1st Division

Two years in the Ypres salient.

as told by Private Albert Franklin Edwards, No. 6857, 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Division, Canadian Infantry.

Editor's Note These were the first Canadians to go overseas in the Great War.

H. L. F. I was born in Canada, but had lived virtually all my life in the United States.

the private was a big fellow about six feet three inches tall and was furious at being captured as i had him at my bayonet's point he gave me no trouble but when we arrived at our lines he took it out on the sentry by spitting at him and slapping him in the face we sat mr prussian on the firing step and told him a few things that would not look well in this book and he finally spoke in english when we called the escort to get what information we could from him he asked after some friends he had made at columbia college new york city where he had been educated he told us that just before the war broke out he had been called back to germany supposedly to attend a military fte as he was still subject to military service he had no idea he said that he was going to be sent to war and he had been drugged and sent into battle forced on by officers in the rear after we had pumped him dry he was handed over together with fourteen other prisoners who were taken the same night and sent to the cage four miles to the rear on the way to the cage he complained to a soldier in the guard accompanying the prisoners of the difficulty of marching through the mud which was very deep the guard told him he should be thankful that he was not in his the guard's place as he had to walk back again I should have stated before that I cut off the buttons from the officer's uniform when he died and kept them together with his field glasses as souvenirs.

I have them still, as no one has claimed them.

A Machine Gunner's Story by Machine Gunner George Eckert, No. 165688, 1st Machine Gun Battalion, 1st Division, A.E.F.

I enlisted in the service of my country April 6, 1917, when we declared war on Germany.

So a lot of people are typically interested in what we can provide.

Even broader armies are interested in what we're doing and a lot of the work that we've been doing this year is how to better enable the 1st Australian Division and support more regularly a lot of warfighters.

So if you're a person who wants to join the reserves and get amongst it and work with, you know, the likes of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Battalion, et cetera, and, you know, 812, 4 Reg, 1 Reg, this is sort of the place to be because we're looking to work more closely with our CIRCAT 7 full-time partners.

Well, thanks very much for coming on the show and giving us an overview.