When that time came, my first difficulty was in communicating my
decision to my family; my second, in getting accepted in Canada. I was
perhaps more ignorant than most people about things military. I had
not the slightest knowledge as to the functions of the different arms
of the service; infantry, artillery, engineers, A.S.C.--they all
connoted just as much and as little. I had no qualifications. I had
never handled fire-arms. My solitary useful accomplishment was that I
could ride a horse. It seemed to me that no man ever was less fitted
for the profession of killing. I was painfully conscious of
self-ridicule whenever I offered myself for the job. I offered myself
several times and in different quarters; when at last I was granted a
commission in the Canadian Field Artillery it was by pure
good-fortune. I didn't even know what guns were used and, if informed,
shouldn't have had the least idea what an eighteen-pounder
was. Nevertheless, within seven months I was out in France, taking
part in an offensive which, up to that time, was the most ambitious of
the entire war.

From New York I went to Kingston in Ontario to present myself for
training; an officers' class had just started, in which I had been
ordered to enrol myself. It was the depth of winter--an unusually hard
winter even for that part of Canada. My first glimpse of the Tete du
Pont Barracks was of a square of low buildings, very much like the
square of a Hudson Bay Fort. The parade ground was ankle-deep in
trampled snow and mud. A bleak wind was blowing from off the
river. Squads of embryo officers were being drilled by hoarse-voiced
sergeants. The officers looked cold, and cowed, and foolish; the
sergeants employed ruthlessly the age-old army sarcasms and made no
effort to disguise their disgust for these officers and "temporary