Regimental Sergeant Major Donald McHugh had served with the 10th Royal Grenadiers for 26 years before the Great War. He had risen through the ranks to become the highest ranking Non-Commissioned Officer in the Regiment, and he was highly respected and liked by all ranks.  He was an excellent leader of men. His older brother, Sergeant Edward McHugh, had also served for many years with the 10th Royal Grenadiers, and mobilized to Valcartier in September 1914, and was assigned to the 3rd Overseas Battalion, but was killed in action at Langemark, Belgium on April 23, 1915.

RSM McHugh was issued the first Service Number (766001) of the newly formed 123rd Battalion. He served the Battalion skillfully and sagely and was compassionate with his men. He was on leave in England when the Battalion went into the Battle of Passchendaele, but while in England he became very ill, and had to be returned to Canada. He was not able to return to active overseas service, but he formed the 123rd Battalion Association in Toronto to support the men returning home, and presided over it until shortly before his death in 1942.  His death was attributed to the illness he contracted while he was overseas.

Sapper James MacLaren ‘Mac’ Shaw was a young draughtsman from Saint John New Brunswick, who had been living and working in New York City, when he decided to return to Canada to join the allied efforts in the Great War.  At the age of 24, he signed up in the summer of 1917 and was immediately assigned to the Canadian Engineers Training Depot and spent time training before being mobilized to England.  In August 1918, just in time for the battles of Canada’s Last Hundred Days, Mac was assigned to the 7th Canadian Engineer Battalion, and joined ~400 men who had served with the 123rd Battalion and 250 men who had come from engineering field companies when the Engineering Branch had been reorganized the previous May.

Mac was a skilled designer and kept detailed notes from his engineering training (see Combat Engineering Notebook under  the Images tab elsewhere on this website). Like the rest of the the men in the 7th CE Battalion, Mac served as both a pioneer and an infantryman as needed, and he faced many dangerous situations as the Canadian Corps drove relentlessly toward the crushing of the German military forces to end the war.  He served in the battles of Canal du Nord, Cambrai, Valenciennes, and onward to Mons, Belgium, where the last hostile shots of the Great War were fired on the morning of November 11, 1918.  On the last day of the war, Mac wrote in his diary, “It sounds funny not to hear the guns.”  He also wrote of dancing in Mons that evening.  Mac repatriated to Canada with the other men of the 7th CE Battalion, under the leadership of Major Bill Lytle, and was discharged at the end of March 1919.  After the war, Mac returned to work in New York where he worked for a large architectural firm on such projects as Rockefeller Center and the 1939 World’s Fair.  After the war, he married his long-time sweetheart, Nita Pratt.  Mac died at the Clara Maas Hospital in New Jersey on May 8, 1960.

Mac’s younger brother, Sergeant Arthur Clarence ‘Clare’ Shaw, mobilized with the 171st Battalion and served with the 13th Battalion in France and Flanders.

Mac’s son, James MacLaren Shaw Jr., served in the U.S. Navy in the Second World War, and came home safe and sound at the end of the war. He was 6’4″ tall and wore a size 14, 4-E shoe, so he was a formidable young man.