Thunder in the Skies: A Canadian Gunner in the Great War
488
Thunder in the Skies: A Canadian Gunner in the Great War
488eBook
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Overview
What was it like to be a field gunner in the Great War?
Drawing on the unpublished letters and diary of field gunner Lt. Bert Sargent and his fellow soldiers, Thunder in the Skies takes the reader from enlistment in late 1914, through training camp, to the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, the Hundred Days Offensive, and home again with peace.
Posted just behind the front lines, Sargent and field gunners like him spent gruelling months supporting the infantry in the trenches. Theirs was a very different war, as dangerous or more at times as the one on the front lines. As an ordinary Canadian writing letters home to ordinary people, Sargent gives a wrenching, insightful account of a tight-knit band of soldiers swept up in some of the most important battles of the war that shaped the twentieth century.
Thunder in the Skies details the daily life of artillerymen fighting in the First World War in a way no other book has before.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781459730953 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dundurn Press |
| Publication date: | 08/29/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 488 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
General Ernest Beno is Honorary Colonel, 7th Toronto Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery. He retired from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1997, after thirty-seven years of service, at the rank of Brigadier-General.
Derek Grout is a historian who has written extensively on shipwrecks and scuba diving in Canada and the United States. His book, RMS Empress of Ireland, was praised on both sides of the Atlantic. He lives in Pointe Claire, Quebec.
General Ernest Beno is Honorary Colonel, 7th Toronto Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery. He retired from the Canadian Armed Forces in 1997, after thirty-seven years of service, at the rank of Brigadier-General.
Read an Excerpt
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....
Table of Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- 1 A City Goes to War
- 2 Into the 21st Battery
- 3 Training and the "Mysteries of Barrack Life"
- 4 "A Great Credit to Your Country"
- 5 New Homes
- 6 "Berlin or Bust"
- 7 At Sea
- 8 Shorncliffe
- 9 "We are a Depot Brigade"
- 10 "Dear ... Folks"
- 11 "Soldiering More Than We Have Done Since We Arrived in England"
- Chapter 12 Zeppelin Attack
- 13 "I Have Seen No Better Brigade This Year"
- 14 To the Front
- 15 A "Present to the Kaiser"
- 16 The Second Division Ammunition Column
- 17 "Hell to the nth Power"
- 18 "Absolutely the Best Pal I Ever Had"
- 19 "We Made the Usual Success of It"
- 20 Prelude to Vimy
- 21 The Battle of Vimy Ridge
- 22 July and August 1917
- 23 "Not Glad to be Back"
- 24 "Like the Crack of Doom": The Battle of Passchendaele
- 25 Winter Quarters
- 26 "Looks Like One Hell of a Job!"
- 27 Operation Michael
- 28 Holding the Line: May and June 1918
- 29 A Much-Needed Rest
- 30 Amiens: "Black Day of the German Army"
- 31 Wedding Bells in "Blighty"
- 32 Back to the Front
- 33 Open Warfare and the Cambrai "Show"
- 34 Valenciennes and the Pursuit to Mons
- 35 Into the Rhineland
- 36 "Blighty" and the Official Record
- 37 HMT Northland and Canada
- Epilogue
- Bibliography