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Description: | Diaries containing ms entries for 1916 – 1918 (376pp, 377pp and 380pp including addenda), together with five notebooks (196pp, 147pp, 151pp, 151pp and 113pp) containing additional, mostly more detailed, ms descriptions, for the periods 1 April – 30 August 1917, 15 September – 31 December 1917 and 11 January – 31 December 1918, written during his service on the Western Front with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, initially as a junior officer in the 1st Field Company Royal Engineers, 1st Canadian Division (March – November 1916), as an Assistant Field Engineer on Corps duties (November 1916 – February 1917), in the 2nd Field Company RE (January – March 1916 and, as commanding officer, February 1917 – May 1918) and in the 2nd Battalion Canadian Engineers (as second in command, May – December 1918) covering the Battles of Second Ypres (April – May 1915 see Vol 2 pp75 – 91 for vivid reminiscences), Mont Sorrel (June 1916), Flers Courcelette (September 1916 including brief references to tanks), Arras (April – May 1917), Third Ypres (October – November 1917), Amiens (August 1918) and the Canal du Nord (September 1918) and his Battalion’s subsequent progress through Belgium after the Armistice as well as service in Cologne as part of the Army of Occupation, also descriptions of his duties overseeing road repair work, demolitions and construction projects, organising work parties and attending courts martial (see 1916 diary and Vol 2 pp1-3 for example) as well as acting as deputy presiding officer for the Dominion election voting (December 1917), references to his unstinting praise for Canadian troops (see 21 April 1916 for example) and forthright views on senior commanders and Canadian politicians (see 10 and 24 April 1916, Vol 1 pp102 -103 and Vol 2 pp140 -141, for example) including also General Lipsett (28 June 1916), Sir Sam Hughes (Vol 1 p83), Major General W B Lindsay (early December 1916, 12 February 1917), General Loomis (13 November 1916, 11 - 20 March 1917, Vol 3 p115), General Sir Julian Byng (8 June 1917) and General Sir Arthur Currie (8 June 1917 and Vol 1 p73) and mention of the fellow Canadian officers and men with whom he served, especially those who were killed and (?Major J M) Rolston, his commanding officer, whom he despised, with excellent descriptions of his living conditions as well as references to air raids in London (see September 1917), the actress Beatrice Lillie whom he knew and visited while on leave in London, the war photographer Ernest Brooks (19 March 1916) and Winston Churchill (14 January 1916), land cultivation by the Canadian Corps (March 1918), his occasional problems with neuralgia and admission to the rest camp at Fresnicourt (April 1918), problems caused by drunkenness (including that of his own commanding officer in 1918), attitudes to the defeated Germans (December 1918), the plight of horses at the front including his own steed and insight also into his personal life including his gambling and his marital difficulties; also a few loose documents, mainly official, relating to the Canadian Corps, 1918 – 1919 and an ms letter from his mother (1935) together with photocopies (47pp) of his service records.
Cataloguer AC | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Subjects: | 2nd Field Company Canadian Engineers Royal Engineers Canadian Expeditionary Force 2nd Battalion 1st Field Company | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Lynn, Edison Franklin | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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