And We Go On: A Memoir of the Great War (Carleton Library Series)

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In the autumn of 1915 Will Bird used to be working on a farm in Saskatchewan when the ghost of his brother Stephen, killed by German mines in France, gave the impression before him in uniform. Rattled, Bird rushed home to Nova Scotia and enlisted in the army to take his dead brother’s place. And We Go On is a remarkable and harrowing memoir of his two years in the trenches of the Western Front, from October 1916 until the Armistice. When it first gave the impression in 1930, Bird’s memoir used to be hailed by many veterans as probably the most authentic account of the war experience, uncompromising in its portrayal of the horror and savagery, even as also honouring the bravery, camaraderie, and unexpected spirituality that flourished a few of the enlisted men. Written in part as a reaction to anti-war novels such as All Quiet at the Western Front, which Bird criticized for portraying the soldier as “a coarse-minded, profane creature, searching for only the solace of loose women or the courage of strong liquor,” And We Go On is a nuanced response to the trauma of war, suffused with an interest in the spiritual and the paranormal not found in other war literature. Long out of print, this can be a true lost classic that arguably influenced a large number of works in the Canadian literary canon, including novels by Robertson Davies and Timothy Findley. In an introduction and afterword, David Williams illuminates Bird’s work by placing it inside the genre of Great War literature and by discussing the book’s publication history and reception.

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