Regimental Number: 83087
Rank: Private
Branch: Co. H 127th Infantry Regiment
Forrest Clinton Falk was born August 23, 1895 in Sumner, Iowa. When he was six years old, he was placed in the Lutheran Orphans’ Home in Waverly, Iowa by his father, but was retrieved two months later by his relatives. By the time he was 15, he had rejoined his father and was working at any odd jobs he could find in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
At the age of 17, Forrest traveled as a stowaway by train up to Edson, then drove a team over the Edson trail for Leonard Beard, a settler coming to Grande Prairie with his family. They arrived in September 1911. In 1912, he was joined by his father, John Frederick Falk. Father and son worked at proving up their homesteads over the next years, with Forrest working out as a ranch hand and a hauler on the trails. Forrest’s homestead was located at 21-72-5-W6.
On September 23, 1917, Forrest enlisted as a Private 1st Class for World War I at Deer Lodge, Montana. He fought at Cierges Fermes and Soissons in the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918, and was injured during this last raid at Juvigny, on August 30, 1918. He had received a wound to his left side, by a high explosive German 77mm shell. After 4½ months in an American Red Cross hospital in St. Aignon, France, he was released.
In 1927, Mr. Falk married Edith Catherine Paige.
Forrest died in Grande Prairie on December 12, 1980.
Sources: Edson to Grande Prairie Trail p. 156, 181; Pioneers of the Peace p. 151-154, 178