[AZRepublican]

My grandfather was one of the lucky ones who came home alive. I don't think he ever stopped thinking of those Private Peterson’s who were not as lucky as him.

[Clive]

My grandfather was at Vimy. He went from there to a British military hospital thence back into the line in time for Passchendaele.

Vimy Ridge is seen by many Canadians as the beginning of Canada's development as a nation.

Our people went to war thinking of themselves as British Subjects, they came home thinking of themselves as Canadians.

[PUGACHEV]

My great-uncle Joe was the youngest of eight brothers. The eldest six were all killed in coal mines; two on the same day in different mines, they were brought home an laid on their mother's front porch. She wouldn't let my great uncle and his older brother, my grandfather, enter the mines: my grandfather went to work for the Lehigh Vally RR as a telegrapher, and Joe, the baby, was drafted and sent to France in WWI.

He nearly made it home in one piece, but, on the last day of the war, he was sheltering along the wall of a large crater when he wanted a smoke -- that fickle desire for a cigarette saved his life. No one on his side of the hole had matches, so he went crawling over to a group on the other side when a shell burst in the crater or nearby. Everyone else in the crater was killed, while Joe, being halfway between one side and the other, had his leg sliced open to the bone. My great uncle left the hospital in 1922, but he survived.