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  Intertwined with the attacks and counterattacks of the war in Europe, I have sprinkled many current events happening at the time back home in Canada — a country that you and Grandpa helped to settle. A young country, itself coming of age, Canada lost many of its young, productive people to the war overseas.

  Jim has the last word. In a postscript to his final letter home from the hospital two days before his death, Jim reveals the type of son he was, Grandma: “Now Mother Dear, don’t worry much about me as I will get alright.”

  1

  Three Cheers — We’re at War!

  The date was June 28, 1914, when the gunshot reverberated all over Europe and England. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia, his beautiful young wife, Sophie, killed. For the month following that fatal shot, word flew around Europe — telegrams, communiqués, debate in the parliaments of all the major countries. The fine print in alliances made years before were read and re-read. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was dead. Nationalism had been surging all over Europe and Great Britain. An excuse for war, at last! War was imminent.

  A throng gathered in Trafalgar Square in London, England, on August 4. As the clock in the tower of Westminster struck midnight, war was declared. A cheer went up. Street parties broke out. In Canada, crowds gathered in main streets, cheering, parading up and down, and singing patriotic songs. German soldiers leaving their homeland leaned out of train windows, shouting “On to Paris!” Equally confident, French soldiers and those of the British Expeditionary Forces rallied their troops with “On to Berlin!” All sides were certain the war would be over by Christmas.

  — — —

  Until the Statute of Westminster was passed in 1931, an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain was binding on the dominions. Consequently, the act declaring war on Germany meant that Canada and the other Commonwealth nations were obliged to support Britain. From Canada’s prairies to its seashores, from the mines of Wales, to the sheep farms of Australia and New Zealand, from Africa, from India, from the halls of Westminster, and from across many continents, men and women answered the call to arms.

  Jim’s attestation papers. Although Jim listed his birthdate as December 18, 1897, his “assumed age” was entered as 18 years and 7 months.

  In Canada, a new country of little more than 7.8 million people, men joined up. Many boys lied about their age so as not to miss the “show” that would end in six months.

  On July 21, 1915, in a small town in southwest Manitoba, three boys boarded the train to Winnipeg. For the occasion, they had changed from their everyday clothes into suits, ties, and hats. By the next day they would be proud members of the 79th Cameron Highlanders of Canada. The regiment, Winnipeg and Western Canada’s first Highland regiment, was only five years old, having being established on February 1, 1910.

  On August 5, 1914, when Ottawa enlisted a division for overseas service, the Cameron Highlanders in Winnipeg were only 497 men strong. Such was the loyalty and enthusiasm of Canadians that after a parade through Winnipeg on August 6, 1914, over one thousand men volunteered for the Camerons.

  2

  Why Are You Going?

  “Why are you going?” his mother asked from the step as she closed the farmhouse door behind her.

  “Why are you going?” she asked as they drove to the burgundy train station slung low against the prairie sky.

  “Why are you going?” she pleaded as she hugged him on the bottom step of the train, the last step before the whistle blew and he disappeared into the smoke and steam, and the sound of the grinding wheels gaining speed. Her question echoed over and over in the sound of the departing train — fading until it was gone. “Why are you going?” she whispered into the void left by the echo, into the silence. His mother’s whispered words were on the tongues of mothers around the world.

  As he closed the front gate behind him, Jim hadn’t looked back at the home he was leaving. He hadn’t answered his mother’s question; not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t. Nor did he ever give her an answer to that question — a question that reverberated with the constancy of shell fire as he crouched in cold, muddy trenches in a foreign land, far from the prairies he knew — the same unanswered question that haunted his dreams, his wakeful nights.

  Jim and his family on the front porch of their home near Belmont, Manitoba, circa July 1915. (Left–right) Jim Fargey, Mrs. J. Fargey (mother), Aileen (sister), Mr. Sam Fargey (father), Frank (brother), and brother Cecil (front).

  Why are you going? In his boy’s mind there was no satisfactory answer then, not one that would have lessened the worry on his mother’s face as the tall, sparse figure turned from the train growing silent in the distance — a frame once erect and now lessened by the unanswered question, the uncertainty of the future. Why was he choosing to leave the three-storey brick home his parents had just finished building? Why was he leaving his bedroom looking out on the pond where the ducks took their young in spring, where he skated in winter? Why was he leaving his bed with the warm, crazy quilt a neighbour had made as a housewarming gift?

  The boys board the train for Winnipeg, July 21, 1915. Though just 17, Jim was determined to join the war effort.

  Jim had just turned 17. Like boys all over the continent, he followed his heart. Was it a heart filled with love of God and Country? Was it restlessness, a desire to see new places, to experience new things? Opportunistic young men grabbed at the chance to change their futures — futures that, here at home, were often predictable, configured, and mapped out for them like a prairie road, with the beginning and end visible before the journey even began. Many dreamt of a bend in that road, a hill, a change in the landscape of their futures.

  How long would she wait for his answer? She would wait, knowing the same sun warmed her son in the trenches. Each night she would trim the lamp wick, clean last night’s soot from the glass chimney. By lamplight she would write the letters he would carry with him into the trenches, into nights occupied with mending the barbed-wire maze of no man’s land. She would write letters that he would read and re-read. She would write; and she would wait for his return. Then an answer would be no longer necessary.

  3

  You’re In the Army Now!

  Jim and his two friends, Leslie and Arthur, travelled a local line, not the Canadian Pacific, east to Winnipeg that morning in July of 1915. However, it was the Canadian Pacific Railway that was still causing excitement all across Canada — that amazing ribbon of steel which had threaded its way both east and west from Central Canada in only five years. When the Last Spike was driven on November 7, 1885, at Craigellachie, British Columbia, the CPR became the thumb that held the ribbon taut for the bow that tied the country together from sea to sea.

  The CPR had been given a gift of 25 million acres (equal to about 100,000 square kilometres) of free land by the government for building the railway. The Dominion Lands Act of 1872 enabled the government to offer 160 acres of free land in the fertile West to any homesteader brash enough to take it and strong enough to work it.

  Immigrants could also purchase a package that included passage on a Canadian Pacific (CP) ship, travel on a CP train, and land from the CPR for as little as $2.50 an acre, then ride across Canada inexpensively on railway cars equipped with sleeping facilities and small kitchens. In providing these amenities, CP created an economy for their railway and helped to settle a vast country. And immigrants did come! Canada’s population grew from approximately five million in 1900 to just under eight million by 1914.

  Records of pay and assigned pay. Jim was paid one dollar a day for his service. Of this, he signed over half to his mother: “I drew my $30, which was pay in full. I signed over $15 a month to Mother. We had to sign it over or the government would keep it for me and dear knows if I ever would see it again. It will go into effect as soon as I leave for the Old Country. $30 is too much to carry around.”

  Within its first 30 years, this very same rail
way had brought Jim’s father and uncles, and later his mother and many others, from Ontario to break the land and build homes in Manitoba — at the time just a small province that had been created on May 12, 1870, surrounding the Red River Colony. Its pioneers had hopes and uncertainties not unlike those of the three young men heading to Winnipeg to join the war effort during that summer of 1915. They all carried with them an excitement and a fear of what lay ahead.

  Winnipeg, September 19, 1915

  Dear Father,

  I suppose you’re threshing now. I see by the papers that pigs are a pretty good price. You’ll be selling ours, I guess. We got our underwear the other day. It is certainly good stuff but a little heavy.

  I drew my $30 which was pay in full. I signed over $15 a month to Mother. We had to sign it over or the government would keep it for me and dear knows if I ever would see it again. It will go into effect as soon as I leave for the Old Country. $30 is too much to carry around.

  Your loving son,

  Jim

  Montreal, October 18, 1915

  Dear Mother,

  We arrived tonight. They marched us onto the boats and gave us berths. I am sending you a picture of the boat. Everything is the same but where it is painted white, it is black in times of war.

  The British often considered the troops arriving from Canada an ill-disciplined, ill-equipped bunch, and sent them to the south of England to “shape up” for the realities of war.

  In his memoir, Riding into War, Canadian veteran James Robert Johnston talks about his arrival at Shorncliffe, England, in the fall of 1916:

  We started in training again in a day or two under Imperial instructors. I still don’t think the English instructors liked Canadians, or they would not have drilled us so hard. It was right on the double all day, bayonet practice, rifle practice, in and out of trenches, bomb throwing and more running. I thought we were in pretty good shape, but they soon showed us the difference. They kept this up for over a week and I think they wanted to make it so hard for us that we would want to go to France, or somewhere else.

  In a letter to his older brother, Frank, Jim gives details of his daily life in England:

  East Sandling, Kent, England, Nov 26/15

  Dear Frank,

  We are taking Musketry training now. Learning all about the rifle and how to use it. After musketry we go to the ranges to practice shooting. Most of us have the Lee Enfield rifles. They are lighter and shorter than the Ross rifle and are far better for shooting. The lads here never used a Ross.

  IN THE TRENCHES

  The Ross vs. the Enfield

  Sam Hughes, Canada’s minister of militia at the outbreak of the First World War, made several questionable decisions: one was to equip Canadian soldiers with the Canadian-made Ross rifle instead of the British Lee Enfield. Although his favourite was good for target shooting, it was ineffective in trench warfare, where it was prone to jam with mud and dirt. As well, the bayonet, when attached, tended to fall off when the weapon was fired. Soldiers in the field referred to it as “the old Sam Hughes.” The Ross did, however, have a higher rate of fire, and snipers liked it for its long range and accuracy. Because of its deficiencies in the field, but over strong objections from Hughes, Prime Minister Borden authorized soldiers to replace “the old Sam Hughes” with the Lee Enfield rifle. Some 1,453 Canadian soldiers disposed of the Ross, and by the Battle of the Somme, the new commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir Douglas Haig, had all three Canadian divisions armed with Lee Enfields.

  Jim’s letter continues:

  I have just been home a week from my leave. We certainly had a fine time in Leeds. The kilts are the dress for getting “the Janes” to look at you on the street. They weren’t very cold with a pair of underpants on but the worst trouble is that you have to wash your knees too often!

  I am on fatigue to-morrow. I can’t kick as it is only the second fatigue since I came here. They say three Zeppelins flew over camp the other night but we did not see them. We have to cover up our windows every night at dark with blankets and the whole camp is in pitch darkness. We have gone out on two route marches this week already. We generally go out about seven o’clock and come in at nine. We do night work such as judging distances in the dark and judging sounds.

  This morning we had scouting. It was rather interesting but hard work with your overcoat on, rifle and pack on our back. We have to carry our pack on our back every morning parade except an hour in the morning.

  We get up at six-thirty. First parade at 15 to 7 for an hour. Come off parade at eight and go on again at eight forty-five. We have forty-five minutes at dinner and go on again till five o’clock. We are going all day and have to look after our rifle and clean our boots after supper.

  Well, Frank, it is nearly bedtime. This is all I have to write this time.

  Your loving brother

  J.H.

  Jim, sporting the regimental kilt: “The kilts are the dress for getting ‘the Janes’ to look at you on the street. They weren’t very cold with a pair of underpants on but the worst trouble is that you have to wash your knees too often!”

  When Jim later writes his younger sister and brother from the battlefields of Belgium, his opinion of the kilt has changed from his earlier letter to Frank:

  April 11/16

  Dear Aileen and Cecil,

  Well, sister and brother, how are you getting along? You have written quite a few letters to me and I’m taking this opportunity of writing. We came out of the trenches the morning before last and are in the supports at present. George Money came over from England and landed here a few days ago but hasn’t been in the trenches yet. They have the kilts and look fine but they are no use for the trenches, especially in the wet weather!

  But Jim’s opinion of the Ross rifle hasn’t changed:

  May 2, 1916

  We are going into the trench with the Ross rifle. I thought before that we would have the Lee Enfield as we did our target shooting with it.

  May 27/16

  Dear Brother,

  I am glad to hear that you are nearly finished sowing your wheat. The 49[th] battalion are in the trenches now. They generally camp around where we are. All the Canadians are near one another. We have had a draft from the 44th battalion to reinforce us. Quite a few fellows have got Lee Enfield rifles. They watch around and pick up old ones and clean them up. I have still got the “old Sam Hugh’s” yet.

  — — —

  Each soldier’s kit could mean the difference between life and death, and so he had to maintain it through mud, freezing temperatures, and blistering heat. At roll call each day the soldier had to produce his full kit.

  IN THE TRENCHES

  Iron Rations

  Food supply was a major problem when soldiers advanced into enemy territory. All men carried emergency food called “iron rations.” These iron rations could only be opened with the permission of an officer.

  The kit contained an emergency ration of preserved meat, cheese, biscuit, tea, sugar, and salt. It was carried by all British soldiers in the field for use in the event of their being cut off from regular food supplies.

  A typical iron ration for British soldiers in 1914 contained:

  1 pound preserved meat

  3 ounces cheese

  12 ounces biscuit

  5/8 ounces tea

  2 ounces sugar

  1/2 ounce salt

  1 ounce meat extract

  After the artillery bombarded the enemy’s defences, soldiers went “over the top.” As they climbed out of the trenches and advanced toward enemy lines, most British and Canadian soldiers carried with them approximately 60 pounds of equipment: a rifle with fixed bayonet, 170–230 rounds of small-arms ammunition, grenades, a steel helmet, and later a gas mask, a pair of goggles against tear gas, a first-aid field dressing, and iodine. They also carried everyday living requirements: a waterproof groundsheet and cape, a filled water bottle, a haversack with a mess tin, personal belongings, one
preserved ration, and one iron ration. Many carried shovels, and some had picks strapped to their backs. A small trench spade could save a soldier from being stuck in open land as well as provide him with a club for close fighting.

  Soldiers stumbled across muddy land cratered by the bombing, unaware that artillery bombardments had rarely knocked out all enemy gun emplacements and barbed-wire fences. Armed with only a rifle and bayonet, and laden with heavy equipment, they were an easy target for the highly mobile machine gunners.

  France, March 23, 1916

  Thank you very much for the parcel. Those cotton rags come in very handy to use to clean our rifles, as cloths like that are very scarce and we have other bandages if needed otherwise. Those socks were fine but I have nearly enough socks now for a while and it is kind of hard carrying them around when we only have a small pack and have to carry everything with us.

  IN THE TRENCHES

  Hughes’s Folly #2

  Another Hughes “folly” had been equipping Canadian soldiers with MacAdam shield-shovels — he had ordered 25,000 of them. Although similar to the standard portable infantry spade, it was also intended to shield the soldier from bullets and allow him to sight the enemy through a large hole in the centre. This design, however, required heavier steel, which meant that each one weighed more than five pounds — making it understandably unpopular with men already carrying a 60-pound kit. It proved incapable of stopping gunfire penetration, and soldiers couldn’t shovel soil effectively because of the sight hole.