An Old Article - Our Soldier Boys

The following article was printed sometime during World War 1. It was among extracts from a letter written by a Placentia native who was at the taking of Caribou Hill. He wrote the letter from France and it was under the date of April 9th.

"Martin Grace, Martin Kent, Tom Ryan, and L. Fewer are well; Jack Collins, N. Carrigan and Jim Mooney are well also. Bert Collins and Tom Kelly and Jack Whalen, D. Furlong and J. Walsh are still in England. I think all our Battalion are getting leave. I think there will be about fifty men go at a time. It is around here you can see the effects of the war. You would not see a man in civilian's clothes if you walked for a month, and the women are doing all their work. The women do all the farm work, drive the horses, just the same as the men, and we were at several places where they had women conductors on the train cars. They also have woman looking after the electric lights and all these jobs men do in peace times. I heard we were going as a pioneer Battalion. The general picked us on account of our good work at Cape Helles. There was a roadway there leading to the firing line and they had to have it closed for the evacuation, and the royal engineers worked at it for a fortnight and gave it up as impossible, and our raiment took it up and did it in three days. It got flooded after that big storm, and we had to clear it up. If we are a pioneer Battalion it is a great honour, because they generally call a pioneer Battalion the brains of the British army. The 7th of April was my birthday: I was 21 years old." Matt Collins

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