(I found one of my grandfather’s journals while I was looking in a bin of family artifacts. It was written in a service book. It seems fitting somehow as the anniversary of the First World War approaches.  This, combined now with my personal connection with England:  I have explored and photographed Salisbury Plain with people very dear to me. )

Chapter 1

My father was one of the first to volunteer for active service in August of 1914.  He went to England with the surplus officers and went through all the terrible hardships on Salisbury Plains.  In due course he went to France and spent about a year in the trenches, at the end of that time returning to Canada to raise and take command of the 156th Battalion.  In 1916 he again sailed for England and a few weeks later my mother, sister and myself followed.

We booked our passage in the Ascania, which was to sail at 8 o’clock, on the 1st of November.