Henry Hastings was a newspaperman, crown prosecutor and barrister in Winnipeg. He had been born in Peterborough, Canada West on 29 December 1858. In September 1916, he attempted to raise the 250th Battalion, supported by the local Polish-Canadian community. The Polish language newspaper in Winnipeg, Czas, lauded the creation of a special unit to fight “the traditional enemies of Poland” as “an historical event.” However, the 250th failed to reach full strength and later merged with Lieutenant Colonel C. B. Keenlyside’s 249th Battalion.

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The Amputee

/ Matthew K Barrett / Leave a comment

Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Webb, D.S.O., M.C.
47th (Western Ontario) BattalionWebb

A shell dropped in among the troops and twenty-two Winnipeg men and Col. Webb were wounded. Webb’s leg was completely severed near the hip. The colonel took out his pocket-knife and cut off the mangled remnants, then tied up his arteries with a shoelace. He afterwards underwent the necessary surgical operation without an anesthetic in Etaples field hospital. Recovering in England, he never used a crutch. He secured an artificial limb and left the hospital walking upon it. Within five months after his leg was blown off, he was back in France with his unit, with the artificial member.

(Winnipeg Tribune, 17 Nov 1924, 4)

Ralph Humphreys Webb succeeded Lieutenant Colonel M. J. Francis as commander of the 47th Battalion on 14 December 1917. In September 1914, the twenty-eight year old Webb had enlisted as a lieutenant with the Canadian Army Service Corps. Webb was born at sea on an ocean liner sailing from India on 30 August 1886. Raised in England, he immigrated to Canada in 1902.

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