But This is Our War

Pembroke. August 4, 1914. On a verandah in town four young people anxiously await news that will change irrevocably the course of their lives. A fifth arrives, out of breath, with the latest bulletin from the telegraph office. War has been declared – and it is their war.

At the age of ninety, Grace Craig looks back to her youth and tells the story of the impact of the Great War on her family and friends. Letters from the young men on the Western Front are interwoven with her own memories of the war. Her brother Basil, youngest officer in the No. 1 Canadian Tunnelling Company, fights underground driving mineshafts deep below the tortured earth of no man's land; later, as an observer in the Royal Flying Corps, he flies above the enemy lines amidst the bursting shells. His older brother Ramsey, a lieutenant in the 38th Battalion, fights in the constant mud on the ground, and must lead his men 'over the top' in the face of enemy fire.

At home their sister knits socks and scarves, packs boxes to be sent overseas, serves vast quantities of apple pie and ice cream in the canteen at nearby Camp Petawa, and leads the assembled troops in stirring war songs. In November 1916 she braves the U boats and the North Atlantic to spend time with her brothers while they are on leave in England.

Divided by danger and distance, letters alone allowed contact. The soldiers yearned for everyday news of home; and in Pembroke one waited for, and kept forever, those precious scraps of paper from beyond the sea.

But This is Our War is a moving, absorbing document of young Canadians at war.