Till We Meet Again: A Canadian in the First World War

An incredibly evocative and action-filled story of one man’s fight in the First World War, rich and raw with remarkable detail.

As he tended to the chores on his homestead, Lester Harper never imagined that he would turn in his hoe for a Lee-Enfield rifle on the Western Front. But the farmer from Pouce Coupe, in northern British Columbia, found himself at a party agreeing to help form a small-town regiment headed for France and the Great War. Lester left behind his wife, Mabel, in the shadow of the loss of their infant daughter, Hilda. A marksman before he even volunteered for the Canadian Army, Lester joined his cousin and friends, thousands of miles from his home, mere yards from the bayonets, bullets, and gas bombs of the feared Boche. In Till We Meet Again, the First World War comes to life in unprecedented detail, drawing on Lester’s letters as well as meticulous historical research.

Not since Timothy Findley’s The Wars, Tim Cook’s magisterial works about the First World War, or Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front has a book about a soldier’s life at the sharp end been told with such humour, gravitas, and in a heart-pounding narrative that drops you behind enemy lines. For at one point, Lester was trapped in a shell hole, a heartbeat away from the Germans setting up their machine gun to mow down his comrades.

This is a remarkable story, remarkably told. This book will be heralded by historians as a new approach to telling a soldier’s story and will become beloved by readers of military history and anyone who wants to understand what life was like for our boys behind the wire.

Originally from Vancouver, Brandon Marriott received his doctorate in history from the University of Oxford. He went on to hold a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of London then taught undergraduate history as a sessional instructor at Simon Fraser University (SFU). An avid traveler who is married to a Canadian diplomat, he has lived in eight countries, visited over a hundred more, and held academic positions around the world. He has been a volunteer instructor at the University of the Nouvelle Grand’Anse in Haiti, a scholar-in-residence at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and a visiting scholar at the University of Oslo. Most recently, Brandon has returned to SFU as a research associate. An outdoor winter enthusiast, you can find him in the mountains in his free time with a good book and a pair of skis.