‘Excitement and terror’

Island soldiers did their share of fighting – and suffering – in the Great War

They came home with heads full of horrors and bodies full of scars, to families who could never understand the nightmare they’d been through.

A war that was supposed to be short and easy had dragged on for more than four years, leaving carnage across Europe and heartbreak on both sides of the Atlantic.

A century later, the sheer toll of the First World War is something Ed MacDonald struggles with.

The UPEI history professor says a narrative of heroes motivated by lofty ideals does an injustice to the Islanders who served.

“I’m haunted by the reality of the Great War — the boredom, the squalor, the discomfort and the periods of intense excitement and terror,” MacDonald said.

“Many Islanders — those who weren’t actually wounded — came back mentally scarred in a period when it was not really understood and recognized, and that tragedy played itself out over decades.”

P.E.I. had the second-lowest enlistment rate in the country, but MacDonald said his research indicates many Islanders signed up elsewhere in Canada. The province had been dealing with a steady stream of emigration since 1880, he said.

He estimates P.E.I. enlistment at more than 8,000, up from the P.E.I. Regiment Museum’s number of 7,168.

Of those, 503 Islanders sacrificed their lives and more than 1,000 were injured.

P.E.I.’s artillery units, the No. 2 and No. 8 siege batteries, served in every major battle Canada fought, MacDonald said.

“We had a tradition in the militia on P.E.I. of being particularly good at gunnery.”

Our only infantry battalion, the 105th Prince Edward Island Highlanders, was broken up to reinforce front-line units and never fought together.

That was probably a massive stroke of luck for the Island, MacDonald said, referencing the battle of Beaumont-Hamel where 89 per cent of the Newfoundland Regiment was killed or wounded.

“The casualty rates for battalions going over the top in the First World War were often horrendously high.”

MacDonald recalled a particularly vivid anecdote from James Morrison’s 1995 book Hell Upon Earth: A Personal Account of P.E.I. Soldiers in the Great War.

Two comrades were talking when an explosion rippled through the air. One looked to the other to continue the conversation.

The lower half of his face had been blown off.

“Just that one incident tells me something about the impact of war and that there’s no glory in war.”