The Current - A soldier's letters gives an inside look at the horrors of the Great War

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

Lester Harper was a farmer from Pouce Coupe, British Columbia, who found himself on the frontlines of the First World War, in France. Now a new book tells his story, based on hundreds of pages of letters he sent home to his wife Mabel.  Brandon Marriott, historian and author of Till We Meet Again, explains how Harper felt about the punishing conditions at the front, the staggering number of men who were killed, and his own brave actions in battle

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It was January of 1917. Lester Harper, a farmer from Pus Coupe in Northern British Columbia, had only been in France for a couple of months, fighting on the front lines of the First World War. He wrote home to his wife, Mabel. Dearest, how is the farm today?

I am sitting on my bunk. in a sandbag hut, built into the side of a high hill, somewhere in the rear of our trenches. There has been moonlight lately, and the nights did not seem so long. Already, Lester had a window into the enormous human loss that was a hallmark of the First World War. This morning, Bill and I had a walk to see the ruins of a battle. We saw hundreds of skeletons and equipment galore. The ground was all cut up with shell holes. This is a beautiful country, but not when there are strong.

shells. Four of the boys who came in the draft with me have been hit, one fatally. I am wet, dirty, lousy, and the roof leaks. Cheer up, but the worst is yet to come. Orovoire, Lester Harper. Lester Harper sent hundreds and hundreds of pages of letters, home to his wife. Now, the Canadian historian Brandon Marriott has used those letters to piece together Lester's wartime story in a new book. It's called Till We meet again, a Canadian in the First World War. Brandon Marriott, good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. This is a really powerful story. And it begins for you with a family drive through France. Tell me about that drive. Yes, about three years ago, we were traveling

through France and my wife wanted to visit Vimy Ridge, where she told us her great grandfather had fought in the battle. And as a Canadian, I was aware of the battle and wanted to see the monument too. And we toured the trenches and the tunnels, and my wife told me and our seven-year-old son about how Lester had fought in the battle and how he had written all these letters to his wife from the front. And I'm a historian, so the mention of letters really intrigued me, and I asked to read them. And we got them from her, and the letters really surprised me. Some were tragic, some were really scandalous, others were humorous, and this really wasn't what I was expecting a man at war to be writing. about his wife in the 1910s.

As an historian, you say that you got a flutter of excitement when you heard about the letters. Yes, for sure. And the first letter I received was, what I received was just shortly before Vimey. And it was at a time when Lester's in the trenches, and he receives a package from his wife. And he's really excited to get this package. And inside the cake, but he says that the air is gone to it, and it's covered in mold. But he's really hungry, and he's in the trenches. So he eats it anyways.

And he writes shortly thereafter. he gets sick as a dog and he writes that if I could get at you I'd spank you and he says no actually I wouldn't I would kiss you and the more I read of these letters the more I really realized that this needs to be a book I want to talk more about the letters and some of the things in them who was he I mean you mentioned he was your wife's great-grandfather he was a crack shot right yes exactly he grew up he's hunting on the prairies and his family this is a family story it kind of intersects with these key moments in Canada's history. The Harpers follow the new railway west across the prairies, and then they trek up to northeastern B.C. where they build a homestead

from scratch. Why did he enlist? I think he enlisted for multiple reasons. I mean, he enlisted at a New Year's Eve party with his friends and his cousins. And he says later on that he speaks of really doing his duty for king and country. And the idea it's the right thing to do. But at the same time, there's this idea of a sense of adventure and possibilities for travel, you see. And maybe even the fear of missing out, his brother had previously joined about a year earlier. And he kind of wondering maybe how it would feel if his friends joined without him. What did he expect when he got there? Because it's interesting that some of the things that come out in the book is there are some people who thought perhaps this war would end fairly soon after he enlisted.

And then there were others who were much more clear-eyed about. what was going on. What was he expecting? Yeah, I think from reading the letters and just studying his life, I think he had a bit of a romanticized version of the army and the war. He was a cadet in Vancouver and he went on a trip to Australia with the cadets and he writes it was the best time of his life. And then when he gets to England, he kind of hears these stories early on about his brother sniping off Germans at the front. And you see repeated over and over again in the letters that hopefully I'll be home soon. I think I might be home by the harvest and then maybe by Christmas and the longer he's there I think the more clear-eyed

that he definitely became he asks somebody as he's going through some of the training what is it like and they say back to him you don't want to know what it's like pray you don't ever have to go over the top yes I mean it was a horrific experience especially when to get so and I think that's one the things that strikes me is how very early on after he arrives in France he sees how horrible it is and how I don't think it was anything like he expected, between the mud and the cold and the lice, and he writes that his feet are wet for a week straight, and then he comes under fire, and he survives his first shelling.

I think he does two tours to the front in the first 11 nights, but he says he doesn't even fire a single shot. At what stage was the war at at that point? So this is about 1916, and by this, this is December 1916, he gets there and then he's in the trenches by in January 1917. And by this point, there's been millions that are dead and wounded. And yet no side has really advanced, I believe, more than 10 miles since they had dug in. It's so interesting.

You learn so much of this detail through these letters. And as you said, you were kind of taken aback a little bit, just not the fact that they even existed, but what he had written in them. Tell me a little bit about why you were surprised by that. wrote a piece in the Globe and Mail, saying that the contents of his correspondent shocked me. Yes, I didn't see it coming in a way that I spent a lot of time reading letters from earlier periods. And then I'm reading Pierre Burton and Vimy. He writes that, you know, the letters from World War I are often brief and impersonal.

They tend to say the same thing. They acknowledge the receipt of a parcel. The soldiers state that they're well. And then they comment on the weather. and, you know, when the hope that they'll be home soon, whether Lester was a lot more open and candid, when he was also a prolific writer writing over 600 pages of letters. And when he was in England, he tends to want to shock his wife,

like I think he's shocked culturally. I mean, he comes from this, you can't even call it a small town because there are no roads or bridges in northeastern BC at the time, and he's a Methodist and he doesn't drink and he doesn't swear, and he doesn't play sports on Sunday. yet he's in England and his friends are having affairs and a woman swears at him. And it's really this culture shock and he wants to share all this with his wife. Why do you think he did that?

Why do you think he wrote in such raw detail? I think that he was really close to his family and he really wanted to share the experience with her. He says at one point, right, I'm writing this to you because I see you as part of myself and I want you to experience it. But at the same time when he's in France, his letters are censored. And not only are they censored by the army, but of course he self-censors. He doesn't want to, he wants to protect Mabel from the horrors of the war. And he does say at one point where he's kind of speaking openly, he starts speaking about coming under shellfire.

He says, enough of that, I should not tell you these things. You know the word that comes up again and again in your book, in writing about the horror of what Lester and so many others went through? The word that you use is slaughter. Can you tell me about why you landed on that word in particular? I mean, Lester, when he talks about it later, he talks about feeling like cannon fodder. And just the brutality of the war, 16 million people dead, the generation completely wiped out, and just the bodies everywhere. I think it was the imagery that really stuck to me when I was studying this.

and you read these accounts and you read these memoirs, and you read about soldiers commenting that there are so many dead that they can taste dead men in their tea, or the fact that they're just so used to these bodies everywhere that some of them hang their equipment on bones hanging out of the trench walls. Why, I mean, it just takes your breath away, hearing that, not alone, let alone reading it. Why is it important for us to hear that?

I think it's really important to remember the current, of sacrifice of these ordinary Canadians who chose to serve. I mean, learning about Lester's experience, I think in immersing myself from this story really gave me a greater appreciation for the sacrifices of our military personnel as well as well as their families, which I think on today of all day is something that we should really focus on. Hi, I'm Nam Kiwanuka, host of mistreated, a new podcast from TVO today about women's health. Historically, women's health has been under-researched and underfunded.

Women's pain has become normalized, and it all adds up to women at risk of being mistreated when it comes to their health. Mistreated will launch September 30th on TVO podcasts and on YouTube. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast and check out the show on the TVO Today YouTube channel. I hope you'll listen. You talk about ordinary Canadians, and he had a tricky relationship with extra ordinary Canadians and those who perhaps would be in positions of power sending young men like him over to the fight. He wrote to his wife, let them, the Canadian politicians, come here and

make a few trips up the line. Then they will sober up, believe me. And at what point in time, I mean, that actually happens, right? Robert Borden, the Canadian Prime Minister, makes a visit to the front. What happened then? Yeah. And I mean, Lester goes there and he parades in front of him. And you kind of see this skepticism at the time. As he progresses in the war, he starts referring to the leaders as the high mucky mucks. And at the beginning, he's excited when he first travels across Canada and goes to hear Borden at Parliament in Ottawa. But by the time that he's been in the trenches for a while, and then when the prime minister comes, he has this skepticism towards it. And I believe he writes later, too, he just talks about how they would send these soldiers.

on these raids to gather intelligence and it didn't matter how many soldiers it cost. He said there were thousands of lives sacrifice just to find out trivial information. You say that Lester, in your words, no longer gave a hoot about Robert Borden and that the shells had blasted

the patriotic spirit out of him. I mean, as you understand it, how common was that sentiment from those who were there right at the sharp edge of this war? I think as the war progressed you start you start to see that he says I think believe one of his words or something about you know patriotism won't bring me home to you nor will it protect me from a German shell and although he was there he believed in fighting for the men at his side and they were his family they were the ones that struggled with him through it this story for you started as I mentioned when you were on the family trip to Vimy Ridge and his battalion was at Vimy Ridge as well what

What did he experience there? Yeah, I think his story at Vimy Ridge is one of my favorites, and it's one of those things that we only have because Lester, well, Lester didn't speak about the war for a long, long time with his family after it happened. But then decades later, when he does finally speak about it, nearing the end of his life, his daughter, Barbara, writes this account, and that was one of the reasons we have it, because it was one of the notes. And Lester's battalion at the time, they were ordered to clear

the villages nearby and they were going over the top and they had to follow this moving wall of shell fire and the timing was the key in this advance they were told to go over on exact time or they would be annihilated by their own shells and lester and his his section they were quite they were veterans at the time but they had a new officer and this new officer would apparently shake every time he heard enemy artillery and lester's cousin who was a sergeant was in charge of their rum. And Lester's cousin actually fills the officer's canteen with rum in order to try to calm him down. But it doesn't work. And during the advance, the officer's timing is off, and the men at the front start getting hit with friendly fire. So Lester's cousin actually runs over

across the battlefield and tries to settle the officer down, but he gets shot in the process. And even with this wound, he carries on and he eventually gets a medal for it. And then Lester's battalion goes on and they clear these trenches and dugouts in this time. What do you learn about that battle through an account like that? I think you really get the firsthand stories, and I think that's what's really important. You get what it feels like to actually have been there, and I think it provides this personal firsthand account that we normally wouldn't have, and that I guess I don't really get a lot of the time when I'm reading about the text from the battle from a history text with a farther view.

We mentioned his experience with Borden. I mean, what do you think psychologically the lowest point of his time fighting was for Lester? I think there are kind of a few moments that jump out at me when he loses his first soldier. He writes that losing men made his blood boil. And when you read these letters, you kind of really see his suffering, how he's trying to understand what's going on. He says that some of the finest fellows I know have gone under, and it's the uncertainty that gets me. You never know what's coming. And then after about nine months, he kind of has another moment where you see the war is really wearing on him.

He's lost lots of friends, and his cousin has gone missing in action, and he thinks he's dead. And at the same time, he hasn't heard from his brother in weeks, and he's worried that he may be dead as well. And he's going through this himself, and he's been in the trenches, and he's had numerous close shaves. he writes, he writes that it's really wearing to never know if you'd be alive again the next morning. He was awarded a medal for his action stringer raid in 1918? Yes, exactly. So he sent on this raid and he was supposed to search these dugouts. And as he's going through the German lines, he spots a German machine gun crew setting up in the distance. And this is beyond their objective. So he decides to charge it alone. And at this,

point, he only has his rifle and one smoke grenade and one other grenade. So he's vastly underarmed compared to this team wielding a German machine gun, which is the most advanced weapon at the time. And yet he attacks it alone and he kills and he captures the crew. How did he feel, as you understand it, about what he'd been able to do? So there's a lot of humility, even years later when he never spoke about it with his family. And even years later, when his daughter finds out about it, he says, oh, and she finds this metal that's being buried up in the attic. And he says, oh, that's not a big deal. They gave lots of those away. It means nothing at all. But yet when she talked to him a little bit more, and we have, you know, in his notes that she wrote, that there's this bewilderment. He writes that we lost seven of our best soldiers. And all we found out was which enemy unit they were fighting. You know, was it worth it? His reluctance to speak about what he had gone through is not uncommon. I mean, there were many, many people who fought in the war and other subsequent wars

who, because of what they went through, wouldn't talk about it. How do you understand that? I mean, there's a scene. Doesn't one of his daughters ask him a question about fighting in the war? Yes, exactly. It's near the end. And this is when Barbara comes home from school one day. And after Armist's Day, and she asked them, she actually asked him,

daddy, did you ever kill a German? And he was reading his McLean's magazine, and apparently he just stared through it. And before Barbara could ask anything else, her mom took her out into the yard and kind of chastised her and said, you know, your father had nightmares for years, so we don't talk about that. And even his grandchildren much later knew better than to ever mention the Great War in front of him. How do you understand that? Yeah, it's one of the things that I think has really, one of the lessons that I really got out of writing this book was really the importance of taking care of our veterans and these longer term implications of military service. Lester writes at one point, he says, some come back wounded, but few come back all right. And with his nightmares and with

the fact that even the mention of the war triggered him, it really, really got me thinking about this. And you're part of this. You're part of keeping those stories alive, right? I mean, How do you carry that? Yes, well, continuing on in that strain of thought, I mean, I did a little bit of research into this, and you find out that veterans of higher rates of depression and anxiety and other illnesses, and then this Remembrance Day, especially I think about my own family, and I think about my cousin and her husband, Lee Martin. And he was a corporal in the Sixth Field Engineer Squadron, a reserve force in Vancouver,

for over a decade in the early 2000s. And yet he was recently diagnosed with ALS in his early 40s with two kids at home. And after talking to him, he was telling me that veterans are up to twice as likely to develop ALS as civilians. And this alongside reading Lester's story and about his own experience has really really gotten me thinking about this long-term implication of military service. What do you see is your responsibility in telling these stories? Again, you wrote an op-ed in the globe. And it begins by you quoting your wife. Your wife told you, please don't write another academic book.

Write something that people actually want to read. Now, it's those closest to us who can say those sorts of things, but what do you think she was getting at there? Well, I wrote a very academic book about a decade ago. And although it was great and it was well reviewed in the small field, it really didn't have the broader reach. And this story was so important that I think she really wanted to get it out for more people to read and writing it in a readable style and to try to fully immerse the reader and the experience of the Canadians in the trenches of the Great War and bring Lester's voice to life. I think it's really important because by learning about their experiences, I think it builds empathy and it really helps to bridge the gap between those who serve and those who don't. Do you worry about that when it comes to other generations? You mentioned that on that trip to Vivian Ridge, your seven-year-old son was there with you.

I mean, do you worry that we talk about this a lot, that younger generations in this country may not find the connections to keep those stories alive themselves and to learn lessons from those stories? Oh, most definitely. And I think about it a lot. When I was writing that op-ed in the Globe and Mail, actually, my son came up and asked me and was like, what are you working on? And I told him I was writing a newspaper article on the importance of Remembrance Day. And he turned to me and he said, oh, so only old people are going to read it then. And that, to me, really hit at why we need to really share these stories and help the youth engage with them. Because I think by reading these stories, you're building that empathy and you're creating these connections.

What will you be, you've hinted at this in a couple of different ways, but what will you be thinking about today on the 11th of November? Oh, I'll definitely be thinking of my cousin as well as all of our military personnel who have served and continue to serve. It's a wonderful story, very powerfully told, and I'm glad to have the chance to talk to you. Brendan, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Brandon Marriott's new book is called Till We Meet Again, a Canadian in the First World War. You've been listening to the current podcast. my name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.

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