GEORGE, JOHN, AND WILLIAM LOMAX

IT WAS COMMON during the First World War for entire families of men to enlist together.

In the spring of 1916, John, George, and William Lomax of Banff, Alberta, all signed up to fight. William and John were privates, but George was made a lance corporal. Soon after, though, he asked to be reduced in rank to private like his brothers — likely to ensure that they could stay together at the front.

On April 10, 1917, John — at nineteen years old the youngest brother — was killed at Vimy Ridge. George, twenty-two, died just a few months later during surgery for wounds sustained in battle. William, twenty-one, survived the conflict but died in January 1919 from pneumonia that was likely exacerbated by the mustard gas poisoning he had suffered during the war.

The deaths of the brothers devastated the Lomax family back home, especially their mother, who passed away in 1922 of heart failure.

“She was really just heartbroken…. That’s all,” said Ed McDonald, the nephew of John, George, and William. McDonald’s mother, Margaret, was just a little girl when her older brothers died, and she carried the pain of their loss for the rest of her life.

“We might have won the war,” he said, “but we lost the family.”

36 After the deaths of John, George, and William Lomax, the job of running the family farm fell to their little sister, Margaret. She is shown here at age seventeen, a few years after the war, with an unidentified child.