My Grandfather's War. Canadians Remember The First World War 1914-1918

the long version

"My great fear has been that, one morning in 1989 or 1991, we would read in the paper 'Last Canadian veteran 0f 1914-1918 dies in Lethbridge'. Then it would be too late." It was this fear that led the author on a three-year odyssey, across Canada and to Europe, which took him over 26,000 miles. He met hundreds of veterans, taped their stories, borrowed their diaries, letters, and journals, and browsed through their photo albums. The result is a moving oral history, reinforced by the best material from print sources, which takes the reader to the trenches of France and Belgium, to the front in North Africa, to wartime London and Paris, to the ships of the Mediterranean, and to the prisoner-of-war camps and the occupied cities of Germany itself. In this labour of love, the author has created a vivid and moving portrait, illustrated with over a hundred period photographs, of a generation that sailed innocently to war in the summer of 1914--and he ws never the same again.