Derek Grout - Thunder in the Skies: A Canadian Gunner in the Great War

Early June 2014 After having spent the past 10 days in Normandy attending the seventieth anniversary of D-Day, I arrived in the Belgian town of Ypres. Under an overcast sky, a friend and I were enjoying an early-morning 10-kilometre walk. The fields along our track were ploughed recently, and muddy with sparse clumps of plants, including poppies swaying in tufts of grass. It was quiet and peaceful.

About a kilometre off the track we spotted a small, isolated Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery with a prominent white cross bearing an inverted bronze sword. A brown stone wall shielded the perimeter of this sanctuary and the encased register at its entrance.

As we crossed the field to pay our respects, mud sucked at the soles of my shoes. Bits of rusted steel were evident in the ground remnants of artillery shells fired 100 years ago. I tried to avoid the mud by taking a shortcut along a narrow ditch (most likely a trench so many years ago), but lost my footing and slid down into the putrid cold water, soaked to my knees. I pulled on the grass to get up the steep bank where prickly nettles stung my hands, arms, and legs, leaving a welt and burning rash. Determined to visit these lads in their final resting place, I followed another line of approach, with boots sloshing and stinking.

The neatly groomed cemetery revealed rows of white tombstones lined up like silent sentinels to mark the graves of young soldiers from Britain, Canada, Australia, and Newfoundland. They were shockingly young, cut down in the prime of life in battle conditions that are impossible to imagine. Their ages ranged from 15 to 29, with the majority in their early twenties. Some could not be identified and are Known only unto God . Here and there graves were adorned with colourful flowers or a small Canadian flag fluttering gracefully in the breeze. My eye caught the marker of a young German soldier, off to one side. His presence with our fallen sons is an acknowledgement of the cost on both sides to achieve the peace in our time for which these men and so many others fought and died.

As a retired Canadian Army officer, I am proud of the accomplishments of the Canadians who fought in the Great War. However, these graves before me serve as a grim reminder of the painful cost of victory.

Later that rainy and thunderous day I visited Vimy Ridge. The white twin-pillared monument is the centrepiece of a 100-hectare preserved battlefield park that encompasses a portion of the ground over which the Canadian Corps made their assault. Vimy was the first occasion on which all four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force participated in a battle as a cohesive and victorious formation, and thus it has become a national symbol of historic achievement and sacrifice.

In the next days we passed through Passchendaele, Cambrai, Loos, Arras, Beaumont Hamel, and many other towns and villages whose names are battle honours emblazoned on the colours of our Canadian regiments. All the while, I asked myself, How can I learn more about this era? And what can we do to ensure future generations remember the heroes of that era?

When I got off the plane in Canada, I received an e-mail from Derek Grout, a writer I had never met. He asked me to read his manuscript and consider writing a foreword to his book, Thunder in the Skies: A Canadian Gunner in the Great War.

This wonderful book brought life and meaning to my experiences during my visit to Flanders. It presents accurately the Canadian battlefield experience of the First World War by the soldiers who witnessed it. As a Canadian soldier and gunner, it was easy for me to identify with Bert Sargent, who joined the Army in Montreal in late 1914 to be part of the Great Adventure. He trained in England, met the love of his life, and departed with his friends to fight a brutal war. As I turned the pages, I empathized with Bert as he endured the harsh realities of combat so vividly described in this book, and I understood that he was fighting for what he believed in, and for his friends.

Derek Grout brings new light and context to the challenging world that faced hundreds of thousands of young Canadians a century ago. His outstanding research brings Canadas contribution into focus and allows us to appreciate the dauntless soldiers of that era, especially their feelings, motivation, love of life, and basic humanity. We learn how, individually and collectively, regardless of rank or position, they all played a meaningful role in creating the foundation of our great nation and in making Canada the land of the free.