Introduction

On the morning of March 26, 2004, I was helping at a church book sale, sorting hundreds of periodicals into piles. “Where do you want these?” a voice demanded.

I looked up as a tall, silver-haired man heaved an old canvas-and-leather bag onto the table. Clearly it had seen better days; the brass fittings were tarnished and the sides had been split so it could be used as a carrier. When he removed a stack of National Geographics, I noticed a name in faded block capitals and, on closer inspection, the letters “CFA.”

“That’s a military antique you’ve got,” I observed.

The man paused to wipe his forehead. “It belonged to my father-in-law,” he said. “Served in the artillery in World War I. Joined the ranks in 1914 and finished up as a lieutenant with a Military Cross.”

I was impressed. “He survived?”

“Yes. One of the lucky ones.” He chuckled. “Never got a scratch.”

Lucky indeed!

We introduced ourselves and started chatting, the magazines forgotten momentarily.

“We’ve got his letters, diary, and photographs,” my acquaintance added, almost as an afterthought, as he picked up the bag and turned to go.

Letters? Diary? Photos? The amateur historian in me was piqued. I knew little of a gunner’s daily life and how it might have differed from a frontline soldier’s. We exchanged telephone numbers.

A few days later I was ushered into a cozy sitting room where a card table held a variety of items together by elastics. Even if Bert Sargent, like many veterans of the Great War, never spoke about his wartime experiences to his children, it was evident he was determined not to forget. My fingers trembled as I flicked through stacks of sepia postcards from a long-vanished world, unfolded barrage maps, and skimmed through letters at random. A quick glance was enough to show that Bert was a gifted writer and a keen observer. There were letters from training camp in England, and others written under shellfire by the light of a guttering candle. They were wonderful, describing artillery life in an intimate, easy fashion, and in a way — 90-plus years after — that deserved to be heard. These letters would lead me on a three-year odyssey, though that was still far in the future.

From what I could see, Bert participated in almost every major Canadian engagement from early 1916 onward. Even better, his experiences were wholly typical of any gunner in the Canadian Field Artillery (CFA). Thus his story is the story of many; he epitomized the citizen soldiers of Canada who served their country so ably in time of need and, the war over, returned to pick up their lives in a nation radically changed in their absence. Fortunately, he’d never been wounded, so there was a continuous record with no long break as he convalesced in an English hospital.

From out of the blue, an idea struck me. Perhaps I could “follow” him around for four and a half years, “seeing” the Great War through his eyes....