Pilgrimage: A Guide to the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in World War I

J.L. Granatstein is a professor of history at York University, the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s, and the author of The Good
Fight.

The Royal Newfoundland Regiment played a distinguished role in the Great
War, fighting at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. It paid in full
measure for the privilege of serving, too. Of the 6241 who served in its
ranks, 1304 did not survive, while 2314 were wounded. In all, close to
half of those who enlisted were killed or wounded, a staggering toll
from a small Dominion. The worst day for the Regiment, a day still
commemorated every year in the province, was July 1, 1916, when the
Regiment went over the top at Beaumont Hamel at the start of the Somme
offensive: 790 officers and men left their trenches; the next day 80
remained alive and unwounded, a slaughter of unparalleled horror even by
the standards of the Great War.

This book traces the RNR’s route through Gallipoli and the Western
Front, listing every man who died and all who were decorated. It
provides a route for pilgrimages, points to the location of the Caribou
memorials that mark major battles, and, although the maps are sometimes
unclear, it deserves to be carried by every Newfoundlander and Canadian
who goes to France.