Frank Swannell Diaries: Part I
Diaries of Frank Cyril Swannell Learn more.
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BC Archives MS-0392 - Box 1, Volume 4-5
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Page 53
Many and many a poor lad has been killed before he ever saw a German. If once we break through, God help the Germans. You can read the result in the dogged set faces of the English Tommies, and I don't think we Canadians will be the last. The French are full of praise for us. 'Bons soldats, les Canadiens.' Anyway, what's the use of comparisons--American, Canadian, or British, we are all one stock. Our American boys here are the first to admit that the United States could do little to help, until, as we hope, the scale will be turned. We need the munitions, not the men.
"Have had ten days--usually it's only five days--in billets behind the firing line. Don't imagine luxurious quarters. Forty or fifty men in a barn with a thin layer of filthy, dust straw and vermin, passing belief as to size and voracity. We four always sleep out in the open pasture.
"I think I know every peasant for half-a-mile around and have some excellent feeds to supplant the unappetizing good rations. I can jabber quite fluently now, but the patois around here is very pronounced. The word, 'Canadien' is enough around here to make one welcome. They don't like the Tommies. "Well, we've a long march yet tonight and then four days of strain and lack of sleep, so I'll close. We carry rifle, 200 cartridges, five sand bags, entrenching tools and knapsacks, water bottle and mess tin, package of field dressing, helmet and respirator for gas, bayonet, one day's rations, great coat, rubber sheet and spare clothes and our own private belongings--about fifty or sixty pounds.
"I have been hit in the head by a spent shrapnel bullet and in the thumb by a piece of shell casing; mere scratch, awfully lucky.
"Yours sincerely, "FRANK SWANNELL."
BC Archives, MS-0392 Box 1 Volume 4 / FRANK SWANNELL PAPERS / Diary and enclosures, 1915.