Ryan Schnee
October 30, 2025
LEF

Why Wait Another Hour or Another Day?

In Canada we mark November 11 as Remembrance Day because the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month was when the armistice to end WW 1 was signed. It is the time every year when we commemorate all the servicemen who have given their lives for our country.  Perhaps the most tragic of all of those losses was the death of Private George Lawrence Price. 

Price was born in Falmouth, Nova Scotia, on December 15, 1892, and raised on Church Street, in what is now Port Williams, Nova Scotia. George was the third child of James Ephraim and Annie Rose (Stephens) Price. He moved to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan as a young man, where he was conscripted on October 15, 1917. He served with "A" Company of the 28th Battalion (Northwest), CEF, Canadian Expeditionary Force.  The 2nd Division's 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade was selected to attack this day. From the 6th Brigade, the 28th 'North-West' Battalion and the 31st Battalion/Alberta Regiment were chosen to lead the attack.[2] The 28th Battalion had orders for November 11 to advance from Frameries (South of Mons) and continue to the village of Havre, securing all the bridges on the Canal du Centre. The battalion advanced rapidly starting at 4:00 a.m., pushing back light German resistance and they reached their position along the canal facing Ville-sur-Haine by 9:00 a.m. where the battalion received a message that all hostilities would cease at 11:00 a.m.[1] Price and fellow soldier Art Goodmurphy were worried that the battalion's position on the open canal bank was exposed to German positions on the opposite side of the canal where they could see bricks had been knocked out from house dormers to create firing positions. According to Goodmurphy they decided on their own initiative to take a patrol of five men across the bridge to search the houses. Reaching the houses and checking them one by one, they discovered German soldiers mounting machine guns along a brick wall overlooking the canal. The Germans opened fire on the patrol with heavy machine gun fire but the Canadians were protected by the brick walls of one of the houses. Aware that they had been discovered and outflanked, the Germans began to retreat.[3] A Belgian family in one of the houses warned the Canadians to be careful as they followed the retreating Germans. George Price was fatally shot in the left breast by a German sniper[4] as he stepped out of the house into the street. He was pulled into one of the houses and treated by a young Belgian nurse who ran across the street to help, but died a minute later at 10:58 a.m., November 11, 1918. His death was just two minutes before the armistice came into effect at 11 a.m.[1]

Price’s death is particularly tragic because, while the signing of the armistice on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, might have a certain poetic value, the poetic timing reveals a certain arbitrariness.  If the politicians and generals could choose to end the war on the eleventh hour, why didn’t they end it on the ninth hour? If they had Price might have returned home to his family in Nova Scotia and gone on to live a productive life.   If they could end it on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, why couldn’t they have ended it on the tenth day of the eleventh month?  Remembering that the war ended on 23rd hour of the thirtieth day of the tenth month, might make history class more difficult, but how many lives would have been saved if those in power who knew the war would end had chosen to end it sooner?  As for Price and the other members of the patrol, why did they choose to fight for the last two hours of the conflict?  Why didn’t they withdraw out of range of the enemy’s guns when they heard at 9:AM that hostilities were to cease at 11:AM?  

The people who made those decisions have passed on and lie beyond the reach of my questions, but those questions should come home to us and probe our hearts.  When we are angry, when we are fighting with someone, why do we wait to make peace?  Why do we wait for an anniversary to reconcile with our spouses?  Why do we wait for a funeral to finally talk to family member that we have been estranged from for years?  The hostilities need to end sometime, so why not sooner than later?  How many unnecessary casualties have there been in your life because you waited to call a truce and make peace?

 “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” (Ephesians 4:25–27, NIV)

[1] George Lawrence Price, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lawrence_Price, accessed Nov 7, 2022.