Aubrey Ernest Forrest (1879 - 1918)

Aubrey Forrest was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He was in the military with the California Volunteers during the Spanish-American War in 1898.1) He was a constable with the Royal North-West Mounted Police (RNWMP) and was on the Dawson - Fort McPherson patrol most years from 1905 to 1911. He once made the 500-mile trip in nineteen days in January/February.2)

Forrest was a Dawson miner in July 1916 when he enlisted to serve in the First World War.3) He joined the Yukon Motor Machine Gun Battery and was promoted to sergeant-major in December 1916.4) The Yukon Battery was amalgamated with Black's 17th Machine Gun Company in 1918. Lieutenant James A. McKinnon, William Kenneth Currie, Ernest Lawrence Peppard, and Aubrey Forrest were the only ones remaining from the Yukon Battery and the forty-nine men who had posed under the “Dawson to Berlin” banner in 1914. The rest had been killed, wounded, taken prisoner or had been transferred to other units.5)

Forrest was wounded during the assault on the Hindenburg Line in August 1918, and he died weeks later of his wounds. He is buried in the Crouy British Cemetery in Crouy-Sur-Somme in France. Forrest Creek on the Wind River is named for him.6)

1) , 3)
Library and Archives Canada, Attestation Paper, WWI Reg. #1015556. 1 July 1916 in Sidney.
2)
R. C. Coutts. Yukon: Places & Names. Sidney, B. C.: Gray’s Publishing Ltd. 1980.
4) , 6)
D. Blair Neatby and Michael Gates, The Yukon Fallen of World War I. Whitehorse: Whitehorse Legion Branch 254, 2018: 50.
5)
Michael Gates, From the Klondike to Berlin: The Yukon in World War I. Madeira Park B.C.: Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd. 2017: 150.