Milestone: 1,000 Pages

Today the 1,000th page was posted on the blog. Never dreaming that this blog would be so involving and engaging it is with some trepidation that I look towards the next 1,000 pages because, honestly, there will be a 1,000 more after that thousand. I can see that some of my initial efforts to keep this blog organized is problematic. The organization and view of the soldiers’ pages is cumbersome and not user friendly, especially on mobile devices. And there are other issues with the blog and its organization but I forge ahead!

Having said that it is something I love doing and slowly each soldier of the 18th Battalion that was killed in action, died of wounds, or died accidentally in the conflict will be recognized. And as someone said on the Facebook Group said, and I am paraphrasing, “They all served and should be recognized” whether they survived the war or not.

To some degree the process can move toward the mechanical and routinized. Find a  soldier on the LAC. Download his attestation papers. Create a folder on the hard drive. Record his particulars in the master database… And so on. But even as this begins to feel routinized you review the service record of a man who served and see that he had a sister that lived at 273 Fordhouse Lane, Stirchley, Birmingham by the name of Mrs. R. Parsons. That that man was wounded on the wrist and lost some of the function in that wrist. And he lived until October, 1958 dying at the age of 78.

And I do not mind admitting that sometimes it makes me sad. All this youth wasted in war. On all sides.

Then I get a message from a student in Saskatchewan looking for help researching “one of my guys” and the sadness retreats and the chance to help them live on directs me for the next hour, day, week.

I often think back on the captured moments of my time and that of the readers of this blog and I appreciate their interest and effort to visit, contribute, and find out more.