IT WAS back in 1914 when the word came to Canada for soldiers to serve for King and Country. As I was very young, not quite eighteen years of age, I thought I would like to enlist, and go to war, not really knowing what I was going into. At that time, anyone enlisting under age had to have his parents' consent, which, I will say, was no easy matter. After having a little battle of my own, with all my relatives, I finally managed to get the signature of my parents. We went to camp a few days later and had about two months' training at Valcartier, and then sailed for England. After training a few months in the Old Country we sailed for France the early part of February, 1915, where we first got our taste of war. I was more than surprised, because I was young, and my idea of war was sniping at each other from behind a tree or stump, but this trench warfare was a new thing. At that time I was attached to an ammunition column which fed the guns with its ammunition. Then it was a case of starving the guns, because the shortage of ammunition would only allow each gun of each battalion four rounds a day and as the soldiers call it out there, they had our "wind up" all the time. [Illustration: GUNNER F. G. McAVITY] We had lost quite a number of men at Ypres and pulled out of that position for another part of the line, when I was wounded on the forenoon of September 21st. It was only a slight wound in the left foot. After a few months at the hospital and proving A-1 again, I was sent back to the line, and joined my unit at Ploegstreet in the fall of the same year. Now, as you know, the fighting was not so great, but the hardships were terrible through the winter. It is simply wonderful what a human being can stand. If anyone had told me before I enlisted that I could lay in mud and water for day in and day out, I think I would have called him a "liar," but I have come to the conclusion that nothing is impossible nowadays. Some days when it was a little quiet, we would spend our time in fixing up our bivouac, which we had built on the ground, as huts to live in. After the winter of 1915 and the spring of 1916, we moved to the Ypres salient and we had a pretty tough time of it there, as they had us pinned in the shape of a horseshoe, and they could hit us from all sides except the rear. The Germans had us overwhelmed at that time, but even with their wonderful fighting mechanism, they couldn't drive back the fighting race from North America. We fought on in the salient until July, 1916, when the first division got word we were to move to another front. It was rather a surprise. We thought we were to have a rest at that time. The fighting was heavy on the two fronts--the Somme front in France and the Salonica front in Greece. So it was a question with the boys which one we were going to. At last word came to move somewhere and after a number of days on the train and on foot, we at last came to a sign along the roadway marked Somme River.