As the news that Britain had declared war on Germany trickled into the harbours, coves, inlets and tickles of The Dominion of Newfoundland, people talked of little else. Coffin’s Cove was no different, wherever a group of men gathered, the question was always the same, would Britain call upon her vast overseas empire for assistance? On August 23,1914, less than three weeks after the declaration of war, all residents of the community, who weren’t ill or infirm had gathered, as they did each Sunday, at St. Stephen’s Church for Evensong, as the Church of England called it’s Sunday evening worship service. It was expected that The Reverend Mr. Hicks, who had returned from St. John’s a day earlier, would enlighten them further. Alice too was there, the eighteen year old, having made the twenty minute walk with her family from what everyone referred to as ‘Upper Coffin’s Cove”. Her heart skipped a beat as she caught sight of her twenty-one year old boyfriend Bill, standing among a group of young men outside the church door. They had planned to marry the following year, yet she knew that the young man would not shirk what he considered his duty, should the call come to go to war in defence of the mother country.

The message from the pulpit that night was clear and unmistakeable, “His Majesty”, declared the good Reverend, “expects all able-bodied young men of his overseas domains, to seriously consider coming to the assistance of the Crown”. The government in St. John’s he told his flock, were already making plans for a Newfoundland Regiment which would sail for Europe in the Fall. It was a somber group who left the church that night, except perhaps for the young men, on whose lives the news would have the greatest impact. With the exuberance of youth, they talked of travelling to St. John’s to enlist and of the voyage overseas to the battlefields of Europe. The same scene was being played out in hundreds of other communities up and down the rugged coast of the island, known as “Britain’s oldest colony”. Young men who had never used a gun, except perhaps to shoot a seabird for the dinner table, were excitedly planning a venture that would take them away from their peaceful homeland, and into an environment that most could never have imagined. That many would not return to the coves and inlets where they had grown up, and that those who did would be changed forever, was not something that was talked about tonight, the excitement of the adventure overshadowed all else.