My maternal grandfather served with the Canadian armed forces during the First World War as a lieutenant in the Black Watch brigade.
He and his company spent a long time in the trenches and fought in the horrific battle at Passchendaele.
Though he was an older man when I knew him, there was a jaunty photo of him in his kilted uniform that greeted you when you arrived at my grandparents' home, and that's how I picture him still.
He was badly injured by shrapnel and they wanted to take his leg off. He refused, which was smart as he survived and just had a slight limp.
My grandmother used to say that if ever there was another war she was going to line up all her grandsons and shoot them each in the foot. She nursed my grandfather through night terrors about the war the whole of his life.
~ Nancy Fulford
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