became more and more unsteady over time. The young Curtis, who had grown up in Peterborough, Ontario, did not survive the war.

There was no escape and no rest from the battering, both physical and mental. Standing shoulder to shoulder with comrades helped, but there was no single method of enduring the death and destruction. Many soldiers were deeply religious, and their faith was only strengthened in the wasteland. “I do believe God will preserve me again when I go back to the trenches,” wrote Frank Maheux to his concerned wife. Although wounded, Maheux survived. Other soldiers found the fighting so brutal that their faith in a higher power was shaken. Weariness led to fatalism, which was a form of psychological coping where the soldiers continued to serve untilalways caught in the rear areas and many were sentenced to death, with twenty-five sentences carried out — twenty-two for desertion, one for cowardice and two for murder. Behind the multiple factors that kept soldiers in the line was the ultimate threat of a firing squad.

Despite the strain, British and Dominion forces were among the very few armies that went through the meat grinder of the Western Front without succumbing to mass mutiny. The Russian forces broke in 1917; the French and Italians mutinied that same year after spectacularly poor leadership and the accumulation of morale-shaking casualties; even the much-vaunted German army was in ruins by the end of the war — but not the Empire’s forces. While the Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and British Tommies paid