He had left Scotland behind many years before. Now in his thirties and a married man, Thomas Bryce had one child and another was on the way when the Great War broke out. Steadily employed as a skilled tradesman in Montreal, Tom was no youngster looking for adventure.
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The Eager Soldier
In the beginning it was like going to summer camp or heading off on a road trip with pals. If you didn’t go, you would miss a free trip back home to the old country where you could visit your grandparents and the friends you left behind. The war wouldn’t last long, the young recruits thought, and what an adventure it would be!
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The Boy Soldier
On Good Friday, 1917, Charles Stanley Lewis was in France close to the Western Front, four kilometres from Bethune. In a village he had purchased two of the pretty embroidered postcards that French women were selling to soldiers for a few pennies. Now in the trenches, Stanley wrote a few reassuring lines to his beloved family in Liverpool, left behind only a few weeks before. Nine weeks later, his brief life was over.
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Family Matters 