While the focus is on the individuals, themselves, their stories are recounted very effectively against a carefully drawn background of the progress and strategy of the war generally and of the Canadian Corps particularly (assisted by a useful set of maps). We follow the Corps through the Somme, Ypres, Passchendaele, Vimy, Arras and Cambrai, and see the deaths of individuals within those mammoth conflicts. The author presents another layer of cross-hatching to the story, tracing such themes as the machine gun, artillery, trench raids, air combat, medics, and railroads again placing individuals, and their deaths, within those separate stories. In all of this, we see as well the details of daily life on the Western Front: the routines, the living conditions, the experience of the wounded.

      A good deal is accomplished by this book. Through this kind of retrieval of individual stories, new generations can be made to appreciate the human dimension of almost forgotten names carved on now seemingly ancient monuments. They can see the meaning of war for those directly serving and fighting - and, just as significantly, for the communities raised them. This, in comparison to abstract sentiment, is a powerful way to understand the experience of war and to acknowledge those who, in different ways, were part of it. In his conclusion, Gray notes that "if this work inspires one grandchild, or great-grandchild, to discover the service of a forebear who answered a nation's call, and perhaps never returned, then its purpose has been achieved." There is no question that the author has accomplished his goal: not just for the descendants of the Carleton Place contingent, but for anyone looking back to one of the major shaping events in our country's history.

Recommended.