Cap Badge - McGill University Siege Battery - Artillery McGill University site: "Two siege artillery batteries were also recruited at McGill – the 7th in 1916, and the 10th in 1917 – on the argument that officers in the heavy artillery had a professional need for McGill's mathematical expertise. Probably the best-known survivor, Sergeant Brooke Claxton, reserved his greatest gifts for the practice of law and politics as Minister of National Defence in the Louis St. Laurent government, and as the founding Chair of the Canada Council. Late in 1918, too late for the war, Ottawa recruited a "university tank battalion," to which McGill contributed 26 officers and 186 non-commissioned members."