The Journal of Private Fraser, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-18

Donald Fraser was in many ways a typical soldier of the Great War. Like thousands of others he enthusiastically enlisted to support his King and Country in the great European war. Fraser joined the 31st (Calgary) Battalion in 1914. His journey from those jubilant days in Calgary led him to the great battlefields of the First World War. His own war came to a sudden end in the slime of Passchendaele in November 1917.. Donald Fraser, lived and fought in the hideous conditions of mud, death, rats, filth, and fire that characterized the Great War. His experiences of trench life were meticulously recorded, bringing to life a soldier's story. What he inadvertently created was a classic account of the First World War, so rich in detail and so vivid the reader can almost smell the cordite and feel the oozing mud.