"The Red Watch": With the First Canadian Division in Flanders

The kind reception given to the rough notes from the Author's Diary, which appeared first in the daily papers in Canada, encouraged the production of this book. These notes, in...

With this book as with many others the first chapter should be read last. The reason it is placed first is that the chronological order must be maintained. Besides, when stirrin...

It was while doing duty in Scotland, shortly after the Jacobite rising, that the 42nd Highlanders came to be called the "Black Watch." The sombre color of their kilts and the wo...

"I suppose now that Great Britain has declared war on Germany, Canada will throw in her lot with the United States," so laughingly spoke an American friend that I met the day Gr...

In the War of 1870, the Germans advanced across the Rhine on the frontier of France. The independent State of Luxemburg and the Kingdom of Belgium were not disturbed. The German...

The work of organizing and equipping the Canadian Imperial battalions for overseas service was taken up with great vigor by the Minister of Militia, Major-General Sir Sam Hughes...

The St. Lawrence River at Quebec presented a busy scene. Never since the days of the Tercentennial of the discovery of the River by Jacques Cartier, when King George and the Bri...

On Thursday, the 14th of October, orders came to disembark. All the ships of the Canadian fleet were there. We learned that we had been sent to Plymouth at the last minute and t...

We had to settle down for a few days to await our arms and equipment, and in the meantime a meeting of the officers was called by General Alderson, our Divisional Commander.

The men turned smartly, facing me. In the centre stood bareheaded the prisoner, a young man about twenty-two years of age, on each side of him a grim old soldier with a drawn ba...

We, that is to say, Mr. J.R. Robinson, editor of the Toronto Telegram, and I stood in Westminster Abbey at the spot in the hallowed floor where "Rare" Ben Jonson had claimed his...

I had thrown myself at ten o'clock on my cot, fully equipped for the first march on the way to France, and had slept soundly till roused at twelve forty-five by a knock on my do...

I was taking a stroll along the railway platform of a station in Northern France where the engine stopped to coal and water when this chorus of barnyard calls burst from the men...

"Yes, Sir John. In fact we are twenty over strength, and I am afraid you will 'wig' me for it, but we marched out at night and some of the men in the base company, hearing we we...

"I understand that orders have just arrived at the orderly room that we are to march up to the trenches to-morrow. I guess we will have to close the officers' mess till after th...

Next day I started out on foot with an officer of each of my companies to go to the headquarters of the Seventh Division. We got a motor bus where the railways cross the Armenti...

When we left the trenches at Fromelles for the first time we took up billets on the Rue Du Quesne. This street was named after a one-time General and Governor of Canada during t...

On the morning of the 8th of March, being Monday, the Germans began the week early by heaving some more shells in the direction of the ruin that guarded our quarters. Some one o...

A terrible disaster happened the regiment on March 23rd. Our adjutant, Captain R. Clifford Darling, was wounded. This is how it happened: An artillery lieutenant was with us con...

The battalion paraded early on April 7th and once more we were on the march. We were working north and were to go into billets near Cassel. The intended attack on the Rue D'Enfe...

On April 17th we received orders not to gather in groups on the street if hostile aircraft were seen, and also that officers were to keep close to their billets. Three of my com...

On the afternoon of the 19th I was very busy closing out my correspondence. I always made it a point while I was out of the trenches to answer all the letters I had received, an...

"Be careful there," said Capt. McGregor. "The French were short of sandbags here and they have built several dead Germans into the parapets." I was examining our new trenches in...

It did not take us very long to realize that a great disaster had befallen our gallant Allies who held the northern face of the salient. The Turcos in broken French explained th...

A cry went along the line of the trenches, and two stretcher bearers jumped up on the parapet and ran towards the Poelcapelle Road, along which Captain Cory's platoon held the t...

"You make the hair stand up on my head. That 'blighter' has followed you up and down with his machine gun all morning, and it is a mystery to me how he manages to miss you."

"Guess the Germans are handing us the wrong bill of fare this morning. Coffee and iron rations," said Sergeant Coe as he bent over and took a look into the tin basin on the Flem...

The Germans were shelling us with high explosive shells from the north rim of the salient. Huge "coal boxes," coming from the direction of Pilken, were falling in the village of...

"What shell?" I enquired, as I had not heard any "whispering Willy" arriving, but something seemed to have covered my clothes suddenly with mud and splinters of wood and bark.

During the night of the 3rd and 4th of May our brigade was withdrawn from the salient and marched to a bivouac west of the Chateau Trois Towers in which our Divisional Headquart...

When General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien came to see me he suggested that I should take a few weeks' rest in England. I objected and said I wanted to be in the big British spring d...