22 January, 1912
Dear Journal,
My name is Wing Chung and I came to Canada at January 20, 1910. I have been in Canada for 8 years now. So, I consider myself more Canadian than Chinese, but they don’t. I found out about the Germans, from the posters. Conscription, didn’t really affect me since I wanted to enlist for the army anyway, but my fellow soldiers were against conscription, they kept on repeating, that they would very much rather be with their families in their comfy beds, But wanted to help my country and defeat the Germans. I wanted to fight for my country, so I went to enlist to help out with the war. I was assigned to be a builder; my job was to build the trenches and bridges. and my fellow builders mainly consisted of African (Black)-Canadians, and a few Chinese.
My mom once said everything happens for a good reason, I didn’t believe this until, rumors started going around about the life in trenches. Trenches were half full of mud and water; there was an awful smell of rotting bodies and gunpowder. There trenches were also occupied with things with a lot of legs, also swarms of rats and the soldiers were catching lice. I also heard about how the soldiers got so tired of this, that they harmed themselves to get to go back home.
New technology was being invented and tested, machine gun was one of the most effective and reliable weapon. Back home my family (I had a wife and a son), they had got jobs and were working in one of these weapon making factories. I was against them having to work, but the money I was getting was just not enough. I also heard of the tanks, at first I thought it was joke, but my fellow soldiers told me they were