“None can realize what war really is unless it is staged on their own front lawn.”
ANDREW MURRAY ROBERTSON, LETTER TO DORIS, FALL 1917
Read the full entry →Andrew Murray Robertson
The complete First World War diary and letters of Andrew Murray Robertson, Canadian Engineers, transcribed, annotated, and preserved by his great-grandson from the original notebooks, letters, and documents he kept.
Start with a short path
Hand-picked routes through the diary, a few entries each, so you don’t have to begin at the beginning and read straight through.
What did joining up look like in 1915? From the day he enlisted to the Channel crossing.
The Somme, 1916A Canadian engineer’s autumn on the Somme: dugouts at La Boisselle, the first tanks, and the roads behind the guns.
Vimy Ridge, April 1917The battle as one engineer recorded it: the build-up, the morning, and the weeks after.
Dear Doris: the letters and the diaryWhat he told his cousin at home, set beside what he wrote in the diary the same week.
The last hundred days, 1918From the first day at Amiens to the diary’s last entry. Where the diary goes quiet, the letters and documents fill in.