The Journal of Private Fraser, 1914-1918: Canadian Expenditionary Force

Thomas S. Abler is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo and the author of A Canadian Indian Bibliography, 1960-1970.

“But everyone gets it [wounded or killed] at Ypres,” wrote Donald Fraser (p. 145), indicating the chances of the average infantryman in the trenches in World War I. Fraser lasted longer than most. He spent two years and two months at the front before a shell ended his military career. This remarkable journal tells his story of that time.

Fraser, a Scot who had immigrated to Canada in 1906, joined at age 32 the 31st (Alberta) Battalion, C.E.F., and later served with the 6th Brigade Machine Gun Company. His journal covers the period from September 1915 to November 1917, while he served in France. He kept notes while in the field and later wrote the work in final form. Despite being written after the war, the daily entries read for the most part as if they were written that day. Fellow veterans who knew of his journal urged him to publish it, but he declined. His daughter preserved the journal and showed it to University of Victoria historian Reginald Roy, who took on the task of editor and finally brought the journal to publication.

Fraser brings to the reader his very personal view of the conflict. He has little respect for officers, particularly those who showed no taste for being under fire. He had a curiosity about the war, reporting the aerial combats he observed and examining crosses (and buttons on decaying bodies) to discover what units had in previous years fought over the ground still being contested.

His view is that of an infantryman, but he gives the infantry little credit for success or failure. He felt infantry battles were decided by the artillery, which either cleared the opposition from before assaulting forces or did not. He is very casual in reporting the Canadian success at Vimy for this reason. He did not find the fighting on that day particularly difficult.

What does overwhelm the reader is the slow but constant attrition, as members of his battalion daily fall to shell or bullet, coupled with enormous casualties when engaged in major battles. Other aspects of the trenches are also there, such as the mud and the C.E.F.’s special cross: the Ross rifle with its tendency to jam. Fraser’s journal brings home to the reader with great effect life, and death, in Flanders.