War Service
The First World War broke out while Macdonald was earning his university degree. In 1915, he underwent military training in the Canadian Officers Training Corps. In February 1916, he joined the 185th battalion, known as the Cape Breton Highlanders, leaving for Britain in October 1916 where he received further training. Macdonald was finally sent to the front lines in France in May 1918 as a lieutenant in Nova Scotia's 25th battalion. He participated in heavy fighting and on one occasion led his entire company because all of the other officers had been wounded or killed. Macdonald felt fortunate to have been spared, but his luck ran out in Belgium when he was hit in the neck by a German sniper's bullet on November 7, 1918, just four days before the Armistice. Macdonald spent eight months in Britain recovering from his wound. He returned home to his family in Cape Breton in 1919. Biographer Stephen Henderson writes that the war had made him "more serious and less self-confident", but "struck by the willingness of so many to march to horrible deaths in the name of an abstract principle".
Read more about this topic: Angus Lewis Macdonald
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or service:
“This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Mr. Speaker, at a time when the nation is again confronted with necessity for calling its young men into service in the interests of National Security, I cannot see the wisdom of denying our young women the opportunity to serve their country.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)